MA Fine Art

Teaching times 2023-24 (subject to change for 2024-5)

• Full-time: Tuesdays and Wednesdays
• Part-time Year 1: Wednesdays; Year 2: Tuesdays

You will be expected to attend for the full day (10am-5pm) in order to use other resources such as the studios, library, and workshops, and attend extra-curricular events such as talks and inductions.

Teaching is primarily through one-to-one and group tutorials, seminars, workshops and studio critiques, in which you will learn about recent theories, contexts and practices.

You are also encouraged and expected to develop your work and research independently. You will be supported by teaching staff who are themselves experienced artists, working across different disciplines including print and fine art.

Our Fine Art Research Unit (FARU) series of artist talks – and other specialist talks across ARU – let you hear invited artists, curators, PhD students and staff talk about their work and engage in debates about contemporary art practice.

You will also benefit from links we have with external arts organisations, including Curwen Print Study, Cambridge Artworks, Wysing Art Centre and galleries and exhibition spaces, both in Cambridge and further afield. We also have strong connections with the Printmaking pathway on the MA Fine Art programme at UAL, Camberwell College of Art and uniquely take part in an annual MA Fine Art Inter-Institutional Symposium, which we hosted at ARU in June 2023, and included 47 students from ARU, AUB, BCU, NUA, Leeds, Nottingham Trent and Farnham.

As London is only a short train journey away, we encourage you to visit relevant exhibitions and events in this important artistic centre. In addition, we promote student participation in open and prestigious competitions and prizes. For students specialising in Printmaking, Curwen Print Study offer at the Art Scholars Printmaking Residency award.

This postgraduate degree in Fine Art will further prepare you for life as a practising artist and develop important transferable skills in writing proposals, exhibition practice, curating, research and critical writing. These will be invaluable skills for alternative arts careers in curating, museum and gallery education or management, or teaching.

Course Leader: Dr Véronique Chance

Recent student and graduate success

Sara Clark and Niall MacCrann (2023 graduating students) have both been selected for the 2023 Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair.

Ayeshah Zolghadr (2022) won the Trinity Wharf Buoy 2020 Student Prize for her work Circling the Square I, which represented the therapeutic walks taken by her father. She was selected from among more than 4,000 submissions to show her work at the exhibition.

Sarah Strachan (2022) was selected for the 2023 Aesthetica Art Prize, showing alongside greats including Larry Achiampong and Hope Strickland. She has also been successful in group exhibitions including: Fresh at the British Ceramic Biennial (2021), London Art Biennale (2021), Newplatform.art (2022) and Fresh Air Sculpture (2022). Sarah was recently awarded the Art Resilience Sculpture Award; she also won the ARU Sustainability Art Prize in 2021 and 2022.

2022 graduates Sarah Strachan & Ayeshshah Zolghadr’s collaborative and curatorial exhibition project The Anxiety Of Interdisciplinarity 2.0 was held at the ARB in Cambridge from September to November 2023 – a further development of their curated exhibition for the IMPACT 12 Interdisciplinary Printmaking Conference in 2022.

The duo also won the first Curwen Print Scholars Bursary Award in 2022, which culimated in a residency and exhibition, Boundary Objects, at the new Curwen Print Study Centre premises in Great Thurlow in November 2022. Ayeshah also won the Cambridge Artworks Award for her MA Show in 2022, with Lon Chircop (also 2022) as a runner up. Ayeshah will have a solo show at Cambridge ArtSpace, whilst Lon will have a Caravanserai residency during 2023/24.

Deborah Suzanne Lander (2021 graduate) was selected as one of Cambridge School of Art’s AA2A artists for 2023/4, and will be using our facilities to create new work. Since graduating, she has also been instrumental in the redevelopment and re-opening of the art gallery The Minories in Colchester, as an ongoing curatorial project through the establishment of the charity We are the Minories.

Kate Green (2022) and Eva Pandera (2021), took up a Caranvanserai residency at Cambridge ArtWorks during 2023.

Kate Green (2022) exhibited her work at the prestigious 2023 Chaya Art Awards Awe & Wonder at the Bargehouse in London, winning the Public Choice award, with Emerge, an installation artwork involving a collection of sculptural elements, created from a variety of mixed media, many of which are recycled.

Lon Chircop, Joe Dean (2022) and Sachiko Purser (2021) were selected to exhibit their work at the 2022 Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair.

Joe Dean (2022) was selected from among more than 4000 submissions to show his work at the Trinity Wharf Buoy 2020 exhibition while studying on the course.

Katy Drake (2021) was awarded a place on the prestigious Advanced Masters Research programme at Sint Lucas Antwerpen.

Anna Dermitzaki (2021) has been working since October 2022 as an Exhibitions Assistant at the Eden Project in Cornwall. She has also been working as a Tate Collective producer at Tate St Ives since 2023 and was recently made a Trustee of the Arts University Plymouth charitable Trust. She also continues to make and exhibit work as an artist.

Ewa Pandera (2021) held her solo exhibition The Forest as a result of her MA Show award, at Cambridge Artspace in June 2022. She has also successfully shown work as part of the Window Wanderland in 2022 and 2023.

MA Fine Art graduates Ian McLaren (2021), Emma Copley (2018) and James Norton (2015) have all found work as Associate Lecturers on the BA Fine Art, BA Photography and BA Digital Media Production courses at ARU.

Sandra Scott (2020) took up her ‘caravanserai’ residency at Cambridge Artworks in 2022 and has been largely responsible for the development of the Cambridge Black Creatives art group supporting black creative people in Cambridge. Who meet at Cambridge ArtSpace fortnightly on Thursdays.

Emily Godden (2019) Graduate has won several wards as a creative technologist and artist, most notably for their award winning social enterprise Virtually There Studio, creating exhibitions, experiences and educational opportunities to benefit both the environment and personal wellbeing. They regularly work with local organisations such as Cambridge Makespace and Collusion, also teaching on the BA Digital Media Production course at ARU.

Salvador Jiminéz Donaire Martinez (2019 graduate) won the 25th European Plastic Arts Contest at the University of Seville in 2019, and followed it up by securing a 12 month residency award at the Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid – considered one of the most prestigious research centres in the country. In 2020 he was awarded a Predoctoral Research Grant at the University of Seville, where he currently developing his PhD research and teaching. He has also received mobility grants to undertake research stays at the Bordeaux Montaigne University, France; and the Université Laval in Quebec, Canada; and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Italy.