Visual Arts

• Cultural context


  Related to society, including values that are learned and attitudes that are shared among groups of people, such as beliefs, customs, ideas, and norms
• How artists show their cultural context

  • Use key features of their culture and world in their artwork to make it recognizable and familiar to the audience
  • Artwork reflects upon the objects, ideas, and customs that society values
  • Allows analysis of the values and beliefs of a society at any given time
  • Art enables individuals and communities to express their unique experiences, values, and perspectives
• Elements of art


  Used by artists to express their culture
• Sidney Nolan


  • Explores Australian culture, in particular the Australian icon from the 1800s, Ned Kelly
  • Represents Australian stories of loss, failure and capture
  • Uses the Australian landscape to show a main part of the unique Australian culture
  • Uses rich colours and space to create a scene that feels familiar to Australians and their culture
• Sidney Nolan's artworks


  • 'Kelly and Horse' (1946)
  • 'The Ned Kelly Series'
• 'Kelly and Horse' (1946)


  • Emphasises the relationship between Kelly, his horse, and the Australian landscape
  • Uses earthy colours, geometric shapes, stylised characters and vast space of the sky
• Naata Nungurrayi


  • Respected aboriginal elder who created desert paintings
  • Depicts sacred women's sites and women's ceremonies
  • Uses dot painting techniques, warm bright colours, thick black lines which form rectangular shapes
• 'Women's ceremony'


  • Refers to the Tingari Ancestors, a group of mythical beings in the Dreamtime who travelled over vast tracts of land through the Western Desert, creating and shaping important sites, performing ceremonies and rituals
• 'Marrapiniti 1B' (2005)


  • Part of Naata's series of rockhole paintings
  • Depicts the creation events at the rockhole site of Manapinti
  • Repetition of the roundel design reinforces the importance of these locations
  • Directly expresses the artist's culture
• Both Sidney Nolan and Naata Nungurrayi depict Australia's landscape in their artwork
• Sidney Nolan's artwork


  Shows the mix between European and Australian culture, as European culture shaped Australia's culture
• Frames

  • Subjective
  • Structural
  • Cultural
  • Postmodern
• Subjective frame


  Personal thoughts or feelings an artist has created into an artwork about an event, time or place
• Structural frame

  How the artwork is constructed, signs, symbols, material choices, location
• Cultural frame

  Beliefs that form a custom or tradition about a group of people, relation to the artist and the world, influenced by their cultural identity or experiences with a particular social or cultural group
• Postmodern frame

  Challenging traditions of the past using a wide range of art materials including technology to express current social issues, exploring new ideas and ways of expressing art
• Conceptual Framework


  • Artist
  • Artwork
  • World
  • Audience
• Artist

  Who? What is their role in society? What do they make? Why do they make art? idiosyncrasies?
• Artwork

  2D/3D/4D/ time-based forms
• World

  Context (time & place), special events, environment, or inner world
• Audience


  Who? How do they view the artwork? Where do they view the artwork? Reactions?
• Landscapes

  • Early landscapes
  • Classical landscapes
  • Modern Landscapes
  • Postmodern/contemporary landscape
• Early landscapes (16th Century)


  • Dominance of the Catholic Church in Europe, Biblical and historical themes
• Classical landscapes (17th Century)


  • Highly realistic with small subtle brush strokes, Idealised, representing utopia, Pastoral beauty
• Modern Landscapes (19th-20th century)


  • Industrial Revolution, Invention of photography, More experimental and expressive painting techniques
• Postmodern/contemporary landscape (20th-21st century)


  • Abstract, Conceptual, Landscape as metaphor, Narrative elements, Political
• Vanitas


  A style of still life painting from the 17th-century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of memento mori
• Still Life of Fruit on a ledge (1640)

  • Highly detailed oil painting
  • Reveals the vastness of the trade network
  • Message of impermanence
  • Capitalist culture of the 17th century
  • New era of paintings
• Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life (1640)


  • Religious allusion
  • Be careful about placing too much importance in the wealth and the pleasures of life, as they could become an obstacle to the path of salvation
  • Symbolic through the objects used
  • Skull is the focal point
  • Message that we should be careful how much we indulge and value wealth and these luxuries, and serves as a reminder of memento mori
• Theory of Everything (2005)

  • Ideas about corruption and the impact of humans on the natural environment
  • Cluttered composition
  • Vibrant
  • Mine, which shows a "hole where everything withers and dies"
  • Tulips are a metaphor, showing that even though they are sick, they are still beautiful and valued, showing that society values "wealth at any cost"
  • Sense of nausea
• Blue (Bower/Bauer) (1998-2000)


  • Cluttered composition
  • Dominant blue colour - royalty and wealth
  • Message of memento mori through the use of numerous skulls, and flowers and fruit which are ephemeral
• Harmen Steenwijk


  A traditional vanitas artist, known for his still-life Dutch Vanitas paintings. He was born in 1612 Netherlands and died in 1656.
• Ex de Medici


  Similarly uses skulls in her artworks, and has a more contemporary style and conveys more modern issues through a wide range of objects