Creative Youth Showcase At Gilroy

This inspiring collection of artworks celebrates the creativity, reflection, and technical skill of students from Gilroy Santa Maria College. Across year levels, students have explored identity, community, and the world around them through painting, responding to both personal and shared experiences. From self-expression to collaborative storytelling, each piece reveals a thoughtful engagement with contemporary art practices.

Artwork 1: Shinae Johnson, Self Portrait (2025)
The Year 11 and 12 Visual Arts in Practice students completed a unit in which they created paintings to explore and represent themselves. Shinae elected to respond figuratively and created a self-portrait encircled by flowers.

Artworks 2 and 3: Wings by Summer Christopher and Fish by Kaitlyn Rapista
Although the final images produced by Summer and Kaitlyn are radically different, both paintings were produced in response to the same stimulus and prompt. The Year 10 Visual and Media Arts students created their paintings by first exploring the arts practice of a contemporary artist, then applying the artist's approach to their paintings. Each successive layer was created in response to a different contemporary artist. The students effectively created their finished works by synthesising the arts practices and processes of a range of artists, including Jenny Saville, Sush Machida, Alex Couwenberg, and Cecily Brown.

Artwork 4: Flood – Year 9 Visual and Media Arts Collaborative Painting
Due to the disruption to regular schooling caused by the flooding at the start of the year, the Year 9 Visual Arts program was changed to allow the students to respond meaningfully to the situation through their artwork. The Year 9s worked collaboratively to create a painting based on the flood event, using the multi-canvas approach of Australian artist Imants Tillers. The main image depicts the flooded causeway at Forrest Beach. Beneath the image, and visible up close, are photographic images of the flood collected by the students. They also incorporated text from news articles about the flooding that were published at that time.

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