BA (Hons) Fine Art

Our course is designed to provide you with a high-quality education in contemporary art practice, and is delivered by highly respected tutors, acclaimed artists and excellent technicians.

Over the duration of the course you will develop your individual artistic voice, informed through your own research and critical evaluation, peer and tutor’s feedback and a deep understanding of your chosen materials. When you graduate, you will be fully equipped to contribute and add something new to the UK’s art scene as an emerging artist.

Exhibiting and being enterprising is a key part of our course. We offer many opportunities for you to exhibit your work with an emphasis on site-specific locations thanks to our unique partnerships with local museums, councils and research centers. We also have a series of international student artist residency placements and worldwide partner university study exchanges. All these experiences are specially created by our tutors to give you a real sense of what it means to be a professional artist - both in the studio and the broader world.

In the first year you will work in open plan studios and participate in collective workshops to find what inspires and excites you as an artist. In the following years you will develop your practical, theoretical and critical skills within your self-defined study plans. The course culminates in two exhibitions of your work for your final major project, one on campus at Bournemouth and the second in London.

We support and encourage experimentation and development of skills, and workshops are offered as a continual part of the course over the 3 years. These are conducted in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video, digital media and sonic art as well as seminars to foster your conceptual development and understanding of curation / how exhibitions are put together.

You will have additional access to the latest technology, such as laser cutters, CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines and 3D printers. Our aim is to provide you with a solid foundation so that you can create contemporary artworks with high technical skill combined with solid conceptual grounding.

Above all we offer a welcoming and inclusive course, set in a vibrant campus dedicated to creative practices of all kinds.

All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.

If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.

If you’re required to have a Student Visa to study in the UK, it won’t be possible to undertake the one-year placement option; there’ll be other opportunities for you to engage with industry during your study at AUB.

Your first year builds upon your previous learning; you’ll experiment broadly and acquire new skills and knowledge, from a combination of both practice and theory sessions.

You’ll attend various workshops, learn about curating and exhibit your work. An important part of the first year is helping you to confidently speak and write about your work. In the final unit of this year, you will define your practice and determine which areas you wish to specialise in.

You’ll work in a mixed practice studio.

Your second year encourages you to examine the positioning of your work within the Fine Art industries and to consider its relationship to audiences.

At the beginning of Level 5, you’ll decide where to locate your practice and which practical working zone of the course to locate yourself in. You can also move between zones.

You’ll continue to improve your practical skills whilst simultaneously clarifying the research questions you are investigating.

You’ll have opportunities to study abroad and participate in challenging projects. We encourage work experience in this year if you decide to opt for the independent study unit. Your research into career options and professional practice will also begin.

In your third year, you’ll continue to develop and refine your understanding of your own practice, specifically the Fine Art discipline, the language it operates within and how it's interpreted by viewers.

This is the crucial year when you consolidate your previous experience and experiments and pursue a focused practice. This is celebrated in your two degree exhibitions, one at AUB and one in London, allowing your work to be viewed by hundreds of people and giving you a springboard into professional life.

All students are registered for the award of BA (Hons); however, exit awards are available if you leave the course early, having successfully completed one or two levels. If you successfully complete a level of the course, you will automatically be entitled to progress to the next level.

For the award of a Certificate of Higher Education (CertHE), you must have achieved a minimum of 120 credits at Level 4. This qualification may be awarded if you leave the University following successful completion of the first year of your course.

For the award of a Diploma of Higher Education (DipHE), you must have achieved a minimum of 240 credits of which a minimum of 120 must be at Level 5. This qualification may be awarded if you leave the University following successful completion of the second year of your course.

For the award of a BA (Hons) you must have achieved a minimum of 360 credits of which a minimum of 240 must be at Level 5 or above, of which a minimum of 120 credits must be at Level 6. This qualification will be awarded upon successful completion of your course.

A BA without Honours may be awarded if you have achieved 300 credits, at least 180 of which are at Level 5 or above, and at least 60 of which are at Level 6.

Students studying this course achieve great things and have won prestigious and high profile awards, such as:

• National ‘Lynne Stainer Painting Prize’
• Solo exhibition at Aspex Gallery Portsmouth
• Two graduates selected for inclusion in the Dangerous Women exhibition, which included Tracey Emin
• Two-week long artist residency in Milan
• Five students selected for Hans Brinker Painting Prize exhibition in Amsterdam

Our students go on to a broad range of destinations, these include:

• HackelBury Fine Art – Gallery Manager
• The Pineapple Group Ltd – Creative Project Manager
• SpearWorks Jewellery – Jewellery Designer/Maker
• James Glancy Design Ltd – Production Fabricator
• Weston College (MA) – Art Tutor
• Picture Production Company – Head of Editing
• White Cube – Client Registrar
• Adidas – Project Manager
• Seen Displays – Senior Creative Project Manager
• Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) – Associate Director
• The Arts of Change – Art Therapist
• Pinewood Studios – Prop Maker
• Gloss – Gallery Manager
• V&A – Internship
• Digital Arts Organization – Assistant
• Damien Hirst and Ian McKeever – Studio Assistant
• ArtSway – Research Assistant as part of a Knowledge Transfer Catalyst Scheme
• White Cube Gallery – Intern
• Artworks artists studios – Founder
• Goldsmiths College – PGCE study

You can find out more about our alumni by exploring their profiles.

As part of your course you may also get the opportunity to take part in course trips, previous trips have included:

International:

• Venice
• Milan
• Copenhagen
• Kraków
• New York
• Madrid
• Amsterdam

National:

• Southampton
• Salisbury
• Somerset
• London

*These trips are optional and some may incur additional costs

This year, we invited a number of industry experts professionals into our classes to give our students a valuable insight into Fine Art and industry. Guest lecturers have included:

• Otobong Nkanga – Visual artist and performer. Her work explores the tension between exploitative extraction processes and structures of care and repair.
• Jasmina Cibic – Film and installation artist. Her installations explore ‘soft power’ – how political rhetoric is deployed through art and architecture, particularly by the state.
• Ingrid Pollard – Mixed-media artist and researcher. Pollard uses digital, analogue and alternative photographic processes, printmaking, image-text and artist books, installation, video and audio.
• Caragh Thuring – London-based painter, originally from Belgium. Her paintings often examine the speed at which images are consumed, asking how much information is required and how slowly the process of looking can unfold.
• Jennet Thomas – MILM, media and installation artist. Her work can look like an experimental film, children's drama or performance art - it’s a call for complexity that collides genres, experimenting with collective constructions of meaning.
• Sean Edwards – Turner Prize winner and represented Wales at the Venice Biennale
• Hardeep Pandhal
• Arts Catalyst

The motivation behind Global Networks is to cultivate inspirational and experimental learning environments and open up a world view for both student and tutor through exciting international projects. These optional projects, with one of our international partner organisations, aim to stretch and challenge the student’s art practice and critical faculties whilst simultaneously increasing their awareness of broader social contexts.