Year 10 Mixed Media Collage - West Moreton Anglican College

Naomi Hobson is a Southern Kaantju/Umpila woman who lives in Coen, a small town of 360 people in the centre of Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland. A multidisciplinary artist, she regularly works across the mediums of painting, ceramics and photography. Inspired by her direct environment, Hobson’s works express her ongoing connection to Country and her ancestors’ ties and relationships with their traditional lands.

In groups, students carefully chose colours they associate with the school such as House colours, College colours, colours of the ground, colours of the flowers on campus etc. Using oil pastels and thin paper, students individually walked around the college grounds collecting a wide range of frottage surfaces. Each rubbing was about the size of a students’ palm and came from their favourite places to eat, walk, think, and play. In small groups, they created a collaborative mixed media piece on canvas using oil pastels, ink washes, fabric, paper and frottage rubbings. Groups kept within their chosen colour scheme, included all the frottage rubbings, and generated multiple layers like in Hobson’s paintings. While working, students told stories and experiences shared by the group such as school camps, sport carnivals, and favourite subjects.

Annabel Simmonds Leader of Learning – Visual Art | West Moreton Anglican College

This activity was inspired by those suggested in the resource below including:

• As a child, Hobson would find interesting patterns and shapes in nature, including grains of sand or glossy bark from ghost gum trees. For one whole week, take a sketchbook with you everywhere you go and sketch interesting patterns you encounter in your everyday environment.
• Recall a memory when you spent time in a natural environment. Capture that memory using mark making. Layer your painting using different materials, colours and patterns associated with this place.