Contemporary Art Practice

The MA in Contemporary Art Practice offers a discursive environment in which to discuss contemporary issues for thinking about, making and presenting contemporary art supported by individual tutorials, group critiques, lectures, seminars and workshops that take place across the year. Units are tailored to nurture the development of your art practice from the earliest manifestations of ideas through to platforms for exhibition and making-public, whilst also providing the skills required to be able to situate your practice within current dialogues and debates. Supported individual learning is complemented by generative workshops and collaborative events and exhibitions, with critical feedback offered throughout the degree from world-leading contemporary artists, writers and curators.

The MA in Contemporary Art Practice is premised on an understanding that artists, makers, writers, curators, critics and historians today are concerned with the function, contribution and work of the artist and art’s potential to reflect upon and intervene in the world. CAP research clusters, reading groups, collaborations, group crits, generative workshops and seminars interconnect with one-to-one tutorials and technical support as well as the School and College-wide teaching units to create an innovative, dynamic and responsive habitat for new approaches to the thinking, making and exhibition of contemporary art practices.

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.

Term 1

The Situating Contemporary Art Practice unit provides the practical and theoretical foundations of the degree. A series of programme lectures, technical and generative workshops and seminars, individual tutorials and group critiques will support you in artwork production and experimentation, helping you to position and situate your practice within contemporary dialogues and debates.

Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA, the College-wide unit. See below for more details.

Term 2

The Demonstrating Contemporary Art Practice unit engages with modes of making-public and with collaborative practices. You will have the opportunity to expand professional networks and engage with sites and contexts of art production and reception. You will be supported in your learning through individual and group tutorials, lectures, workshops and reading groups. You will also have the opportunity to collaborate with peers across all aspects of planning and exhibition of a series of public projects and events involving external partners and deliver a presentation of your work with feedback from leading professionals in contemporary art practice.

In term 2 all School of Arts & Humanities students will participate in the Urgency of the Arts, School-wide unit. Through this unit we ask: what does arts and humanities research and practice have to offer in our current socio-political climate? The unit introduces students to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and practices relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the Arts & Humanities. The delivery is devised to help you identify and query your own practices and disciplinary assumptions through encounters with others and within the various practices undertaken by students in the School, and to raise awareness around contemporary concerns. You will be supported in understanding the ramifications of your own work and practice within a broad cultural context, and to recognise its many potentially unintended readings and consequences.

Term 3

The Independent Research Project at producing a final artwork for presentation in a public exhibition. You will be supported through individual and group tutorials and one-to-one technical support, alongside a series of programme specific and School-wide professional practice lectures and workshops, with critical feedback on your work via an external group of arts professionals.

Situated at the core of your RCA student experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College- wide AcrossRCA unit supports how you respond to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds by engaging you in a global creative network that draws on expertise within and beyond the institution. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for you to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts.

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations from internationally acclaimed speakers that will encourage you to think beyond the discourses of art, architecture, communication, and design, and extend into other territories such as economics, ethics, science, engineering, medicine or astrophysics.

In interdisciplinary teams you will be challenged to use your intellect and imagination to respond to urgent contemporary themes, providing you with an opportunity to develop innovative and disruptive thinking, critically reflect on your responsibilities as a creative practitioner and demonstrate the contribution that the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world. This engagement with interdisciplinary perspectives and practices is designed both to complement your disciplinary studies and provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.