Visual Arts

Visual Arts at Colonel Light Gardens (CLG) Primary School is taught to all students across the years and encompasses all of the different art skills and modalities. Students experiment with and create using, drawing techniques, painting, sculpture, fabrics, modelling, printmaking, digital arts and design.

The arts curriculum at CLG is designed with a two-year focus, incorporating a yearly rotation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Artists and Art History as the artists/art movements of inspiration to guide our learning.

Students have the opportunity to share their art works with parents and the school community through our bi-annual South Australian Living Artists (SALA) exhibition. Our graduating senior students also exhibit at the end of their primary years at the Cumberland Park Community Centre as part of their graduation process.

Students have the opportunity to work with artists in our community through our Artist in Residence program. Artists include Michelle Lee (abstract expressionism), Leah Grant (street artist who also created a mural on our school canteen) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait artist, Elizabeth Close. Students also attend exhibitions at the Art Gallery of South Australia when the exhibitions support our learning within the arts space.

The art room is a place of success and creativity and extra curricula activities are guided by our Senior Arts Captains. Students have the opportunity to participate in our boys and girls art groups during Gozen where we create artworks to beautify our school, promote wellbeing practices or connect with our community through art.

Each year the students of CLG create Art Trading Cards that are shared across the school and when students follow our school values of Care, Respect and Safety they receive a trading card form the teachers or our school leadership team, to trade with their peers. This allows students across the school to connect and communicate with art as their shared dialogue.

Creativity is our shared language.

Michelle Bawden
2021 Ministers Visual Arts Education Award for Public Primary School.

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”” – Howard Ikemoto