Visual Culture and art making
A ‘snapshot of tertiary art students in
New Zealand and Hong Kong
By Wing-Tai (Bobby) Hung
Locating myself in the research
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Born in Hong Kong and moved to New Zealand when I was three years old
Artist and interest in painting, illustration, drawing, street art and graffiti
Studied Bachelor of Design and visual arts
Studied Postgraduate diploma in secondary teaching, education and most
recently Masters of Education based on the topic of visual culture.
• Beginning of my new research journey- challenging perceptions to my art
and being an art educator.
The research question
• How are understandings of contemporary visual culture reflected in
students’ art making at differing tertiary art institutions located in their
cultural milieu of New Zealand and Hong Kong?
Visual arts education of the past, present and future:
• 19th century there was a focus on technical, formal drawing, fine arts,
influence of the western art canon.
• Early 20th saw the influence of European artists and movements such as
cubism and new forms of expression.
• 20th century saw the move towards discipline based art education: art
production, art criticism, aesthetics and art history. Visual arts as most of
us know it.
• 21st century move towards visual culture art education.
What is Visual culture art education?
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We live in an image saturated era where visual culture is everyday life and
images / technology dominate our lives.
Anybody who lives in any culture lives within visual culture
Visual culture is a images, sites, experiences, and artifacts found in daily life and
not bound to educational institutions
Visual culture can be anything man made which includes: TV programs,
billboards, paintings, movies, cartoons, advertising, toys, architecture,
sculpture, games, clothing etc…
Two key components that underpin
the study of visual culture
Visuality:
• The creation of knowledge through the act and experience of looking
• Examining various positions of looking to understand, deconstruct and
challenge our daily visual experiences as users, consumers and producers.
• Studying the visual in ways that can challenge social beliefs, values and
perceptions to view the invisible and hidden messages.
Cultural images, sites and artifacts:
• Cultural images, sites and artifacts are not separate entities but are
connected to people’s lives through their thoughts, beliefs, customs,
systems, and actions.
• They are products of society so visual culture can be examined through
the eyes of the people who engage in the experience of looking.
• You cannot understand a culture without analyzing it’s production and
consumption.
Visual culture art education
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Shift from teaching images in art history to domain of images in culture.
Relationship between viewer and what is being viewed.
The study of both high culture and low culture.
Critiquing our understanding, perceptions and beliefs of and about the world
through our daily visual experiences.
Visual experiences from outside of the classroom and examining these in the
classroom.
Decipher deeply embedded messages found in images to address issues such
as representations of gender, discrimination, sexuality, class and ethnicity.
Moving beyond pre-packaged forms of knowledge found in the classroom and
help students develop analytical skills to not passively accept information.
Responding to the visual culture being studied with the appropriate art
production that is relevant.
Research methodology
Arts-based research:
• Interpretive qualitative research by coming both scientific inquiry and
artistic process to create new ways of visual thinking and knowing
• Conducting, understanding and presenting research in ways beyond text.
• Using the (re)presentation of visual data from the research to present and
be disseminated as findings
A/r/tography:
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Artist, researcher and teacher.
Integration of knowing, doing and making to generate new insights.
Participant-researcher generated dialogue with participants.
Without art and education informing each other, theory without practice
is empty; practice without theory is blind. The ongoing challenge is to
bring theory and practice together in such a way that we can theorize
our practice and practice our theories.
Findings from the research
Participant’s visual surroundings:
• Most participants used their environment as reference points in their art but
did not critically engage with their visual environment or surroundings.
• This confirmed how deeply embedded visual images are in our environment
and the lack of criticality in examining these images, sites, media and artifacts.
Participant’s definitions of visual culture
• All participants definitions were relatively similar to the literature’s definitions.
What influenced the participants?
• I considered that 6 participants influenced by visual culture and contexts bound
to traditional fine arts.
• Five participants used artist models, with four from New Zealand but not
unexpected as this is a key model for teaching in NZ secondary schools.
• HK participants were not more significantly influenced by visual culture than
NZ as I originally assumed.
Findings from the research continued…
Globalization and digital media:
• There was very few participants using digital media as their main mode of art
making but did use a range of technology including photography in their art
making.
• Participants were creating their own representations of reality.
• All of the participants were on a range of online community sites that shared
their art work such as apps like ‘instagram’.
What did the institutions offer?
• All the institutions delivered what they purported but no institutions taught or
educated students about visual culture.
• Limited to the historical and contemporary study of art images.
• The institutions were still positioned within discipline-based art education
paradigm of teaching and learning.
Post-research
• I did not ask the participants to formally reflect on their participation in the
research so I believe that they will continue to see no relevance in raising their
awareness of their visual surroundings.
References
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