These are ATARMAxxing’s course-guide summaries. Review all required areas, including school assessments, practical work, performances or folios where applicable. Follow your course’s option rules.
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Unit 3, AOS 1 — Collect: inspirations, influences and images
Unit 3 opens with collecting: you research three artists whose work shapes your own, gather images and sources of inspiration, and record everything in the Visual Arts journal. The key knowledge is the working vocabulary of the whole study — the art elements (line, colour, shape, form, tone, texture, sound, time and light), the art principles (emphasis or focal point, movement, rhythm, unity, variety, space, repetition and pattern, balance, contrast, proportion and scale) and how they combine with materials, techniques and processes to create aesthetic qualities and visual language. You also learn the inherent characteristics and properties of the materials of your art form, how artists and personal experience become subject matter and ideas, and how to conceptualise, document and evaluate art making using art terminology.
Unit 3, AOS 2 — Extend: make, critique and reflect
Here the collected material becomes artworks. You make work in your chosen art form based on influences, exploration, responses and reflection, developing subject matter, ideas, techniques and a style by responding to the artists you researched and other sources of inspiration, and building visual language to represent ideas and communicate meaning. Documentation runs continuously in the Visual Arts journal, and the area closes with a critique: you prepare and present an account of your art making, then document and reflect on the feedback and use it to revise and develop the work. The study design's definitions of visual language, influences and inspiration all live here and are quoted back in examination reports.
Unit 3, AOS 3 — Connect: curate, design and propose
The exhibiting strand starts in earnest. You research the characteristics of exhibitions and of exhibition spaces — galleries, museums, other exhibition spaces and site-specific spaces — and the responsibilities involved in curating, including selection of artworks, curatorial considerations, exhibition design, didactic information and the relationships between artworks and artists. The outcome is an exhibition proposal for a specific space using two works by each of the three artists from Area of Study 1, supported by a required visit to an exhibition in the current year. From 2024 the study design no longer demands that you discuss thematic connections specifically, but relationships between artworks and artists, presentation and curatorial intention remain central.
Unit 4, AOS 1 — Consolidate: refine and resolve
Unit 4 consolidates: you extend and resolve the subject matter and ideas begun in Unit 3, refine and resolve your visual language, and apply materials, techniques and processes to complete at least one finished artwork in a specific art form. The Visual Arts journal records this progressively, and you reflect on and evaluate how ideas were extended from Unit 3, how visual language was resolved and how materials were used. This area also carries the first conservation content: the methods used to conserve and care for the materials of your own art form, discussed with the correct terminology.
Unit 4, AOS 2 — Present: plan and critique
Presenting your own work. You research the characteristics of specific exhibition spaces and how artworks are displayed in them, then plan and document the display of at least one finished artwork in a specific space, including positioning, fixtures, lighting, relationships between works and the didactic information — such as an artist's statement — that supports it. The area ends with the Unit 4 critique, in which you present the finished artwork, explain the decisions made throughout art making, critically evaluate the work and account for how subject matter and ideas are represented and meaning communicated.
Unit 4, AOS 3 — Conserve: present and care
The conservation area. You investigate, identify and evaluate the methods used and considerations involved in the presentation, conservation and care of artworks while on display in an exhibition space, and the conservation and care that applies during handling, storage and transportation — climate and light control, framing and glazing, plinths and barriers, condition reports, crating, gloves and invigilation, and the roles of curator, exhibition designer and conservator. You compare these with the methods that could apply to your own artwork on display and in storage, using artworks studied in exhibitions visited in the current year.
Unit 1, AOS 1–3 — Explore, expand and investigate (not examinable, foundational)
Unit 1 is where the making habits are formed. Area of Study 1, Explore, is an inquiry into materials, techniques and processes across a range of art forms, including their historical development and the health and safety practices attached to each, all documented in a Visual Arts journal. Area of Study 2, Expand, uses that experimentation to make and present at least one finished artwork on a set theme and to write a reflection. Area of Study 3, Investigate, researches three Australian artists, including one or more Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artists, and presents information about their work in a format suited to a proposed exhibition, such as a catalogue, brochure, website or didactic panels.
Unit 2, AOS 1–3 — Understand, develop and resolve (not examinable, foundational)
Unit 2 introduces the exhibiting strand and the aesthetic vocabulary. Area of Study 1, Understand, has you visit a thematic exhibition, research three of its artworks plus three you source yourself, and design and curate a thematic exhibition of the six with an overview statement and a consideration of display. Area of Study 2, Develop, explores how art elements and art principles combine with materials and techniques to create aesthetic qualities and style in experimental artworks made in response to a theme. Area of Study 3, Resolve, refines those experiments into at least one finished artwork with an emerging personal style, documented progressively in the Visual Arts journal.
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VCE Art Making and Exhibiting Study Design (From 2023)
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Check current requirements and course options: https://vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce-curriculum/vce-study-designs/art-making-and-exhibiting/vce-art-making-and-exhibiting