Writing a review of an Art exhibition
Reviews are texts that provide information about creative works, exhibitions or performances. They are subjective texts as they offer individual opinions, responses, and evaluations of creative works.
In Visual Arts, students may complete reviews:
- after visiting an exhibition at a gallery or museum
- as part of their evaluation and critique of a school or class exhibition
- as 'authentic' literacy tasks which are published in a class, school, or community publication or online
- orally – presented in class, live, or recorded, like a television or radio segment, or podcast.
A review is a hybrid or multi-genre text. Most reviews include:
- description
- analysis and interpretation
- evaluation
- details about the exhibition (Adapted from Barnet, 2011).
While these three elements are present in an art review and are organised sequentially in this manner, students may experiment with the structure of art reviews as they become more proficient at writing them.
The worked examples below use an art review written by a Year 10 student after visiting the
Becoming Modern: Australian Women Artists 1920–1950 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat (VCAVAR038,
VCAVAR039,
VCAVAE041,
VCAVAP044,
VCAVAR045,
VCAVAR046). A range of other model texts teachers can use to demonstrate to student how to write art reviews can be found on the
Art Guide Australia website.
Description
The description is written in the present tense. This is because the review explains where a current artwork or exhibition is being shown.
In addition, because the purpose of a descriptive element of review outlines in detail what the works or exhibition is about, it often contains:
- adjectives and expanded noun or nominal groups to describe the works
- prepositional phrases to describe how the various elements are positioned in relation to one another.
In the description section of a review, the reviewer recounts:
- outlines when and where the work, performance or exhibition can be seen
- provides information about the producers (or performers), the title of the works and other contextual details.
When describing artwork and exhibitions, students may describe:
- the physical properties of the works (quantity of works, size, medium)
- content (what the works are about, narrate or represent)
- presentation (how the works are presented to the audience)
- interaction (whether the works are interactive, or if there are more interactive elements to engage with the work).
To support students to write descriptions of artworks and exhibitions, teachers may use the following two strategies:
Teachers may also use the 'Jointly constructing word pictures' strategy found in the Media Arts section of the Toolkit.
Becoming Modern: Australian Women Artists 1920–1950 celebrates the works of over forty artists. While many of the artists may be well known, such as Margaret Preston and Nora Heysen, viewers are introduced to forgotten artists, including Clarice Beckett and Constance Stokes.
Spread over five rooms, the exhibition presents a range of rarely-seen artworks in chronological order, including paintings, prints, drawings, and ceramics, demonstrating the breadth and skills of Australian women artists from the Modernist period.
Analysis and interpretation
The analysis and interpretation section is also mostly written in the present tense. It is only added historical or contextual information that is written in the past tense.
In this section of the review, the writer analyses the meaning or themes of the works, and the way that the works are displayed or performed.
When analysing and interpreting the works, students should write about inferential questions, offering interpretations about what makes the works unique or interesting.
Teachers can draw on activities completed during exhibition excursions to prompt students to discuss:
- their first impressions of the exhibition, for example, 'What did you notice?,' 'How did you feel?'
- the artworks that they were drawn to and features of these using Visual Arts vocabulary
- the themes and messages in the artworks
- the organisation and curatorship of the exhibition
- whether their first impressions changed after viewing the whole exhibition.
To support students to write analyses of artworks and exhibitions, teachers may use the following strategies:
During their careers, the work of many of these women artists was often disregarded by male artists and critics. This exhibition acknowledges the skill of these artists and their role in shaping art in the first half of the twentieth century.
Many of the works comment on the experience of women in Australia. While this includes representations of domestic spaces, it is the way in which women artists depict the female body that is most engaging. For example, the women in Ethel Spowers's
Resting models (1934) are dynamic and somewhat engrossed in one another.
Evaluation
The evaluation is written in the present tense and the reviewer provides a recommendation about the work(s) or discourages audiences.
To support students to write evaluations of artworks and exhibitions, teachers may use the following strategies:
Teachers may also use the 'Writing interpretive responses' strategies found in the Media Arts section of the Toolkit.
The trip to the Ballarat Art Gallery to see
Becoming Modern is well worth the effort. It is unlikely that such an extensive collection of Australian women artists will be on display again anytime soon.
Details about the exhibition
This section lists the details for the exhibition, including location and exhibition dates. It is either located at the top of the review or at the end.
Becoming Modern: Australian Women Artists 1920-1950
18 May – 4 August 2019, Art Gallery of Ballarat
Open 10 am – 5 pm daily
Free entry
Learning sequence
The
learning sequence for Levels 7 and 8 in Visual Arts, demonstrates how literacy teaching strategies can be used in a sequence.
A
learning sequence tool is also available to assist in the planning of Visual Arts and Literacy across a series of lessons.
References
Barnet, S. (2011). A short guide to writing about art. Pearson/Prentice Hall.