What you will study
This course provides an integrated approach to fine art practice: you'll have the opportunity to study painting, sculpture, printmaking, lens-based media, performance and site specific activity and new technologies, either in single, unchanging disciplines throughout three years or in combinations.
Modules
Modules focus on making, exhibiting and contextualising art. You'll be introduced to the importance of understanding the value of professionally sharing your practice though exhibiting work and organising exhibitions within the University and at external venues in Kingston and Central London.
Year 1
Year 1 encourages an exploratory approach to fine art. Subject workshops, talks and critiques introduce a wide range of media, technologies and disciplines. You'll undertake independent studio practice, test your ideas, your use of media and collaborate with your peers. Critical and Historical Studies modules will explore the relationship of written and spoken communications to media and materials.
Core modules
Introducing Studio Practice
60 credits
This module is designed to promote effective use of the studio to stimulate the establishment of a Fine Art practice and to introduce a broad subject context alongside that delivered through Critical Historical Studies.
Through independent, peer and group learning, you will be encouraged to identify and develop new practical / thinking skills and interests and to nurture existing ones.
With consideration to established methods, you will be asked to consider new and alternative modes of practice in and beyond the studio and to begin to invest in collaborative approaches to making and reviewing yout work. You are invited to be curious and reflective in your approach to materials, processes and ideas as well as to establish strategies for self-management and enrichment.
Professional Skills I
30 credits
This module supports you to disseminate the work you make to critically reflect on what you have done and to gain awareness of a broad professional context for Fine Art practice.
You will be encouraged to acquire strategic skills for planning, showing, recording and communicating work in a variety of formats, including publication and exhibition via analogue, digital and online media. By rendering and displaying practical work for peers, teaching staff and external audiences, you will gain an awareness of the importance of editing and evaluating the work you have made.
Contextualising Contemporary Practice: Fine Art
30 credits
This module introduces the various contexts in which the contemporary practices of fine art, are defined, debated and displayed. The module is designed to support your first steps as practitioners within the wider field of the visual arts in the 21st century. Through lectures, discussions, screenings and exhibition visits you will be introduced to the historical framework of modernity and post-modernity in order to understand the development and contemporary situation of your discipline.
The module is organised as discrete but related teaching blocks that progress from broader questions of cultural practice to the more specific debates that have framed the historical development fine art and its associated fields - for example experimental filmmaking, video making and photography. In the first block, the emphasis is broad and focused on developing in you, an understanding of the notion of practice in the visual arts, by addressing the historical, theoretical, social and political factors that have affected our understanding of its function. In the second block, you will be encouraged to consider the key debates, theoretical questions and changing contexts that inform your discipline. Throughout, there is an emphasis on the introduction of key analytical, critical and research skills, and through close engagement with visual sources, historical texts and contemporary critical writing, you will begin to develop the tools necessary to discuss, conceptualise and reflect on your own emerging practice.
Year 2
In Year 2 you'll develop your individual creative expression and build your interdisciplinary experience and collaborative skills. This includes optional live projects. You'll develop technical skills and explore a wide range of source material in a critical and analytical context.
Core modules
|Developing Studio Practice
60 credits
This module promotes effective use of the studio to develop your fine art practice. Through a process of continuous practice-based research you are supported to expand on ideas with further experimentation, so as to develop and extend your own formal language within the context of contemporary Fine Art.
Through independent, peer and group learning, you are encouraged to enhance your practical / thinking skills and interests and to nurture existing ones.
Throughout this module, you are encouraged to pursue increasingly self-led enquiry in and beyond the studio and to continue to invest in collaborative approaches to making and reviewing your work. You are supported to be increasingly analytical in your approach to materials, processes and ideas, as well as to hone strategies for self-management and enrichment.
Professional Skills II
30 credits
Designed to help develop the skills that will equip you for a professional life in work, this module supports you to enlarge upon your knowledge of a broad professional context for Fine Art practice.
You will develop upon and enhance relevant strategies for planning, curating, exhibiting, and documenting work in a variety of ways, including publication and exhibition via analogue, digital and online media. By testing and determining increasingly relevant strategies for rendering and displaying practical work to peers, teaching staff and external audiences, you will develop further awareness of the importance of editing, evaluating and adapting the work you have made in plural contexts.
Assisting Level 6 students with the mounting of a final show further develops your exhibition and project planning skills.
Critical Issues in Fine Art: Research and Practice
30 credits
This module engages you with the critical issues driving contemporary art practice within the expanded field in which it operates. Emphasising practical, experiential research-led enquiry and reflection as an integral mode of learning common to both art practice and the study of art's histories and theories, you will identify, explore and analyse current trends by investigating the contexts in which those issues emerge - in critical literature, art writing, exhibitions and curatorial agenda. Looking outwards to address the contemporary manifestations of the relationships between, for example, art and politics, the operation of global capital, activism and community, changing sites and spaces of the production of meaning, the politics of identity, and contemporary turns in philosophy and critical theory, the module also encourages you to reflect and begin to situate yourselves. Making links and interpreting the themes emerging in their own practice, the module provides you with the building blocks with which to construct an informed critical and conceptual framework within which operate while forging connections to wider artistic networks and contexts beyond the studio.
Year 3
In Year 3, you'll continue your independent study. Your work will express increasingly subtle and complex visual arguments, reflecting current critical, conceptual, theoretical and aesthetic issues. You'll complete a dissertation, final portfolio and exhibit your work.
Core modules
Sustaining Studio Practice
60 credits
This module is designed to be the culmination of previous studio practice modules in which you are required to synthesise the contingent parts of your prior academic experience and consolidate your learning through a comprehensive body of work, enabling you to progress to professional practice or further study.
At previous levels of study, you will have progressed your learning incrementally and as such you will have acquired the tools to engage with this module and demonstrate your achievements in an appropriate final presentation. You are encouraged to reflect on the knowledge and skills that you have acquired during your degree and, through independent, peer and group learning you will be encouraged to learn how to present them to an audience external to your immediate peer group.
Additionally, you are encouraged to continue to develop an authoritative understanding of contemporary fine art and the critical evaluation skills essential to fine art practice.
Professional Skills III
30 credits
Building on previous achievements in the professional presentation of your work to an audience, in this module you will fine-tune your exhibition skills and extend your ability to document and communicate your work in a way that is fitting to your individual professional.
You are required to develop your understanding of how to pursue a professional fine art practice, and an awareness of the possibilities for success in both continuing as an artist and / or moving into other related areas. A combination of final exhibition and portfolio enable students to highlight and synthesise your achievements in the final year of undergraduate study and produce documentation that can be applied to a range of career choices.
Dissertation: Research and Reflection
30 credits
Building on the links between research and practice embedded at Level 5, the Critical and Historical Studies (CHS) Dissertation: Research and Reflection module focuses on in-depth research, critical enquiry and reflection on questions and critical issues emerging in students' own practice, and pertinent to the practice of their own discipline.
Over the module, students will initiate and develop an individual research topic; identify and evaluate appropriate archives, bodies of critical literature, visual/material sources and research methods; manage their study time; engage with and respond to tutorial dialogue and peer feedback, and apply critical and analytical skills to produce a 7-8000 word written Dissertation, supported by a series of lectures, seminars and tutorials.
