About A-Block: The programme

Visual Arts and Design OBIE showcase 2008: A-Block


Year 10 BTEC First Diploma Art and Design: The Built Environment
Using an exhibition at the Hayward gallery, Psycho Buildings and particularly the works of Rachel Whiteread as our inspiration students have produced their own sculptural houses. With the structure of their own home as a starting point they developed the pieces expressing how they felt about their house, family members and local community. The result is an eclectic mix of sculptures giving us a wonderful insight in to the minds and family life of our Year 10 strand!

Year 10 Option GCSE Art & Design: Post-it note installation
The Year 10 GCSE students have been exploring the theme Plants with Attitude working so far with 2D processes, drawing, collage and print-making. Throughout Art History artists have ascribed meaning to plants through a variety of media, means and conventions. For example plants have been given magical, medical, spiritual and romantic associations. Each student has selected and researched a specific plant twinned with a theme of interest, such as roses and love. For the OBIE students have produced a collection of narrative mono-prints revealing an often subverted story inspired by this research and presented on the everyday post-it-note as if to suggest these stories are everyday occurrences.

Year 11 BTEC First Diploma Art and Design: Self Portraits
The Year 11 students have been exploring the portrait. They have investigated the meaning of a portrait through history and understand meanings of symbolism and the link between colour and emotion. The students spend a great deal of time investigating the meaning behind their work and how they would make a portrait that represented them accurately. They explored devices and formal elements such as pose, expression, composition, mark making, paint application etc. This project will now evolve into an Alter Ego project, exploring themselves as a ‘celebrity’.

Year 11 Option GCSE Art and Design: Personal space, built environment.
The year 11 Option GCSE group have been looking at the theme ‘Built Environment’ since Term 5 last year. Using their visual enquiries as a start point they have been combining the spaces in which they inhabit when relaxing and when at work to create a purely ‘Personal Environment’. The group have had the freedom to choose the most appropriate media for the job taken from the range they have explored over the last year, the only restriction they have had for these pieces is that it must fit onto a 30 x 30cm tile.

Year 12 BTEC National Diploma Art and Design: The Body
Our Yr 12 strand students have been exploring the theme of The Body in a wide and varied array of materials and techniques. Students have explored Photography, Sculpture, Textiles and Painting; they then developed their own take on the body specializing in one or two techniques.
The result is a wide and varied response to what at first appears to be a narrow subject. This being the first time we have allowed our students to be self directed early in their BTEC and it has given them invaluable experience in developing their organization, opinions and skills.

Year 13 BTEC National Diploma Art and Design: Mixed Media Storybooks
The Year 13 students have been exploring mixed media image making in depth, using traditional and non traditional materials and techniques. They have looked at the use of mixed media imagery in art, design and illustration and selected the most appropriate effect to illustrate a story they devised themselves. The storybooks each comment on a social issue that the students find important. It was vital for them to communicate their message as clearly as possible through the making and presentation of their storybooks in order to fully reach their audience.


Year 13 BTEC National Diploma Art and Design: Fashion Visualisation / Film Genres
Fashion visualization influenced by film genres. Students explored fashion illustration through mixed media to produce male or female clothing collections.

Year 13 BTEC National Diploma Art and Design: alTURNERtive Painting Prize
The Year 13’s have been working towards these painted outcomes since Term 5 last year. The project started with a range of workshops based on contemporary and traditional painting practice and was in informed thematically by the ideas and concepts of the artists entered for this years Turner Prize. The students have since explored these themes visually through a broad experimentation with paint and developed these outcomes with a view to them being exhibited for an externally judged prize. These paintings will be judged by Art Professionals Laura Green (contemporary painter) and Deirdre Kelly (Deputy Director of Chisenhale Gallery) as well as being subject to a live public vote on the evening of the OBIE Show.
The project was inspired by the alTURNERtive prize at The Welling School.

AS Graphics: Graphic Illustrations
So far this year, the AS Graphic students have been exploring graphic illustration, using a range of materials and techniques, including photomontages, mixed media image making and computer generated collages. They have been working with the theme of Fairy Tales, investigating illustration through history and different cultures, as well as contemporary styles of illustration. Each student chose a scene from a fairy tale to illustrate, produce an individual response to the narrative and well as designing specific typography to accompany the image.

Year 11 BTEC First Diploma Art and Design and Yr 12/13 BTEC Diploma Art and Design:
Video and Animation Work
A collection of the lens based moving image work made by students over the last academic year. Work has been produced in response to a number of topics, year 11 work was for end of year celebrations, Year 12 was a response to their fashion illustration project, and year 13 work was for their final major project. The work showcases a wide variety of practical techniques ranging from stop- motion to live filming and including hand drawn roto-scoping and puppetry.

Wish Translator
Yr12 students invite you to share a wish (in the wish translator cabin) and will translate it to make it come true.

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More on the show to follow!