The Department of Fine and Visual Arts aims to provide a comprehensive study in the practical, historical and theoretical aspects of visual art and both new and emerging visual media. Students undertake Studio Practice courses in Art and Technology, Ceramics, Community Engaged Art, Designed Objects, Painting and Drawing, Performance Art, Photography, Print Making, and Sculpture and new Genres, leading to the Bachelor of Fine Art and Technology. The Fine Art and Technologies program is structured as a process for developing critical skills, ideas and thought for an effective understanding of contemporary art and its historical and theoretical concerns, questions and issues.
The program aims to equip students with the ability to formulate and develop their own artistic and creative processes, constantly encouraging them to use modern technologies to elevate their ideas to meet the challenges and responsibilities of creating contemporary art. Students are encouraged to develop new forms of expression to engage in processes that explore art as a continuous dialogue between the responsibilities of the artist as a shaper of ideas, and to work at the cutting edge of society. They should aim to view artistic practice in the wider context of art and society.
The program is designed as a continual process of thinking and making. Students acquire the knowledge, skills and techniques needed to develop critical competency and language for exploring ideas and forms through creative practice. The studio work should develop the student’s creative faculties and provide them with the critical language and proficiency needed to engage in the analysis of form, content and intent in their choice and use of materials and techniques.
The program intends to prepare students to be effective communicators of ideas, fluent in both written and oral presentation of their work, as well as being competent in handling concepts with a greater sophistication that demonstrates an understanding of art in relationship to other areas of human achievement. This should in turn inform the critical ways in which they interpret the complex ways in which art informs and shapes society, so as to prepare them for professional careers as artists, educators and, creative and innovative original thinkers.