Headspace 7: ME AND MY PLACE
9 September – 19 November 2006
Secondary student portrait exhibition

Headspace 7, the seventh in the National Portrait Gallery’s series of student exhibitions, will be presented from 9 September to 19 November 2006, at Commonwealth Place, Canberra. This exhibition aims to expand students’ understanding of portraiture and explore its possibilities as an art form for the expression of ideas.

Collaborative working partnerships between school-based art educators and National Portrait Gallery Education staff have fostered valuable learning opportunities for students. We are keen to consolidate existing, and build new partnerships with secondary art educators and students in the ACT, regional NSW and regional Victoria. Our Headspace exhibitions demonstrate a capacity to forge dynamic and vigorous art practices in the field of portraiture at the secondary school level.

PHILOSOPHY

Underpinning the Headspace exhibition program is the belief that portraiture is a valuable, potent, and pertinent art form through which secondary students can explore aspects of themselves, their communities, and the world as it is, or might be. Art production, particularly portrait art production, gives students a sense of agency, of being able to make things that matter to them happen in the real world. Art opens up dialogue between individuals and their worlds.

The Headspace exhibitions will showcase the portrait art of secondary school students from Year 7 to Year 12. We are interested in the ways in which students explore portraiture at all levels of learning in the secondary school. Each year we invite you to explore the theme WHO AM I? with your students and to submit your students’ self-portraits to the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition selection process.