Fine Art MA

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio

Admission to this course involves reviewing your portfolio. After you apply, we will ask you to share a link to an online portfolio of your work. This enables us to see your potential and understand your approach and motivations. 

We will ask you to log on to Student View to share your portfolio link. We will not be able to progress your application to Brighton until you share your portfolio.

• Find out about the specific requirements for your course.

Creating your portfolio
We’ve put together advice and guidance to help you create and share your portfolio and we run regular online portfolio advice sessions where you can get help from our expert team.

Course structure

The course runs for 12 months full-time and 24 months part-time.

Regular seminars, tutorials and crits take place each Tuesday and Wednesday. Most students are part-time and attend each Tuesday in Year 1 and each Wednesday (plus Tuesday evening) in Year 2. Full-time students attend group activities on both of these days and spend the rest of the week either researching or working in our shared studios.

Part-time students research and make work in their own studios outside the university and use university facilities (such as workshops or libraries) for practical and presentation purposes. All students have access to the Postgraduate Project Space to install and exhibit work.

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Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Areas of study

The course is split into two main sections. Both involve elements of theory and practice – together with portfolio and visual documentation preparation – and culminate in assessed exhibitions.

Section 1

The first section (one year part-time or six months full-time) concentrates on the identification and development of your chosen mode of practice, with a degree of re-evaluation and experimentation being the norm.

You will display and discuss your work within a group to form a social and professional bond with your fellow students. You will also attend lectures and seminars given by the regular staff team and visiting guest speakers.

Section 2

The second section prepares you for the final assessment exhibition. This involves regular crits and group meetings. You will present a seminar linked to your work, develop your professional practice and networking skills, and receive tutorials on the extended essay that you write during the summer vacation.

Modules

• Reconfiguring Practice

  This module brings you together with your peer group to identify the history and context of your practice and evolve ways of discussing, developing and reconsidering it. You’ll take part in tutorials, seminars, workshops and group feedback discussions. Through group work you’ll become familiar with the art practices of your peers and explore ways of making work, exhibiting together and identifying and developing professional skills.

• Consolidating Practice

  In this module you will build upon and bring together your knowledge of materials and processes developed on the course. It will give a framework for you to integrate your methods of production, critical position and practical research and enable you to identify and use additional skills to create a coherent body of work which considers audience.

• Research Methods and Professional Practice

  This module focuses on the expression and presentation of practice-based research and professional practice skills. Following a series of presentations and discussions you will deliver an artist talk or research seminar (PowerPoint, Keynote or other format) for an audience of your peers and tutors. The presentation will contextualise your own research and practice with relevant theory, literature, artefacts and examples of professional practice.

• Research Essay: Written/Visual

  This module gives you the opportunity to develop a written or visual essay (zine, graphic novel or video) focused on an area of research that is both important to you and sensitive to contemporary debates. Using the theories of other scholars, and referencing from a diverse selection of sourced material, you will develop a discussion and argument that analyses and evaluates your chosen topic.

Student views

“Tutorials were very good, helpful and to the point.”

“It has been interesting to have a varied response to work from different tutors, advisers and mentors.”

“I attended video editing and woodwork inductions – both of which were clear, thorough and well led. The Media Centre is particularly fantastic.”

“The course has helped me to reconfigure my practice and has enabled me to get to the next level – putting my work into a theoretical framework has been a valuable tool.”

Meet the team

Amy Cunningham

Amy Cunningham is a multidisciplinary artist, lecturer and researcher, who uses the singing voice, video, materials and drawing to explore the texture, patterns and glitches in technologies and environments. Addressing both the obsolete and the futuristic, her artworks have included a fictional computer game in a real eighteenth century garden, opera as a video installation and an Internet broadcast as a song cycle.

Currently she is developing a series of work which explores the relationships between the architecture of leisure, wildlife and industry within coastal environments.

Read more about Amy Cunningham and visit Amy's Vimeo site.

Other teaching staff include Sean Dower and Alex Pollard.

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

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