HSC Visual Arts Practice Questions

Artmaking practice is described as a network of procedures because making art is not a single act but a set of connected, repeated and revisable actions an artist uses over time. Those procedures include the choice of materials, the processes applied to them, the techniques by which those processes are controlled, and the styles and qualities that emerge and are then deliberately maintained. The word network matters: the procedures are interdependent rather than sequential, so changing the material changes what techniques are available, which in turn changes the qualities the work can carry. The word procedures matters too, because it frames artmaking as intentional and informed human activity — decisions that can be accounted for and adapted — rather than spontaneous self-expression. Practice in this sense is also durational: beliefs, actions, motives and ideas are built up over time, which is why an artist's body of work can be read as a practice rather than a series of unrelated objects.