Curating Cranbrook 2023
On Friday evening, mesmerising music emanated from Oliver Smith’s guitar and filled the sultry summer air. A crowd of Cranbrook art supporters and the aesthetically inclined (plus boarders in search of a pre-dinner canape) gathered on the forecourt of the Governor’s Ballroom. A heavy vintage school bell was vigorously rung by Jeremy Kim, a Kindergarten student. Loud peals sounded out, signaling all to enter the splendid Governor’s Ballroom for the opening of Curating Cranbrook, a biannual K-12 art exhibition. Selected artworks in a variety of expressive forms were featured, produced by Visual Arts students in the Primary, Middle School and Diploma Programme / Senior years.
The Headmaster, Nicholas Sampson opened proceedings, articulating the centrality of the arts to Cranbrook in both historical and contemporary contexts. He emphasised the skill development, practice, thought, and tenacity required to produce a resolved artwork in a school context. Caspar Nicholson, student Head of Visual Arts, and Mitchell Coles, student Head of Photography, presented the perspective of senior students. Caspar spoke with passion about his own positive experience of artmaking and acknowledged the role of Cranbrook’s specialist art educators K-12, who daily design and deliver exciting art experiences in studios across the school campuses. Guest artist Paul Davies inspired us by outlining his own fascinating creative journey, including cross-cultural opportunities and exhibition experiences in his career as a successful practicing artist. Poised, Year 6 Jamie Petsoglou explained how Visual Arts lessons in the Junior School balance and enrich his school day, giving him space to think, imagine, experiment, be calm, create, and reflect. Jamie’s first-hand perspective is supported by evidence from the Australian Council for Educational Research. Through the arts, students make coherent meaning and order for themselves out of the welter of impressions and sensations bombarding them, from inside and out.
Art making often involves internal, individual, and unseen intellectual effort. An exhibition like Curating Cranbrook provides the crucial function of bringing artwork out into the world to engage and communicate ideas to an audience. When students first see their artwork on display, the experience can be revelatory. Observing audience reactions, listening to how an artwork is understood and experienced by others provides immediate, unfiltered feedback, sometimes of the most unexpected kind. Exhibitions offer student artists a valuable chance to gain immediate insights into how their artwork is ‘read’ and understood. The immediacy of the feedback loop created when audience and artwork meet naturally leads students to reflect on how their work is perceived. This leads students to explore new ways to communicate with clarity and consider materials and techniques to complement and amplify their ideas.
Last weekend the exhibition was buzzing with interested visitors, including proud student artists and their families. Thank you to the Cranbrook community for forming a genuinely interested and appreciative audience, for initiating conversations with students about their work, and for expressing enthusiastic support for the creative endeavours of Visual Arts students from K – 12.
Fiona Crawford
Head of Department, Visual Arts
