Urban Construction // Lesson Idea

Name of Artist: Erman AB,  Koh Wei Ling and Tan Kuay Yong

School: Swiss Cottage Secondary School, Serangoon Garden Secondary School, Jurongville Secondary School

Art as Narrative and Inspiration

How can students learn to create narratives based on inspirations from a local context?

I imagine this lesson to be adapted for secondary three students. This lesson will probably stretch for about a term. It will include teacher’s demonstration, students’ hands-on activities, research, reflections and discussions.

Objective/ Instructions:

Students will:

• Visit a neighbouring estate and observe people interacting.
• Observe the happenings and analyse what is happening based on visual references from their subjects.
• Record these observations through photography
• Quick sketches and annotations in student’s sketchbooks are also encouraged as part of gathering information.
• Share these records back in class and discuss on students’ interest in approaching the subject matter.
• Analyse principle of designs that have been applied in the photographs.
• Respond to works of Andreas Lieby Christopher (http://www.andreaslie.com/), Dan Mountford (https://www.flickr.com/photos/danmountford/) with the use of ‘Let’s Talk About Art’ package. This will help students to look at the artworks closely and extract visual evidence to justify their analysis.
  • (Example from Let’s Talk About Art package) What Makes You Say That?

Students will look at an artwork and answer the following questions:

• What’s going on in the artwork?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What other information is there (in the artwork) that supports what you say?
• Utilise the package to come up with a possible narrative.
  • (Example from Let’s Talk About Art package) Beginning, Middle, End
    • If this artwork were the BEGINNING of a story, what might happen next?
    • If this artwork were the MIDDLE of a story, what might have happened before? What might be about to happen?
    • If this artwork is the END of a story, what might the story be about?
• Revisit the same estate to capture different portraits of people (or their own self-portrait) and the urban scape that they are in.
• Create a narrative based on their photographs.
• Explore and experiment the different layering of the portraits and the urban scape using Adobe Photoshop (primarily blending options of the different layers).
• Create a final work that will successfully express their narrative.
• Print the final composition.
• Write about their work using Feldman’s DAIE theory.
• Have a gallery walk with all the works up and have a critique session.
• Reflect again based on their peers’ works and evaluate their work.

Materials

• Portraits of people and/or of students, space, symbols of their identities
• Digital camera and digital software (Adobe Photoshop)
• Let’s Talk About Art package