strawberrye
Premium Member
Introduction:
VA theory exams, although often being labelled as one of the easier ‘HSC’ exams-has its own challenges, fundamentally, half of the exam consists of unseen questions as well as the lack of complete HSC visual arts papers to practice on(a lot of the images are copyrighted on BOSTES).
However, one of the most enjoyable things about the exam, arguably, is it provides you with the opportunity to become a detective, to analyse those tiny clues from the artist’s names, period and artwork title and materials in the captions and extracts provided, and integrate everything together to form one of the many possible cohesive answers that can get you full marks. The versatility and creativity involved in constructing these short answer responses as well as the opportunity to show off how much you have learnt over the years about various artists in an essay remains fundamentally, for me, an enormous part of my enjoyment of visual arts.
Feel free to reply to this post to supplement any information that I have missed.
1)Complete all allocated research tasks to the best of your ability
Over the HSC year, you will be completing a minimum of five case studies-which often is categorised by a shared thematic concern, i.e. artists from particular artistic movement/exhibitions, or more broadly investigating the practices of curators/art historians/art critics. Although some parts of your case studies will be taught and completed in class, inevitably, your teacher will allocate parts of case studies as assignments or homework research tasks, it is vital that you complete these tasks on time and to the best of your ability.
When you are continually refining how you organise and express your information effectively and consistently through completing these tasks, these skills and the research information on various artists/critics/curators will be essential steps for effective exam preparation for your theory exams.
2)Develop a deep understanding of what practice, conceptual framework and frames means, how they interact with each other and apply them consistently over the year
There is an excel book by Craig Malyon called “Revise in a month-HSC Visual Arts” that provides a very detailed explanation on these terms and how to apply them. I will briefly provide an overview of these terms below.
Practice-categorised into
1)Conceptual Practice (the artist’s influences, ideas explored in the artwork)
2)material practice(the techniques and materials that the artist have utilised in constructing the artwork).
Notice how effective material practice can enhance the conceptual depth of an artist’s BOW.
Conceptual Framework-incorporates the interactions between the four agencies of visual arts, includes
1) The World(refers to the artistic movements and significant political/social/cultural events taking place at the time the artist is making his/her artwork)
2)The Artist(can include reference to the artist’s conceptual and material practice),
3)The Artwork(as a medium to convey the artist’s reactions to the events occurring in the world at the time or as a form of self-expression, sometimes artists can challenge the convention distinction between the artist and audience through performance art, i.e. Stelarc, Gilbert and George)
4)The Audience( serves as interpreters of the meaning of the artworks produced, can include art critics/historians, again artists can choose to challenge these divisions through producing artworks that requires mass collaboration)
Frames-can be separated into:
1)Subjective(feelings evoked by the artwork, viewing works as an exploration of the subconscious, personal feelings of the artist)
2)Cultural(gender/racial issues examined, artworks as vehicles of cultural/political commentary of contextual societies they are created within)
3)Structural(visual elements of artwork-conceptual meaning derived from its structural composition)
4)Postmodern(challenging establish artistic conventions through appropriation, parody, humour, challenging the fundamental notion of what art is).
It is vital that you develop an in depth knowledge of the above three terms and ensure that your notes/generic essays are written to incorporates all these three areas. This will ensure that you will be able to effectively adapt your information to any questions given in your theory exam. Ask your teachers for practice short answer questions and use this knowledge to practice answering the questions under EXAM CONDITIONS, get your teacher to mark it and improve upon any feedback receive. Repeat this process throughout the year.
3)Develop a good understanding of major artistic movements-their distinguishing visual features, key artists and chronologically arrange them on a time line and apply this understanding in your exam.
To give yourself the extra edge in the short answers, if you can develop a brief understanding of significant artistic movements, such as Realism, Cubism, Expressionism, post-expressionism, impressionism, postmodernism, Fauvism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Pop Art etc, and you can understand key features to distinguish these artworks, key artists and time period they were popularised, you can discuss these things if you come across a particular artwork that is evidently belong to a particular art movement in the unseen question.
You will show your depth and breadth of your knowledge by doing the above –this will be particularly helpful if there isn’t much information provided in the question to extend the answer you can extracted from the clues provided.
4)Don’t panic-Read over questions more than once and plan all your answers before you start writing
The importance of reading questions and making sure you are answering exactly what the question is asking you cannot be overlooked. You will not be getting any marks for information/analyses irrelevant to the question.
Out of the three unseen questions, you will have one question on Frames, one on conceptual framework and one on practice-have a look at whether the question provides you with clues on what type of question it is, this should be done mentally in the reading time in your exam. For example, a question that says, ‘Evaluate this artist’s practice….”is likely to be a practice question, so if you answer using a subjective frame will unlikely to get you much marks. If you are unsure of what frame the question is-don’t state what frame you are doing, just analyse it according to what frame you think it is likely to be.
For the short answers and essay, plan your answer either mentally or on paper before you start writing-you need to make sure you are addressing all parts of the question and for questions with more than one artwork, that you are addressing both artists/artworks in equal depth. For essays, write down the names and artwork of the artists you think will go best for the essay question you have chosen-choose the question based on the artists you have prepared and the information you have.
Planning beforehand will avoid you missing out parts of the question and missing out easy marks under exam conditions, it will also avoid you repeating information.
5)Choose a plethora of artists from different time periods in your essay
The essay is for you to highlight your comprehensive understanding of visual arts. So try to choose a selection of artists that comes from different time periods, so will work with different materials/techniques, it would also be preferable to have more than one artwork for each artist. A good essay will have at least detailed discussion on 3 different artists-although this can vary.
6)Manage your time effectively in the exam, follow all instructions.
It is wise to follow the recommended time allocation at the start of your exam paper. Basically 45 minutes for your essay and 45 minutes for your short answer questions. Have a rough idea of how long you should be spending on each question-write down the clock time you should finish each question by, and STICK TO IT. Spend the most amount of time in the question that requires the highest amount of marks. It is not necessary to have an introduction and conclusion in short answers, so don’t waste time making one, just launch straight into your answer.
It is also important you make sure all your writing is legible for the teacher-teachers simply can’t add marks to what they can’t read.
Follow exam instructions closely, for example, each answer needs to be started on a new page/booklet, don’t just keep writing your answer only to found out you have not followed exam instruction-this becomes very important and very easy to miss in your nervousness in completing the exam. Start the essay in a NEW BOOKLET, and label everything, losing marks because you have missing booklets or incorrect labelling that confuses teachers is not worth it.
Usually for short answer questions, for each mark of the question, you should provide one significant piece of information supported by information you have extracted from the picture/caption. I.e. for a four mark question on postmodernist features of an artwork, for example, you should be describing four postmodernist features and highlight WHY THEY ARE POSTMODERNIST, if you have time, do one more fact than the marks, i.e. five features instead of four-just to be absolutely safe
7)Integrate artist/critics/historian's quotes where appropriate in your essays
By inserting artist's statements about their practice, critics viewpoint of the artist's conceptual practice, or historian's perspective on an art movement, if skilfully done, can substantially differentiate your essays from others, and hence, result in a higher mark.
Conclusion:
If you write practice essays and practice short answers regularly, as well as keep your mind open to the many possible forms an artwork can be in-i.e. some artworks are temporal, such as in the form of ice which can melt over time, you can do this by going to different exhibitions or reading online on contemporary practices of artists, this will ensure you have a good practical and theoretical understanding of visual arts.
Perseverance, persistent practice and feedback as well as possessing an optimistic, never giving up attitude are the key ingredients to succeeding in your visual arts theory exam. All my best wishes for you to ace your HSC VA theory exams
If you have ANY QUESTIONS relating to the VA theory exams that haven't been answered in this post, feel free to reply and ask them below-I will reply as quickly as I can
VA theory exams, although often being labelled as one of the easier ‘HSC’ exams-has its own challenges, fundamentally, half of the exam consists of unseen questions as well as the lack of complete HSC visual arts papers to practice on(a lot of the images are copyrighted on BOSTES).
However, one of the most enjoyable things about the exam, arguably, is it provides you with the opportunity to become a detective, to analyse those tiny clues from the artist’s names, period and artwork title and materials in the captions and extracts provided, and integrate everything together to form one of the many possible cohesive answers that can get you full marks. The versatility and creativity involved in constructing these short answer responses as well as the opportunity to show off how much you have learnt over the years about various artists in an essay remains fundamentally, for me, an enormous part of my enjoyment of visual arts.
Feel free to reply to this post to supplement any information that I have missed.
1)Complete all allocated research tasks to the best of your ability
Over the HSC year, you will be completing a minimum of five case studies-which often is categorised by a shared thematic concern, i.e. artists from particular artistic movement/exhibitions, or more broadly investigating the practices of curators/art historians/art critics. Although some parts of your case studies will be taught and completed in class, inevitably, your teacher will allocate parts of case studies as assignments or homework research tasks, it is vital that you complete these tasks on time and to the best of your ability.
When you are continually refining how you organise and express your information effectively and consistently through completing these tasks, these skills and the research information on various artists/critics/curators will be essential steps for effective exam preparation for your theory exams.
2)Develop a deep understanding of what practice, conceptual framework and frames means, how they interact with each other and apply them consistently over the year
There is an excel book by Craig Malyon called “Revise in a month-HSC Visual Arts” that provides a very detailed explanation on these terms and how to apply them. I will briefly provide an overview of these terms below.
Practice-categorised into
1)Conceptual Practice (the artist’s influences, ideas explored in the artwork)
2)material practice(the techniques and materials that the artist have utilised in constructing the artwork).
Notice how effective material practice can enhance the conceptual depth of an artist’s BOW.
Conceptual Framework-incorporates the interactions between the four agencies of visual arts, includes
1) The World(refers to the artistic movements and significant political/social/cultural events taking place at the time the artist is making his/her artwork)
2)The Artist(can include reference to the artist’s conceptual and material practice),
3)The Artwork(as a medium to convey the artist’s reactions to the events occurring in the world at the time or as a form of self-expression, sometimes artists can challenge the convention distinction between the artist and audience through performance art, i.e. Stelarc, Gilbert and George)
4)The Audience( serves as interpreters of the meaning of the artworks produced, can include art critics/historians, again artists can choose to challenge these divisions through producing artworks that requires mass collaboration)
Frames-can be separated into:
1)Subjective(feelings evoked by the artwork, viewing works as an exploration of the subconscious, personal feelings of the artist)
2)Cultural(gender/racial issues examined, artworks as vehicles of cultural/political commentary of contextual societies they are created within)
3)Structural(visual elements of artwork-conceptual meaning derived from its structural composition)
4)Postmodern(challenging establish artistic conventions through appropriation, parody, humour, challenging the fundamental notion of what art is).
It is vital that you develop an in depth knowledge of the above three terms and ensure that your notes/generic essays are written to incorporates all these three areas. This will ensure that you will be able to effectively adapt your information to any questions given in your theory exam. Ask your teachers for practice short answer questions and use this knowledge to practice answering the questions under EXAM CONDITIONS, get your teacher to mark it and improve upon any feedback receive. Repeat this process throughout the year.
3)Develop a good understanding of major artistic movements-their distinguishing visual features, key artists and chronologically arrange them on a time line and apply this understanding in your exam.
To give yourself the extra edge in the short answers, if you can develop a brief understanding of significant artistic movements, such as Realism, Cubism, Expressionism, post-expressionism, impressionism, postmodernism, Fauvism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Pop Art etc, and you can understand key features to distinguish these artworks, key artists and time period they were popularised, you can discuss these things if you come across a particular artwork that is evidently belong to a particular art movement in the unseen question.
You will show your depth and breadth of your knowledge by doing the above –this will be particularly helpful if there isn’t much information provided in the question to extend the answer you can extracted from the clues provided.
4)Don’t panic-Read over questions more than once and plan all your answers before you start writing
The importance of reading questions and making sure you are answering exactly what the question is asking you cannot be overlooked. You will not be getting any marks for information/analyses irrelevant to the question.
Out of the three unseen questions, you will have one question on Frames, one on conceptual framework and one on practice-have a look at whether the question provides you with clues on what type of question it is, this should be done mentally in the reading time in your exam. For example, a question that says, ‘Evaluate this artist’s practice….”is likely to be a practice question, so if you answer using a subjective frame will unlikely to get you much marks. If you are unsure of what frame the question is-don’t state what frame you are doing, just analyse it according to what frame you think it is likely to be.
For the short answers and essay, plan your answer either mentally or on paper before you start writing-you need to make sure you are addressing all parts of the question and for questions with more than one artwork, that you are addressing both artists/artworks in equal depth. For essays, write down the names and artwork of the artists you think will go best for the essay question you have chosen-choose the question based on the artists you have prepared and the information you have.
Planning beforehand will avoid you missing out parts of the question and missing out easy marks under exam conditions, it will also avoid you repeating information.
5)Choose a plethora of artists from different time periods in your essay
The essay is for you to highlight your comprehensive understanding of visual arts. So try to choose a selection of artists that comes from different time periods, so will work with different materials/techniques, it would also be preferable to have more than one artwork for each artist. A good essay will have at least detailed discussion on 3 different artists-although this can vary.
6)Manage your time effectively in the exam, follow all instructions.
It is wise to follow the recommended time allocation at the start of your exam paper. Basically 45 minutes for your essay and 45 minutes for your short answer questions. Have a rough idea of how long you should be spending on each question-write down the clock time you should finish each question by, and STICK TO IT. Spend the most amount of time in the question that requires the highest amount of marks. It is not necessary to have an introduction and conclusion in short answers, so don’t waste time making one, just launch straight into your answer.
It is also important you make sure all your writing is legible for the teacher-teachers simply can’t add marks to what they can’t read.
Follow exam instructions closely, for example, each answer needs to be started on a new page/booklet, don’t just keep writing your answer only to found out you have not followed exam instruction-this becomes very important and very easy to miss in your nervousness in completing the exam. Start the essay in a NEW BOOKLET, and label everything, losing marks because you have missing booklets or incorrect labelling that confuses teachers is not worth it.
Usually for short answer questions, for each mark of the question, you should provide one significant piece of information supported by information you have extracted from the picture/caption. I.e. for a four mark question on postmodernist features of an artwork, for example, you should be describing four postmodernist features and highlight WHY THEY ARE POSTMODERNIST, if you have time, do one more fact than the marks, i.e. five features instead of four-just to be absolutely safe
7)Integrate artist/critics/historian's quotes where appropriate in your essays
By inserting artist's statements about their practice, critics viewpoint of the artist's conceptual practice, or historian's perspective on an art movement, if skilfully done, can substantially differentiate your essays from others, and hence, result in a higher mark.
Conclusion:
If you write practice essays and practice short answers regularly, as well as keep your mind open to the many possible forms an artwork can be in-i.e. some artworks are temporal, such as in the form of ice which can melt over time, you can do this by going to different exhibitions or reading online on contemporary practices of artists, this will ensure you have a good practical and theoretical understanding of visual arts.
Perseverance, persistent practice and feedback as well as possessing an optimistic, never giving up attitude are the key ingredients to succeeding in your visual arts theory exam. All my best wishes for you to ace your HSC VA theory exams
If you have ANY QUESTIONS relating to the VA theory exams that haven't been answered in this post, feel free to reply and ask them below-I will reply as quickly as I can
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