This year’s Headspace exhibition Facing Memory: Headspace 4 provides us with valuable insights into the thoughts, creative processes and art-making practices of secondary students from Year 7 to Year 12 from sixty-two schools in the Australian Capital Territory, regional New South Wales and Victoria. Portraiture makes a powerful visual statement, no less so when it is made by secondary school students.
At the National Portrait Gallery we are committed to education as a social process which enables young people to engage with themselves and their worlds. Through our collaboration with art teachers the Gallery offers students the opportunity to realise their own unique capabilities through portraiture as a valuable art form for the expression of ideas. Exploring the theme of memory students demonstrate a diverse range of responses through the concept of portraiture. We compliment the students and teachers who have contributed to producing the artworks.
Andrew Sayers, Director
