Introduction to the BFA
Fine Art at the Ruskin is the practical and theoretical study of creative visual intelligence. It is a studio-based trajectory through the disciplines that shape contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation, video, sound, performance and other experimental forms. The BFA course balances structure and openness, theory and practice, individual and group energies.
The Ruskin forms a lively community both within and beyond the undergraduate course. The group of BFA candidates is intimate: only about twenty students are admitted per year, and these small numbers facilitate active debate amongst and across years, as well as making possible a staff to student ratio this is unbeatable among UK art schools. Various crossover activities are organised with DPhils and research fellows, and in addition to this, students benefit from relationships formed across other disciplines within their colleges and throughout the university as a whole. Links to the professional art world in the UK and beyond are also opened, through a professional practice programme, offsite exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford, and organised trips to London galleries.
The course is structured across three years, each made up of three compact 8-week terms. Although end-of-year exhibitions in the first and third year are examined, and the second year provides the longest expanse of time for unfettered experimentation, a rigorous studio-based practice is elementary throughout. Students are encouraged to enhance nuts and bolts skills whilst meantime learning to reflect on their practice, give it context, and sharpen critical thought. The theoretical element is deeply woven into the learning methodology of the course and is taught both in the lecture rooms and the studios.
Fortnightly tutorials with permanent and visiting staff are required, as are weekly courses in human anatomy in the first year, and weekly art history and theory lectures and seminars in the first and second years. Supplementing these fixed points in the curriculum is a varied banquet of offerings, including group critiques, student-organised exhibitions, weekly visiting artists’ talks, weekly skills based workshops, and thematic seminars and symposia. Within this intense crucible that is the Ruskin, we encourage students to take their own initiative and to map an individual course through which to develop a distinctive voice.
Daria Martin
BFA Course Leader
