VPR2012 - Professional practice - 2018

This is a core unit in the Visual Arts and is second of the two 2nd year units. The unit provides students with a broad range of approaches to cultural production for those wishing to work in the visual arts industry across a diverse range of professional platforms. This unit introduces students to various professional processes and outcomes that contemporary visual artists engage and exhibit in. The workshop-driven classes incorporate theoretical and historical perspectives on these gallery-based modes. This unit introduces various steps required to make art public from: studio-based processes; the engagement of critical feedback; administrative processes associated with gallery-based exhibition; installing an artwork; and contextualising the artwork in a considered theoretical and curatorial framework. The workshop program facilitates a support structure for the development and consolidation of experimental approaches to conceptual and material outcomes of burgeoning research interests. Students are required to investigate and develop individual and collaborative solutions to a series of creative public outcomes. Teaching methodology involves lectures, fieldtrips, critical dialogue, class discussion and peer review. Safe and sustainable approaches to fabrication techniques and materials are promoted as core values in the unit.

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

1. Understand how the conceptual, material and logistical approaches to their visual artwork relates to gallery-based programs;
2. Examine an area of independently framed research using various analytical strategies;
3. Manage different stages of the development process in an experimental manner;
4. Initiate and present interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches in contemporary visual art practices that are consistent with their consolidating research position;
5. Contextualise through structured writing formats the theoretical and material rationale for their work and the work of others within the field of contemporary visual art;
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.

This is a semester-long project unit. 100% mixed mode assessment (includes progressive assessment and folio)

12 hours per week, including four hours of taught studio and eight hours of personal study and studio practice.

See also Unit timetable information