The subject of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design is offered through three undergraduate courses, a taught postgraduate programme and opportunities for research study from MRes to PhD, delivered in a flexible learning environment, and supported by a team of staff professionally engaged across a wide range of practices, publishing and exhibiting widely with national and international recognition. The courses are housed in the studios and workshops of the award-winning Broadcasting Place building at Leeds Metropolitan University, equipped with everything from the latest Macs and software to letterpress and printmaking workshops, photographic darkrooms, a digital print unit, animation workspaces and 3D construction facilities. Workshops are integrated into the studio and social spaces, fostering a dynamic and productive environment. Students have access to a range of cameras, lighting, video and sound recording equipment. In addition all courses are supported by the virtual spaces of a dedicated e-portfolio web site that students use to upload work, gain feedback from their tutors and to interact with other students.Activity also reaches out from Broadcasting Place into the city outside and beyond, to Armley Mills Industrial Museum, into exhibitions and residencies for Art in Unusual Spaces in disused shops around Leeds, and Leeds Art gallery. Students in Graphic Arts and Design have opportunities to work on live projects with external clients and those studying Contemporary Art are encouraged to initiate their own exhibition and curating projects, in which staff professionally active in the field support them. Staff and students organize a weekly Film Salon collectively.Leeds is a vibrant hub for social and cultural activity in the North, with Leeds Art Gallery hosting The Northern Art Prize, The Henry Moore Institute, Northern Ballet, Opera North, the West Yorkshire Playhouse and an annual International Film Festival providing focal points in the city and Bradford Media Museum, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the forthcoming Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield just a short distance away.
The Fine Art course teaches students to think; it is predicated on a pluralistic approach to thinking and making with reference to historical and existing attitudes and contexts.
The question of the studio acting as a primary focus to art production is balanced by the concerns of utilizing both accepted and alternative spaces for presentation and the consideration, formulation, production and realization of ideas. Students are encouraged to be innovative, inventive and proactive, working independently, collaboratively and curatorially as aspects of their developing and ongoing practice. Developing an open and enquiring attitude through experimental enterprise is a required approach in realising the expectations of this course. Thinking is doing and doing is thinking; incisive research informs and modifies practice. In that respect students are required to be self-motivated, critically reflective, proactive and engaged in their own and others creative languages. Students' imaginative explorations are supported by 1-to-1 tutorials, seminars, group presentations and discussions, lectures and a cogent visiting lecturer programme. The aspirations of the course reflect a continuing dialogue with current and relevant cultural values and issues that surrounds students in their everyday lives. Whether such adventures are executed through painting, sculpture, text, film, photography, performance, print, sound, digital processes and procedures et al, after consideration such mechanisms offer ideas as tangible experiences.
The course is supported by an incisive but discriminatory theory programme at each of the three levels that applies an intelligent appraisal of historical, philosophical and contextual readings for students to evaluate and apply to their own practice. Students are required throughout the course to articulate their concerns and ideas not simply through artworks but verbally and conceptually in written form as a means of exploring, examining and refining their intentions and/or contextual applications.
The BA (Hons) Contemporary Art Practices course enables students to develop an idiosyncratic approach to art within the wider context of contemporary culture. Individual practice is developed alongside a programme of collective artist lead projects, theoretical seminars, visiting artist lectures, film screenings, written tasks, collaborative off-site activities and curatorial projects.
The course is ideas based particularly enabling and supporting work in moving image, performance, audio, web, text, and lens-based practices and promotes a flexible studio culture based on hybrid and interdisciplinary approaches to creativity using individual and shared workspaces for making, discussing, meeting and viewing.
Initially students respond to a 'Manual' of information, concepts, and themed tasks, establishing their own approach to the studio and facilities. Technical inductions into, 3D construction workshop, print, photography, digital suite, video editing and the library and learning resources provide a platform for beginning work. In their second year, students are offered a range of collaborative off-site projects, including, curating, audio field recording and performance, to develop new skills in shared production, project management and documentation. A series of theoretical seminars leads to a written element towards the end of the second semester. In the final year, student practices focus on an individual practice supported by a written contextual document demonstrating an ability to articulate ideas and contexts through a self-reflective approach.
Activities are supported through a process of individual tutorials, with group seminars and presentations staged throughout each level of the award. Each student regularly recieves formative feedback towards a final assessment point at which students are assessed against their individual creative approach, technical application and research into their individually identified study.
Art graduates have chosen careers across a broad cultural spectrum including the music industry, exhibition organization and curating, the fashion and design industries, and film and television. Students can choose to move into postgraduate study across a range of disciplines and continue to develop skills as practicing artists in painting, sculpture, filmmaking, print, and multimedia, working as individuals or as part of a collective.
The BA (Hons) Graphic Arts and Design course enables students to develop their own distinctive personal approach to the study of graphic art and design through a combination of brief-led work and self-initiated projects. The course covers a wide spectrum of disciplines and media, from graphic design for print to illustration, from photography, typography to animation and moving image, from information graphics to web design. What remains consistent through this is that we believe that graphic design is a verb as much as a noun, a thought process and a way of working rather than a prescribed set of outcomes. We encourage and cajole our students into creative independence, asking them to find their own personal graphic voice, to 'think round corners' and to come up with original and distinct solutions to communication problems. We try to foster in our students an approach and attitude that might stand them in good stead in whatever part of the creative industries they might wish to work in.
Students are introduced to the course through inductions in a range of media, from the most up-to-date computer software and digital print to black and white film processing, animation and moving image to letterpress, etching and screen-print. Students are encouraged to respond to a series of briefs through these media, which forms a technical and creative backbone that then allows the student in the second semester of first year to begin to locate their own interests. In Level 5, initially students again respond to a series of integrated studio and critical briefs that open up to allow the student to explore their own creativity. In the second semester of level 5, students pursue largely self-initiated projects that are developed and more fully explored in the final year of the course. Students attend individual and group tutorials and are required to regularly present their work to both staff and peers alike. Throughout this, students' practical work is supported by the writing of a Learning Agreement that proposes, describes, negotiates and contextualises the student's work. Practice and theory are fully integrated in the course and this is supported by theoretical lectures and seminars, film screenings and practical workshops.
The course is taught by current practitioners across a range of disciplines and media, from illustration through to animation, photography and film to design for print and has a rich history of fostering unique talents and alumni include Graphic Thought Facility, Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs, Anthony Burrell, and the illustrator Martin O'Neill.
The School has a significant research student community at MRes, Mphil and PhD level. It is a leader in practice-based research in Contemporary Art and Graphic Design with students developing a professional practice through the production of work and its public presentation accompanied by a supporting text. We have a diverse research community of students who regularly publish and exhibit in the UK and internationally, recently New York, Mongolia, Japan, New Zealand, London. Particular areas of expertise in supervision are audio-visual practices across fine art and graphic design, photography, and interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to contemporary art and design. We are interested in research that challenges traditional notions of practice, sites of production and output, both in their work and presentation of final PhD submission. We currently have links with The School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Salford University, and Imperial College amongst others.
Recent practice-based achievements have included Shezad Dawood, The Killing of Chief Crazy Horse: binaries of representation in the first and third world investigated through performance art practice and Casey Orr, American Journeys and the American Dream: photography re-envisaging an internalised disconnection from nature.
Each year, up to three international and two UK trips are offered, most recently to New York, Berlin, Madrid and Krakow. Groups of students can attend the Frans Masereel Print Workshop in Belgium, and the European Exchange Academy in Beelitz, Germany, where for four weeks students work alongside peers from USA, Finland, Netherlands, and Belgium on an intensive programme of work that leads to a public exhibition. The courses participate in the Erasmus European Exchange programme with institutions from Estonia and Poland.
A wide range of practitioner's visits provides students with lectures, seminars, personal tutorial advice and support. Recent visitors have included, David Shrigley, Adrian Shaughnessy, Jonathan Barnbrook, Simon Roberts and A Practice For Everyday Life, John C Welchman, Leah Capaldi, Juneau Projects, Simon Martin, and Emily Wardill.
Over the past few years renowned sound artist Chris Watson has made an extended visit organizing a project of experimental sound recording and performance that draws upon his experience in field recording with David Attenborough at the BBC.
institution code name : LMU
institution code : L27
course code : WW12
start date : 20 September 2011
short form of course : BA/Contem
application deadline date: 15 January 2011
institution code name : LMU
institution code : L27
course code : W100
start date : 20 September 2011
short form of course : BA/FineArt
application deadline date: 24 March 2011
institution code name : LMU
institution code : L27
course code : W210
start date : 20 September 2011
short form of course : BA/Graphic
application deadline date: 24 March 2011