Use your senses

Use your senses

Exploring works of art with the five senses, for all ages

Engage with art at home. In this exercise, we encourage learners to use their senses.

Below are some questions to encourage children and young people to talk about art. Use these questions at home, or in the classroom with the Howard Hinton Collection which is able to be accessed online here. The Hinton Collection housed at NERAM is the result of one of the greatest acts of artistic philanthropy and benefaction in Australian history. Between 1928 and 1948 a collection of over 1000 artworks by leading Australian artists were donated to the newly constructed Armidale Teachers’ College by the retired shipping agent, Howard Hinton OBE (1867-1948). The Collection provides a snapshot into Australian artistic practice in the early twentieth century.

Choose an artwork and try these prompts to help learners investigate their observations.

Imagine we’ve jumped inside the artwork…

  • Where is this place?
  • What can you see ahead, behind, below and above you?
  • What can you smell?
  • What can you hear?
  • Is there anything you can taste?
  • What can you touch? What does it feel like?
  • How will we get out of the artwork and back home?

Explore the artwork below…

Teachers/Educators Notes

Emmanuel Phillips Fox, St. Marks, Venice 1907, Oil on canvas

  • Does this landscape depict an Australian setting? If not, why?
  • What colours stand out?
  • What time of day is it in this scene?
  • What style or movement do you think the artist is influenced by?

A.D. MacCormick (1860-1943) A Tasty Dish n.d. Oil on canvas

  • Where are they?
  • Does it look comfortable in this room? What does the lighting in the room indicate?
  • What can you smell?
  • What is the rug on the floor?

Elioth Gruner, The Beach. 1918 Oil on canvas

  • Have you been to a beach like this? Where is this?
  • What sort of brushstroke has the artists used to create light?
  • What time of the day is it?
  • Is it a happy, joyful scene?