Faculty Focus: CAPA

It's been another great year in CAPA this year, with plenty of students performing and showcasing their work around the school and in the community.

The Newbald Portrait Prize has been a great success in its first year. 18 talented Visual Arts students submitted portraits of their teachers which are exhibited outside the Principal's office. 

A big congratulations to Georgia Simons for HSC Excellence in 2022. Georgia ‘s work was selected for the First Class exhibition at Lake Macquarie Gallery. First Class showcases the exceptional standard of work produced by HSC Visual Arts students form the Hunter and Central Coast regions. 

Also a big congratulations to junior band 'Ridikill', who have made the finals of the Bandwidth competition at the Hunter School of Performing Arts.

Music

This semester Stage 4 students have been developing composition skills using a range of technology including notation software and online sequencing programs. They have also been selecting repertoire for a performance task and developing solo or ensemble technique on ukulele, guitar and keyboard.

Year 9 students have been working toward their Viva Voce musicology tasks. Students will present their analysis of a popular song to the class in groups. They have also been learning about the history of Popular music in the 60's and 70's with a focus on the music of 'Motown'.

Year 10 students have been looking at the history of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal and developing their knowledge of terminology associated with the concepts of music. They have also been honing their composition skills in the Composition task using notation software.

Preliminary Music students have been rehearsing for an upcoming performance task representing the class topic: Popular Music. They have been studying the progression of popular music in the 70's and 80's and laying down the groundwork for their upcoming composition and musicology task next term.

HSC students had a very busy term 3 with the annual Senior showcase night held at the legendary Wickham Park Hotel and finished on a high note with much lauded performances at the Year 12 Graduation Assembly.

Concert Band:

A group of dedicated students have been developing their reading and ensemble skills at band rehearsal each Tuesday morning and are looking forward to more players joining next year!

Bandwidth:

Newcastle’s own ‘Ridikill’ made up of Year 8 and 9 students was successful in securing a spot in Bandwidth 2023! 'Ridikill' was also successful in auditioning for an opening spot at the 2023 Senior Music showcase and played to a packed house, garnering much praise for their first public performance.

Drama

Y8 Drama:

This imaginative cohort of creative minds came together for the first time this year and have absolutely flourished in a theatrical environment. The semester-based course focuses on gaining skills in the two dominant forms or theatre; group devised drama, and scripted drama. The first unit of work built students' skills and confidence in improvisation, building characters, and structuring theatrical stories for an audience. This came together in a cacophony of styles, forms, themes, and genre during their group-devised performances. The second unit allowed students to fine-tune their technical and analytical skills to bring characters and scenes to life on stage. Students were tasked with performing a range of scripts to explore ad expand their understanding of staging, stage direction, subtext, tension, and atmosphere.

Y9/10 Drama:

A newly formed class of eager, first time Drama students, 9/10 Drama have experienced a wide range of performance styles throughout the year. Having begun the year with a crash course on the basics of improvisation and performing for an audience, they soon found themselves thrust into the world of the ancient, masked performance style of Commedia del'Arte. Having honed their skills in physical and vocal articulation, students were tasked with creating an entirely new piece of theatre through their unit on Verbatim Theatre during Term Two. Term 3 continued in the vein of self-devised theatre, with students gaining inspiration from a range of societal issues to create a group-devised performance challenging the audience's perceptions of a topic or theme. The final unit of work for the year brought it all back down to the nitty-gritty of honest, realistic performance skills through our brief study of Realism through Scripted Drama.

Y11 Drama:

This rowdy bunch of enthusiastic characters came together in a Drama classroom for the first time this year. Their willingness to explore and expand their understanding of storytelling through performance from the onset prepared them well for their first play building assessment task at the end of their first term. Term Two saw a shift of focus away from performance skills and toward the structural and technical elements involved in the staging of a play for an audience. This 'Elements of Production' unit culminated with a portfolio of technical work and creative visions designed for the staging of a monologue, with each student acting for a classmate's design. The final unit focused on 'Theatrical Styles and Forms'. Students challenged the structures and conventions of traditional theatrical forms through the experiential exploration of Berthold Brecht and Theatre of the Absurd. The unit allowed students to discover their utterly outrageous side through the practical workshopping of Samuel Beckett's iconic play, Waiting for Godot. The class have now moved into their HSC year and have been exploring both their own creative strengths, as well as the Australian cultural and societal issues explored within the plays 'Norm and Ahmed' and 'The Removalists'.

Visual Arts

Year 7 Visual Art Students have investigated a range of art making activities including: printmaking, ceramics, painting and portraiture. They have been investigating the ways artists use the world as a source for their ideas to make and interpret art. Students have been exploring symbolism, portraiture and sustainability through various topics.

Year 8 students have explored Surrealism and the subconscious mind as well as Australian graphic artists, investigating a range of different artists and their practices to build on their knowledge and inform their own artistic practice.

Year 9 students are building on their knowledge of portraiture and the Archibald Prize as they investigate the works and practice of artists such as Del Katheryn Barton and Frida Kahlo. They have explored the work of artist Shaun Tan and contemporary Aboriginal artists such as Lin Onus and Kathleen Petyarre and used this knowledge to create a contemporary landscape painting

Year 10 students have explored how artists move from reality to abstraction using the man made and mechanical world as a starting point for realism to abstraction and  still life to pop art. They have studied artists of the likes of Jefferey Smart,  Sarah Graham and Claes Oldenburg to support their learning through this journey.

Our senior Visual Art students travelled to Sydney for the day to visit the Art Gallery of NSW. We kicked off the day at the Art Gallery of NSW and explored the wide range of exhibitions. A favourite installation was by artist Adrián Villar Rojas, where students were able to walk through the old WWII oil bunker, as part of the Gallery’s new Modern space.  Students then continued exploring works from Artexpress and other collections within the gallery. 

Our new HSC students have begun creating their HSC Body of Work. They are busily researching and experimenting with their chosen mediums with an aim to develop their artmaking skills over the next year. Students are exploring and researching personal themes and ideas and working in their Visual Arts Process Diaries to develop conceptual strength in their artmaking.