BA (Hons) Fine Art

Course description

The BA in Fine Art at Coleg Menai aims to be a challenging and exciting experience taught by practising artists with National and international reputations. This course offers learners the chance to explore personal themes, ideas and creative concerns through a wide variety of disciplines including: drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking and multimedia activity.

Creative futures modules develop various projects with external partners and organisations; these equip learners with an understanding of the wider opportunities for a vocation within the Arts sector.

Unit information

For every 10 credits, students should engage with around 100 notional hours of learning. This will be approximately 30% direct learning contact and 70% independent student learning.

Year 1 (Level 4)

Visual Research in Fine Art (20 credits, compulsory)

This module will lead students through individual work programmes on the intensify drawing and information-gathering processes. This will include the introduction to visual grammar with visual responses from a broad range of sources, and introduce a broad approach to visual research including objective, expressive approaches and risk taking and experimentation working in different 2D and 3D materials. Portfolio 100%.

Materials and Methods 1 (20 credits, core)

This module aims to encourage a consideration of the various materials and means of expression employed in contemporary visual art. It will enable the student to acquire independent and collaborative making, thinking and organisational skills, as well as developing technical competence in a range of practical skills, giving a foundation in good working practices and health and safety issues. Students will learn to identify the interaction between materials, processes and ideas and engage in consideration of how their own visual ideas can be expressed through appropriate methods and materials. Portfolio 100%.

Concepts and Practice in Fine Art (20 credits, compulsory)

This module aims are to encourage and develop speculative enquiry, risk taking and critical thinking, establishing a framework for the discussion of practice as research. Students will be introduced to a range of media, practice, strategies and methodologies which will enable students to develop a variety of outcomes from research material, as well as developing the skills of recording through visual and conceptual research.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction (20 credits, compulsory)

The aim of the module is for students to gain an understanding of the rationales behind making and unmaking and the importance of the relationship between deconstruction and construction, both intellectually and practically. This will encourage and develop speculative enquiry and critical thinking and aid students to determine how the use of materials and processes, strategy and practice, can inform and contribute to the realisation of creative intentions. Portfolio 100%.

Site Context and Practice 1 (20 credits, core)

This module aims to develop students’ understanding of contemporary art practice through the investigation of professional practice and making work in relation to physical and/or social contexts. It will encourage students to develop their own visual language outside the studio context in relationship to location and audience response, and develop students in locating their practice in the wider world socio politically with regard to the specific location and context. Portfolio 50%, Blog 50%.

Contextualising Contemporary Practice 1 (20 credits, core)

The module purpose is to construct a critical framework for student’s studio practice. It aims to introduce the historical debates and current issues which inform contemporary fine art, and encourage contextual thinking and critical awareness. It will engage students in research as an essential element practice and familiarize students with the critical language necessary to discuss the contexts of their own emerging practice through discussion and reflective writing. Presentation 25%, Blog 25%, Essay 50%.

Year 2 (Level 5)

Research and Practice (30 credits, compulsory)

This module will encourage students to develop a critical investigative and analytical approach to the development and synthesis of theory and practice in their work and that of others. The module aims to foster a reflective and evaluative approach to developments emerging the individuals’ creative practice, enabling them to develop a personal language. This module increases student responsibility for the direction of study and the location of practice and prepares them for more independent study at Level 6. Portfolio 80%, Presentation 20%.

Developing Studio Practice (30 credits, compulsory)

This module promotes students’ effective use of the studio to develop their individual Fine Art practice. The module builds on the experience gained within level 4 and serves to establish choice of specialist practice through which students will realise personal creative intentions. Through a process of continuous practice-based research they are supported to expand on ideas with further experimentation, so as to develop and extend their own formal language within the context of contemporary Fine Art. Portfolio 100%.

Materials and Methods 2 (20 credits, compulsory)

This module will build upon prior workshops provided in Lens Based media, Sculpture, Printmaking and Digital Media in level 4. Learners will expand on a range of processes, materials and techniques initiated in level 4, with relevant health and safety instruction. This module is supported through dialogue with the individual student‘s thematic studio practice. Portfolio 100%.

Site Context and Practice 2 (20 credits, compulsory)

Designed to help develop the skills that will equip students for a professional life in work. They 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 relevant strategies for making and displaying practical work to peers, teaching staff and external audiences, they will develop further awareness of the importance of editing, evaluating and adapting the work they have made in specific contexts. Portfolio 50%, Blog 50%.

Contextualising Contemporary Practice 2 (20 credits, compulsory)

This module builds upon the historical framework explored in contextualising practice at level 4. Contemporary practices of Fine Art Practice are interrogated, debated and displayed. It supports the student’s further steps as practitioners providing an understanding of the thematic developments in contemporary Fine Art Practice through seminars presentations, discussions and exhibition visits. Students will explore these thematic trends in post-modernity in order to understand the development and contemporary situation of their studio practice. There is an emphasis on the development of key analytical, critical and research skills, and through close engagement with visual sources historical texts and contemporary critical writing. Students will begin to identify the tools necessary to discuss, conceptualise and reflect on their own emerging practice. Presentation 25%, Blog 25%, Essay 50%.

Year 3 (Level 6)

Independent Study 1 – Research and Make (40 credits, compulsory)

The principal aim of the first Honours course module, is to provide the student with the sound intellectual and practical base which will nurture the progression of their work through to the particular demands of the Degree exhibition at the conclusion of the Exhibition Module. The ability to synthesise the various elements which make up the fine art process and to respond creatively is essential to preparing students for life in the arts sector as practitioners working outside of the education system. Students will plan, negotiate and bring to conclusion a body of work. Portfolio 100%.

Locating Professional Practice 3 (20 credits, compulsory)

At this stage in the course students take greater responsibility for their planned and organised engagement. Building on previous achievements in the professional presentation of their work to an audience, in this module students develop their exhibition skills and extend their ability to document and communicate their work in a way that is fitting to their individual professional goals. Portfolio 75%, Presentation 25%.

Critical / Curatorial Contextual Studies 3 (20 credits, compulsory)

Building on the links between research and practice embedded at Level 5. This module aims to develop and consolidate a student's ability to undertake a major research project which is linked to their studio practice. It enables student's to carry out an extended body of research on an agreed topic of their choice (appropriate to critical and contextual inquiry) which has currency in the realm of contemporary fine art practice .The module enables students to initiate and produce a sustained body of work that synthesises their critical evaluation, theoretical understanding and its relationship with studio practice. Dissertation 90%, Dissertation proposal 10%.

Independent Study 2 – Exhibit (40 credits, compulsory)

This concluding module has as its main focus the degree show. It also marks a transition to life beyond university, for which the programme has been a preparation throughout. The degree exhibition will consider methods of presenting work, critical self-evaluation, professional experience in working with an external gallery and developing individual and group communication and organisational skills. The blog remains important throughout and you will receive specific verbal and written feedback on your studio practice and developing critical awareness during the module. This should reflect a strong critical engagement with the week by week progression of the course. Portfolio 100%.