Fine Art Printmaking BA(Hons)

International requirements and visas

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

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio advice 

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.

Top reasons to choose this course

• We allow you the space and give you the guidance to think through making, turning ideas into tangible creative outcomes.
• You will gain skills in working with a range of materials and processes, understanding that new discoveries can be made by engaging with materials and processes.
• You will be working in one of the UK’s best-equipped printmaking workshops.
• Lecturers are practising artists who bring a diverse range of skills and experience to your learning.
• You will plan, organise and execute exhibitions of artwork for public audience.
• We give you the tools to communicate ideas in visual, written and spoken forms.
• Strong links with local arts communities provide volunteer and employment opportunities.
• The optional placement year gives you the chance to make connections and gain valuable experience.

• Over the course you will develop tenacity, resourcefulness, resilience and self-motivation, fundamental aspects of sustaining an art practice or working within the creative industries.
• There is space to discuss, articulate and critically evaluate your own and others artwork.
• You will graduate knowing how to develop professional proposal documents that communicate planned work in visual and text form and include ethical and health and safety considerations.
• At the end of your degree you will exhibit a body of work in the university’s graduate show and graduating students often organise a self-funded show.
• You have the opportunity to apply for an exchange programme with the University of Nagoya, Japan.

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Year 1

You will explore a variety of ways of working, including investigating drawing in an expanded way, colour theory and ideas development. You’ll have theoretical lectures and seminars as well as technical inductions into all the main processes of printmaking (etching, lithography, screen, relief, Photoshop and Illustrator). You will be supported to develop research into interests and concerns that motivate you as an individual. You will also collaboratively plan a group exhibition and take part in a print edition project.

Modules

• Studio Practice 1: Orientation

  This module orientates you to the main elements of studio practice. Research informed teaching introduces you to various methods of contextual and critical exploration that will underpin the development of your practice, informing the development of professional skills. Seminars and tutorials will give you the opportunity to discuss your interests with each other, helping to generate and develop creative ideas.

• Studio Practice 2: Enquiry, Edition, Exhibition

  This module provides you with the opportunity to match your imaginative and intellectual concerns against the constraints and potentials of editioned printmaking, a skill set that contributes to professional employability. This experience will lead to the planning and presentation of a year group exhibition. By demonstrating an increasingly fluent, critically informed understanding of your visual research, you will develop a convincingly progressive printmaking practice.

• Printmaking Technical Inductions

  This module provides technical demonstration and direct workshop engagement with the main processes of etching, lithography, screen printing, relief and digital printmaking processes. You will also compare and contrast the potential of the processes to which you are introduced.

• Theories and Practices of Fine Art: Introduction to Global Art Histories and Art Writing

  This module introduces a range of global art histories underpinned by various modes of art writing and art practice. You will examine and critique the Western canon of art history; indigenous, decolonial, punk, feminist and queer art histories; high and low art theory; art criticism; art journalism; and artist’s experimental writing. 

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.

Year 2

The second year is when you really begin to develop your work and your autonomy of practice, testing your ideas and research methodologies, and clarifying what aspects of printmaking you want to refine. The fine art exhibition, held in and around the university gallery, gives you the opportunity to exhibit your work with your peers from other disciplines. A public engagement module provides connectivity between studio and workshop activity, usually a school- or artist-led project, and a professional working environment.

Modules

• Studio Practice 3: Investigation, Experimentation, Public Exhibition and Engagement

  In this module, you will develop a body of work using a self-determined approach to printmaking, testing ideas and processes across print media and related materials. You’ll learn the practical and professional practice skills to prepare and present work for public exhibition, using safe, ethical and inclusive working methods. Post exhibition, you will focus on deepening your practical and critical research and engaging with the public through collaboration with external organisations.

• Theories and Practices of Fine Art: Contexts and Specialisms

  This module will explore the theoretical, analytical and critical frameworks in your field of fine art practice. It addresses how characteristics of disciplines, genres and media have been defined and challenged within an expanding and global field of practice. You will be encouraged to think about and articulate your ideas around art and consider alternative viewpoints to the Eurocentric Western cultural traditions within fine art.

• Professional Development and Studio Practice

  This module will support the development of your independent practice, explore how your learning can be used to improve your employability and enterprise prospects and identify key skills you have acquired to date. It looks at issues related to your personal and professional practice, including a variety of presentation forms, visual and written documentation, and how these can be used to publicise and disseminate your work and ideas.

Placement year

Gain valuable experience and earn money during an optional placement year following year 2. You’ll return to the final year of your degree with added confidence, additional real-world experience and valuable contacts. 

A placement year gives you the chance to work with established professionals in design studios, galleries, film sets, music labels, creative agencies, newsrooms and many other environments. You’ll be able to get an insight into creative workflows and come away with a portfolio filled with real-world projects that will stand out in a competitive job market.  

It can also help you discover your creative direction and passion for a particular area of work, helping you grow artistically as well as professionally.   

Our dedicated Placements and Employability team will support you in getting a placement that suits your interests and career goals by helping you with your CV and cover letter writing, applications, online testing and more. Plus, they’ll provide support and guidance when you’re on placement and make sure that everything is going well. 

Final year

In your third year the exploration of creative possibilities intensifies as you consolidate your interests in order to plan a resolved body of work for the graduate show. This is an exciting time when the insights and experience gained throughout the course come together to present undergraduate practice at its most inventive, thought-provoking and professional. There is also a focus on the development of your practice after undergraduate study and the course has a proven track record of progression to respected masters-level courses.

Modules

• Studio Practice 4: Speculation and Integration

  This module builds upon year 2 and offers a period of speculation, reflection and planning in which you will define a self-directed studio practice. Informed by research and investigation, you will integrate the various elements of your studies into a coherent and critically informed practice. The module also encourages you to look ahead to opportunities within and beyond education and record these in a professional development file.

• Theories and Practices of Fine Art: Articulation of Your Critical Position

  In this module you will continue to work with increasing independence, expanding and refining your work in relation to theory and practice. The practical aspects of this module give you a foundation to explore, develop and shape your independent and reflective positions on art. You will identify a focused area of investigation and articulate an in-depth body of work which demonstrates an understanding of the theories and issues that underpin your subject.

• Studio Practice 5: Coherence and Syntheses – Degree Exhibition

  This module supports you to develop and complete a coherent and critically informed body of work that best reflects a print language appropriate to your interests and concerns. A body of contextual and theoretical research will underpin the thinking within your practice. You will consider approaches to the professional presentation of your work and refine your skills so you can work safely, ethically and sustainably in an exhibition context.

Facilities

The course benefits from top-class facilities including:

• dedicated studio space for each student 
• facilities for intaglio, relief, lithography and screen printing 
• expert technical staff to assist you in workshops and inductions into equipment and technologies 
• essential hand tools available for loan 
• Media Centre, including specialist equipment such as materials for sound, film and photography available for short-term loan, computer rooms with contemporary software for digital image processing and manipulation, graphic layout and typography, animation, film and sound production and editing
• the TECH HUB – a team of technical demonstrators based in Grand Parade who provide specialist creative software support including Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects etc), Rhino, Blender and C4D, as well as web and blog-related software. They manage digital manufacturing services within the School of Art and Media, including laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC routing, plasma cutting and 3-axis CNC milling. They also have VR headsets and 3D scanners. The TECH HUB has its own dedicated PC suite with all of the software they support as well as standard university programmes
• Photographic Services Unit including well-equipped dark room, studio and camera loan facilities
• department print bureau 
• one of the country’s best-stocked specialist art and design libraries 
• internationally important Design Archives
• on-site supplies shop.

Meet the team

Phil Tyler, course leader

Phil Tyler is a practising artist who is interested in the relationship between the materiality of painting and its potential to act as a cypher for grief, loss and the notion of the sublime. His practice involves painting, drawing, printmaking photography, collage, digital image and writing.

He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally since the mid 1980s, including in the ING Discerning Eye, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, The Lynn Painter-Stainers prize, The Garrick Milne Prize, The Royal Over-seas League, East, The National Open and the Whitworth Young Contemporaries competitions, and most recently his work was part of an exhibition of 82 British Artists in Poland and well as The Ruth Borchard Prize. His work is in both public and private collections in this country as well as in America, Australia Finland, Hong Kong and Sweden, including Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

Read a Q+A where Phil talks about his artistic career and route into teaching.

Other staff include:

• Johanna Love
• Chris Hunt, Ray Dennis, Heike Roesel and Wayne Case (technicians).

Portrait by Phil Tyler

Summer shows 2024

Course fees

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

• Brighton Boost – cost of living help for our new undergrad students. Find out about how we can help with your study, accommodation or travel costs and more...
• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• Read our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf) for more on University of Brighton tuition fees.

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