Year 1
Experimentation
The first year is very much about asking questions. What isn’t drawing? What can’t be landscape? We’re interested in how students think through their response, not in having everybody answering in the same way.
You’ll have an induction into all the college workshops, including ceramics, print, 3D, textiles and photography. Specialist workshops throughout the year will help you to explore a diversity of materials and processes. You will also learn the ICT and research skills you need to tackle assignments in this and subsequent years and begin to understand something of the theory and context of fine art. By the end of the year you will have begun to get a feel for the ideas and materials that excite you and will be able to make choices about your creative path through the second year.
Tutorials, seminars and group critiques will help you develop your reflective and analytical abilities and visiting lecturers will bring a wide range of experiences and perspectives to help you to expand your understanding of fine art practice and to contextualise your own work.
Year 2
Development
The second year is still about asking questions. As you begin to develop your own practice, you will start to formulate the important questions you want to explore. You will be experimental, curious and take risks as you begin to develop into an informed, skilled, independent practitioner. You will begin to consider more clearly your professional ambitions after graduation and, in the second semester, you will take part in a group exhibition of your work in a commercial gallery. Second year students organise, advertise and curate the exhibition, gaining valuable professional experience.
You will continue to develop your reflective and analytical abilities through tutorials, seminars, lectures from visiting practitioners, and group critiques.
Year 3
Confirmation
The year begins with an opportunity to re-think, re-open and re-explore your ideas and practice and then to create a substantial body of practical work that confirms and clarifies your ideas and thinking. You will also research and present a focused and extended critical enquiry in an area relevant to your own practice. This research will actively help you to understand and develop your practice-based work. You will also create a highly specialist and professional portfolio of work and relevant promotional materials and a website.
The course culminates in an End of Course exhibition which gives you the opportunity to present your work to a wider audience. There are a number of prizes, exhibition opportunities and residencies offered to graduating students and you will also have the opportunity to meet gallery owners, and other representatives of the creative industries. You will graduate with the knowledge and skills you need to begin your life as a professional contemporary artist.
Tutorials, seminars, lectures from visiting practitioners, and group critiques will continue to help you to more clearly understand the context of your work and to critically reflect on and analyse your own work and that of others.
