The High School is presenting its best work at a special exhibition in the Art Gallery this week.
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There’s a lot of really striking material in all forms of art. Some of the artists have been featured in ARTEXPRESS, the NSW show-case for the very best of school art throughout the state.
The Glen Innes High School exhibition borrows from that state-wide title (ARTEXPRESS) and calls its exhibition ArtImpress.
Visual Art teacher, Abi Sparks, said: “It’s showcasing the latest Higher School Certificate work from this year and all the up and coming, extraordinary artists at the High School.
“It would be a shame to miss it because there are such interesting ideas here and a range of different art forms – sculpture, painting, drawing, photography.
“The students have really resolved their ideas and come up with some really interesting art work.”
It’s obvious when you enter the gallery that the students have used their imagination to try to make us think –there’s a suitcase, for example, on which is printed a large photograph of a New England station, the railway line going off into the distance, suggesting travel.
Lauren Pedlow has a striking picture of a young girl, sitting low in a nest, clutching an animal. Alyssa Hoffman has another self-portrait, wearing a mask. She calls it “dystopian”, a disconcerting, bleak view (though she said she planned to follow up the work with two others which were lighter in outlook).
The point is that they are using their imagination and want the viewer to be struck by the image and to think about it.
Abi Sparks said the art showed young people were interested in their local environment and in history.
She is pleased at the number of Glen Innes High School students whose work was selected for the state-wide ARTEXPRESS.
Her class got two nominations, and the works by Lachlan Martin and Tom Macansh were selected for a total of five exhibitions.She said: “It is a pretty outstanding testament to the quality of our art department”.
ARTEXPRESS is a well-established competition where only 150 works are selected from that of the 10,000 students who take the subject across NSW.
Abi Sparks said that to be selected students had to score in the very top mark range as marked by an external team that travel around regional schools.
As the state-wide event publicity describes it: “ARTEXPRESS grew from humble beginnings to a major event in New South Wales. The impact of the exhibition has surpassed its original function as a display of exemplary Visual Arts bodies of work and it remains internationally unique in its selection processes, quality and scope.”
The standard is high. So is that at the Glen Innes Art Gallery.