Thank you for using this pre-visit resource. We believe this will help strengthen student learning leading up to and during your gallery visit. Due to the different versions of PowerPoint schools may use, please check for, and correct any formatting issues before you use this presentation with your students. Please check by viewing in slide show format before making any necessary changes. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me. Welcome Learning Experiences Outside the Classrom Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts Phone: (09) ext 7703 Jeremy Leatinu’u Education Coordinator

Image: Art with an Artist Te Tuhi pre-visit lesson 2

During the next few lessons we will be exploring… Welcome to Art with an Artist Copy vs original Image: Before we start, let’s recap what we learnt during our last lesson… Artist Glen Hayward made this fire extinguisher from wood and acrylic paint.

In the last lesson we learnt that positive and negative space… are two completely different spaces. Positive space being the physical shape of something and the negative being the space around it. seem to change places as seen in John Wegner’s photographs of the sky and city. can be made into a sculpture like artist Rachel Whiteread has when she cast the negative space (or inside space) of a house.

Let’s start this lesson by exploring “Copy vs Original”. Image:

Image: The Mona Lisa painting created by artist Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most well known paintings in the world. Since 1519 many people have made copies of this well known painting. Many have created paintings to look like Leonardo’s painting and others have painted in their own style. Mona Lisa Painting With so many painted Mona Lisa copies, how do we know which is the original painting? Especially if we haven’t seen the original painting? Can you spot the original painting made by Leonard da Vinci? Mona Lisa c Painted by Leonardo da Vinci

So what is an original and what is a copy? And how are they different? The word original means something that is first, something not copied from. The word copy means something trying to look exactly like another. Image:

We have seen what an original and copy can look like in painting but what other ways can we copy in art? Many of today’s artists are using technology to make their art and now its becoming easier for anyone to have a copy of an artwork. We don’t have to be an artist to create an exact copy of the Mona Lisa. We don’t even need to paint. With computers and the internet we can simply go online, find a photograph of an artwork, press print and we would have our own copy of an artwork. With technology we can make one copy or many copies of an artwork. Copy, paste and print But printing a copy from the internet is very different to having an original. The original Mona Lisa was hand painted by the artist Leonardo da Vinci himself, and the copy is just a print from a printer. How an artwork is made and by whom (the artist) is what makes an artwork an original.

Image: Some artists have chosen to make artwork that specifically explores the difference between copy and original. New Zealand artist Heather Straka chose to make art about copying from an original Heather created an oil painting of an Asian woman wearing a flower in her hair and a Hei tiki pinned to her dress. To explore the idea of copying from an original Heather had asked 59 artists from China to make a copy of her original painting. What she noticed is that every single copy was different to one another. No matter how accurate the artists from China were in copying Heather’s painting, they could never make their painting exactly the same. This is because every person in the world paints differently, and so no one painting looked exactly the same. Heather’s art focused on the idea of copying but in the end showed how individual we are, even if we try to copy.

Image: Another New Zealand artist who has made art about copying from an original is Regan Gentry. Regan created a series of artwork made from the wood Gorse. He made a tree stump, a knife, an axe, meat, toilet paper and a baby rocker all from Gorse wood. With Regan and his Gorse artwork we can start to think about how these objects are copies. If we think about a wooden knife and axe…can we chop wood or cut meat with a wooden knife or axe? The knife and axe would most likely brake. This is why a blade from an axe or knife is made from steel, because it strong and can be very sharp. Regan’s artwork makes us think about the material of an object. If we make a copy of something using a different material it does not always make it the same as the original.

Image: What about copies of cultural objects? What do copies of cultural objects look like? Here is a Hei tiki made from paunamu or greenstone Here are Hei tiki made from resin or plastic Hei tiki are unique to Maori culture and are often seen tied around a person’s neck Not all Hei tiki look the same. Some Hei tiki designs reflect a particular tribe or iwi. Most Hei tiki are also made from a particular material. Which Hei tiki do you think is the original and which is the copy? Why? Traditionally Hei tiki were made from paunamu or greenstone and bone. This would make the Hei tiki on the left the original and the plastic Hei tiki on the right a copy.

Let’s recap on what we have learnt so far… As we have seen, ‘copy’ and ‘original’ are to two very different things…

An original means something that is first, something not copied from. means something trying to look exactly like another. can look like the original but is not exactly the same. What did we learn so far? artwork is something that has been crafted by the artist himself or herself. A copy Mona Lisa c Painted by Leonardo da Vinci

In the next lesson we will explore “The art of casting”. End of lesson