VPR1113 - Research practices - 2018

Research Practices is a core unit in the Visual Arts sequence and is one of four 1st year units. This unit is a practice driven, workshop based unit which explores varied drawing methodologies and ways they can contribute to a research practice in visual culture. It is designed to develop, challenge and expand how students think about making artwork and to develop research skills. A series of individual and collaborative exercises and projects are presented as starting points that, when navigated, foster creative research skills and develop students' material skills. The main emphasis of this class is to demonstrate how thinking operates through making. Fabrication processes in the workshop can be in any medium from across two- and/or three-dimensional works, to sound and performance. The aim of these exercises is to have a generative influence on production, creating a pool of ideas, strategies, forms and processes for students to draw on and develop as they progress through the course. Teaching methodology involves critical dialogue, classroom discussion and peer review. This unit presents a broad range of approaches to contemporary art and its institutions for those wishing to work in the arts industry as artists, curators, arts writers, educators or practitioners. Research Practices encourages an experimental approach to conceptual and material outcomes. Safe and sustainable approaches to fabrication and materials are core values in the unit.

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Apply a broad range of conceptual and analytical approaches to projects;
2. Experiment with a variety of materials and technical approaches in relation to assigned research topics;
3. Undertake collaborative approaches across contemporary visual art practices;
4. Differentiate between strategies of observation, analysis, experimentation and critique across the developmental process and begin consolidating solutions to assigned research topics;
5. Contextualise in a basic capacity the theoretical and material rationale for their work and the work of others within the field of contemporary visual art practices;
6. Understand and apply the rules of occupational health and safety appropriate to sustained independent studio practice and in order to collaborate safely with peers.

100% mixed mode assessment (includes progressive assessment and folio)

12 hours per week, including 4 hours of taught studio and 8 hours of personal study and studio practice.

See also Unit timetable information