Master of Fine Arts

One of English artist Gillian Wearing’s most famous images is of a man in a business suit looking calm while holding up a sign on which he had written, "I’m Desperate". Wearing subtitled this body of work, ‘signs that say what you want them to say and not what someone else wants you to say’. She was attempting to give voice to her subjects, and not to define them according to her own preconceptions. This work stands as an interesting metaphor for control in art and demarcates important issues sur­rounding authorship and collaboration.

The theme of this work serves as an interesting metaphor for the Master of Fine Arts degree. It sug­gests that artists today need to learn to understand the power of imagery and how to manipulate and yet share it at the same time. Art is about setting up dialogues in which people speak and are not spoken for. It is about learning to work in collaboration so as to make dynamic connections with the social realm while producing work of the highest quality.

The Master’s degree in Fine Arts continues the phil­osophical underpinnings of the Bachelor’s and Post­graduate Diploma courses at a higher level. Building on this inter-disciplinary model, the Master of Fine Arts offers candidates the opportunity to produce an advanced body of art, working in close co-operation with a supervisory team. The degree is offered over one year after the successful completion of the one-year Postgraduate Diploma of Fine Art.

The MFA is by major thesis which entails the pro­duction of a significant body of art work together with a piece of contextual writing up to a limit of 10,000 words. Students have twelve calendar months to complete the degree.

Each student has access to secure studio facilities. They also have full workshop access and special rights for the usage of a range of high-end technical equipment including digital still and moving image cameras, data projectors, and sculptural fabrication technology.