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OK, students, here are the Visual Arts Top Ten Tips for exam success.
Its February and next month – or at the latest the following month – is upload time. I have provided tips for each of your three assessment components.
Read, respond and relax!
THE COMPARATIVE STUDY (20%)
1 CULTURAL CONTRAST
Your selected artworks must come from more than one cultural context. They may be from a similar time frame or cultural tradition, provided that there is depth to the consideration of how each work is seen within the different cultural contexts in which they were created. If the works chosen are from the same cultural origin then they will receive 0 (that’s ZERO) in criterion A.
2 CONNECTIONS TO OWN ART-MAKING PRACTICE HL
Examiners assess the depth your analysis and reflection in relation to your art making practice, not the quality of the art works (if these are submitted as part of the exhibition or the process portfolio this will be assessed there).
This assessment criterion concentrates on how you reflect and makes connection in the 3-5 additional screens dedicated to this HL task. Analysis might be evident through drawing and other visual means as well as text, but reflection will only be evident through text.
THE PROCESS PORTFOLIO (40%)
3 REFERENCING
Every image used must be appropriately referenced to acknowledge the title, artist, date (where this information is known) and the source, following the protocol of the referencing style chosen by the school and you must ensure that your own original work is identified and acknowledged in the same way to ensure examiners are clear about the origins of the materials
4 CRITICAL INVESTIGATION
Engaging with the work of other artists will inform your art-making practice. Consider artworks that are RELEVANT TO YOU – e.g. artworks that share your own material, technical or conceptual concerns. Your critical analysis in this context will help solve the material, technical or conceptual problems that you may be encountering. Background biographical or cultural information has little or no relevance to this criterion.
5 NO DOUBLE DIPPING
You must not put exhibition work in the process portfolio. It may be tempting, especially if you have shown a thorough documentation of the process that leads up to a resolved piece, to show that resolved piece in the portfolio – but it’s not allowed. Files that get marks in the exhibition component can’t also receive marks in the portfolio component…So if you are putting resolved work in your exhibition, you cannot also put a picture of this in the Process Portfolio
THE EXHIBITION (40%) 
6 IT’S HOLISTIC
The exhibition is assessed as a whole, which means all the evidence presented – including the artworks, exhibition photographs, the curatorial rationale, and the exhibition text. The visual arts guide states: “The final presentation of the work is assessed in the context of the presentation as a whole (including the accompanying text) by the teacher against the assessment criteria.”
7 USE AS MANY – OR AS FEW – TECHNIQUES AS YOU LIKE
There are no restrictions for range of media. Unlike the Process Portfolio you are not required to explore more than one medium.
8 EXHIBITION SPACE
The space where the exhibition is presented has NO effect on the marking. Assessment criterion D refers to the selection of works and to what extent the curatorial rationale justifies the selection and arrangement of a group of artworks in a designated place, but there is no reference to the quality of the space itself.
9 NO SOUND IN VIDEO
Any audio component used as part of an artwork will not be assessed: examiners assess only the visual arts and will ignore any audio element. (The sound will be turned off).
10 COHERENCE: THEME OR NO THEME?
“Coherence” does not refer to a theme, but to “thematic or stylistic relationships”. Coherence is not necessarily achieved through visual conformity, or a collection that is just visually similar and/or repetitive. “There can be diversity within coherence: there should be evidence of relationships between artworks rather than simply similar artworks. The relationships could be dynamic and surprising, and could involve ideas about styles of artmaking, or there could be thematic relationships but, as in the past course, a theme is not required.”
Good luck!
