Fine Art

Learn to adopt an interdisciplinary and material-led approach, based on experimentation, risk-taking and personal innovation.

MA Fine Art at Bath Spa will challenge your assumptions about art production and encourage you to explore ways to progress within and transform the field. It will also encourage you to build collaborative relationships with other artists and develop transferable skills.

You’ll identify your individual position as an artist and learn to promote and exhibit your work professionally. You’ll take a holistic approach, embedding theory, research, and historical and contemporary practice into your work.

MA Fine Art at Bath Spa runs over one year and is divided into three trimesters.

Trimester one
Begin to take chances and challenge your creative processes. You’ll interrogate your existing knowledge and develop skills in an environment that encourages playfulness and artistic risk-taking. You can experiment freely in our wide variety of specialist facilities, open studio spaces, and technical workshops – where expert support is on-hand.

Trimester two
Building on the work in the first trimester, you’ll maintain an experimental approach, but start to narrow your focus. We’ll help you evaluate your initial studio developments and refine your working strategy. You’ll be encouraged to pay greater attention to the presentation of your practice and to test how finished works relate to each other in, as well as to the spaces of, exhibition sites.

Trimester three
You’ll work in the studio with increasing independence as you establish a professional practice. You’ll devise and complete your Master’s Project, working to a proposal which contextualises your work within your specialist discipline and leads to your final Degree Show.

This course includes or offers the following modules. Please check the programme document for more information on which modules are core, required or optional.

• Research Methods
• Theory and Professional Context
• Practice 1 (Fine Art)
• Research Practice
• Theory and Professional Practices
• Practice 2 (Fine Art)
• Masters Project

Your progress is evaluated throughout the course and at the end of each trimester through a mixture of exhibitions, verbal/visual presentations, research folders/blogs and written assignments.

You’ll learn through lectures, talks, taught sessions, individual and group tutorials, and studio critiques and seminars.

Visiting lecturers, and seminars with external professionals and internationally renowned designers and artists, will help you determine where your current practice sits within the industry.

Our collaborative structure also means that you’ll learn from each other – for instance, Curatorial Practice and Textiles students might engage in debates with Fine Art students.

Technical Demonstrators, who manage our workshop facilities, provide teaching and support across a wide range of subject specialisms. Your learning is also supported by specialist librarians.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

When permitted, Bath School of Art, Film and Media offers fieldwork opportunities throughout the academic year.

There are several awards and competitions at Bath Spa that MA Fine Art students can enter:

• The Porthleven Prize
• Peter Kinley Prize for Painting
• Betty and Peter McLean Prize (for ceramics)
• Freelands Painting Fellowship (open to postgraduate students who studied BA Fine Art at Bath School of Art, Flim and Media)
• Emerge studio residency

As a postgraduate Fine Art student you’ll benefit from access to comprehensive digital workshops and specialist art and design facilities, including:

• Our student service point at Locksbrook where you can purchase subsidised art and design materials, hire out equipment for free and collect Library resources
• Access to our well-stocked Library at Newton Park
• Specialist technical facilities across all of art and design
• Access to studio space where you can work on projects and refine your practice and your research.