27 September 2017

Jumped right into the thick of it this school year with the kids producing work for auction to raise funds for charity. With little time to create artworks to the theme of nutrition, we made quirky collage transcriptions of still life paintings.

In these collages, Year 10 and 11 students transcribed still life paintings by Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse, as well as contemporary artist Dennis De Caires. They analysed the composition, colour, and value in the original works as they replicated these paintings in another medium.

Students constructed their pieces using patterns and textures of wood, textiles, rice terraces, and the artworks of several prominent artists, including Vincent Van Gogh, Damien Hirst, and Yayoi Kusama. They depict a wide range of objects that are nutritious or conventional in the still life genre, such as foods clipped from advertisements and botanical illustrations and shapely vases and decanters.

I've been delighted by how well my students took to their collages, sticking through the initial task of transcribing an image, then yielding some control over the composition to the materials at hand. Their works take a different spin and exist apart from the originals.

Trung - Still Life after Henri Matisse's "Still Life (Pineapples, Lemons)"

Nhan - Still Life after Henri Matisse's "Still Life after Jan Davidsz de Heem's 'La Desserte'"