Fine Art

Study mode:On campus Study type:Full-time Languages: English
Local:$ 14.8 k / Year(s) Foreign:$ 28.2 k / Year(s) Deadline: Jan 20, 2025
1 place StudyQA ranking:1794 Duration:1 year

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The Ruskin MFA degree is an intensive, interdisciplinary programme in the practice of contemporary art, designed to support studio-based and theoretical components of your artistic practice.

Many alumni from the Ruskin have pursued careers in the fine arts as practising artists, teachers, curators and gallery professionals in both public and private galleries. Others have gone on to pursue careers in diverse areas such as education, finance, architecture and the film industry.

The course will provide an intensive series of one-to-one tutorials and weekly studio seminars, focused upon your own art-making, its key concerns and ideas, and your inter-dependent development with the other artists in the MFA group.

This studio-based learning programme will be supported by a regular seminar series engaged with current debates in contemporary art history and theory. The curriculum of reading and discussion will be tailored to the emergent concerns of the group and their dialogue with wider discourses of contemporary art and visual culture.

This student-centric approach to your own art making, as well as to its historical and theoretical context, will be possible because of the unusually small cohort size of the Ruskin MFA. Great attention will be paid to individual concerns, whilst generating a collective dynamic of mutual participation in generous and robust discussion. Through this process, you will be provided with a demanding yet supportive environment that allows you to engage with what it means to work as an artist today, considering how an artist's practice and ideas are understood in and across different social, artistic and intellectual contexts.

The course benefits from the extraordinary resources of knowledge across the University, placing special emphasis upon the experimental histories of art and art education, and their potential to transform knowledge, forms and situations. You will be expected to develop your artistic practice within the programme, researching and generating an advanced body of art work, employing the technical resources and facilities of the Ruskin and drawing upon Oxford’s extensive library and museum resources.

Varied teaching situations will be employed to identify and provide for each individual student's needs, and to draw individual artistic concerns into group dialogue to promote extensive contextual knowledge and awareness. These include:

  • a studio programme of individual tutorials over all three (or six for part-time students) terms, with an allocated tutor who will oversee your academic development. An additional provision of elective tutorials will also be made, enabling you to benefit from the individual research strengths of other permanent staff as well as regular visiting staff across the school, complemented by input from high-profile visiting lecturers;
  • two programmes of group seminars throughout the first and second terms, one dedicated to the presentation and analysis of studio work (such as group critiques) and one to the reading and analysis of contemporary art history and theory. These will be timetabled to facilitate the attendance of part-time students; and
  • complementary support through access to technical training for new skills and techniques, delivered by the Ruskin’s regular technical staff, as well as occasional skills workshops.

The MFA will have three main modes of assessment:

  • an exhibition or other presentation of a fully realised artwork or body of artworks made by you during the MFA programme. This will require you to develop, create and present a coherent, thoughtful exhibition, or other presentation as appropriate, of artwork. Other presentations may include websites, live performances, etc;
  • an extended written text of at least 4,000 words. This piece of written work will require you to reflect upon your studio practice, drawing together aspects of the technical and formal processes of art making and considering them in relation to art-historical contexts and theoretical debates;
  • a portfolio of documentation of studio work. Throughout the programme, you will be required to make thorough, scholarly documentation of your work, to be submitted at the conclusion of the programme. This supports the assessment of the final exhibition or presentation in demonstrating the provenance of the processes, strategies and ideas manifest there.

Applicants are normally expected to be predicted or have achieved a first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours (or equivalent international qualifications), as a minimum, in fine art or a related subject. 

However, entrance is very competitive and most successful applicants have a good first-class degree or the equivalent.

For applicants with a degree from the USA, the minimum GPA generally sought is 3.75 out of 4.0.

If you hold non-UK qualifications and wish to check how your qualifications match these requirements, you can contact the National Recognition Information Centre for the United Kingdom (UK NARIC).

No Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or GMAT scores are sought.

  • Official transcript(s)
  • CV/résumé
  • Statement of purpose/personal statement:1,000 words
  • Portfolio: Up to 15 images and/or 12 minute of moving image work
  • References/letters of recommendation:Three overall, generally academic

Portfolio

A digital portfolio of recently completed studio work documented through images or other mode of documentation is required.

Your portfolio should be provided in digital format with your application, although you may be asked to bring along originals at the interview. Portfolios should be hosted on a website or service that is publicly accessible via the internet, eg via Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr or your own website.

A PDF document comprising the URL (and password, if necessary) for your portfolio should be uploaded to your application as written work.

The department will not accept portfolios submitted via email. If you cannot provide a web-based portfolio, please send an email to graduate@rsa.ox.ac.uk to discuss alternative arrangements.

Portfolios will be assessed for evidence of creative thinking and artistic accomplishment, and clarity in the exposition of ideas.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

Higher level

Test

Standard level scores

Higher level scores

IELTS Academic 
Institution code: 0713

7.0 Minimum 6.5 per component  7.5  Minimum 7.0 per component 

TOEFL iBT 
Institution code: 0490

100

Minimum component scores:

  • Listening: 22
  • Reading: 24
  • Speaking: 25
  • Writing: 24
110

Minimum component scores:

  • Listening: 22
  • Reading: 24
  • Speaking: 25
  • Writing: 24
Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE) 185

Minimum 176 per component

191 

Minimum 185 per component

Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English (CAE) 185

Minimum 176 per component

191 

Minimum 185 per component

  • Global Education
  • Hill Foundation Scholarships
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