Key Concept: Surrealism and Imagination
Related Concepts: Representation & Audience
Interpretive Lens: Personal and Structural Lens
ATL: Research Skills

Artists and artworks from the Surrealism art movement in Europe and Australia will provide conceptual and aesthetic prompts for the development of student’s personal responses, ideas, messages and meaning in their future artworks. This includes exploring First Nation Australian Artist’s approaches to conveying their stories and messages in contemporary indigenous works.

Students will work through the Creative Process that addresses the four areas in this diagram. It is important to note that this list is not intended to dictate a sequential approach to developing and using these skills. Students will be moving back and forwards between the quadrants, reflecting on their practices and redirecting when necessary.

  • Research and Exploration
  • Development and Experimentation
  • Refinement and Resolution
  • Reflection and Evaluation

It is expected that the following tasks will be completed, collated and submitted in the final presentation for assessment for this unit. Students have been asked to develop brainstorming and illustrations in their visual diaries. Research and annotations can also be produced with Word or PowerPoint with high quality photography.
Students may choose to annotate their work directly in their visual diaries or in a digital presentation.

References to help students complete these practical and research tasks successfully are provided towards the top of the Year 10 Art Learning page.

Visual Diary Production Guides
Analysing Artworks Guides

Students will initially be given inspirational prompts for each page of the visual diary but will later be required to take ownership of the direction of their future compositions.

Students have been advised to source information and images of artworks from reputable websites, books and magazines. All images and information needs appropriate citations. Images require didactic information as well as the url directly below the image. This should be in a small but legible font.

No information is to be directly copied and pasted from the Internet or any AI tool such as ChatGPT. Students should only include annotations that convey personal understanding and analysis of creative practice of artists and their artworks.

The Art Story – Extensive information about the history of art, artists, art movements including biographies, artwork analysis and cultural lenses.

Significant galleries around the world also provide excellent information. TATE Britain or ModernMoMA New York, Louvre France, The Guggenheim Museum New York and the NGA and NGV Australia are excellent places to start.