This studio explores contemporary identity through illustrated symbols and narratives, aiming to inspire a contextual understanding of selfhood. Throughout this course, image-based activities are integrated into a modern context. Practice and theory are essential to this studio, with praxis acting as a mode of inquiry. Students will investigate how images create meaning in relation to cultural histories. Historical and theoretical references frame projects, emphasising the activities of seeing, imagining, and making. Processes for creating imagery will occur both individually and collaboratively. 

Material thinking, which generates ideas manifested in the methods of making images, is the foundation for practice-led research in this studio.  

Critical inquiry will support a range of image-making techniques and media, with mark-making as a process for discovering visual meaning.

You will use mediums such as charcoal, ink, paint, collage, and digital platforms. Students will regularly present their ideas and image-making activities in class.

Understanding audience responses will help you assess the success of your visual information. You will research histories of art, image-making, and storytelling. This research will also contribute to the development of your artwork, as it will reveal how visual periods have influenced expression.

Practice-led research methods will be the foundation for learning and teaching in this course. Crafting imagery is thinking through image-making.

This course is practice-led. We will be doing regular workshops in class.

There are three assessment tasks for this studio. The briefs comprise a variety of interconnected milestone deliverables that build on each other:

Brief 1 Collaborative project 
Brief 2 SKO publication
Brief 3 Journal publication

Brief 1 Contemporary mask/costume characterisation from an origin story. 

(collaborative project due week 4)

Brief 2 SKO – Studio Knowledge Object publication. 

Your SKO is a reflective and analytical A4 publication of your process throughout this studio. The SKO document will establish an experimental visual practice focusing on authorial image-making for design and illustration.

(work-in-progress due week 8 – digital psd and printed publication due week 12)

Brief 3 Journal publication
An illustrated A4 publication focusing on an origin story. 

This publication will be incorporated into your SKO publication.

(finished Journal/SKO – digital psd and printed publication due week 12)

Morales, Helen. Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Hirsh, Jennie., and Dr Isabelle Loring Wallace. Contemporary Art and Classical Myth. Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.