Visual Studies is a dynamic theoretical subject that all students take throughout their degree in Visual Art. It provides important skills in research, understanding, reflection and communication that feed into students’ creative practice. It is taught through weekly lectures and guided group discussions, as well as through reading, written essays, group excursions, and spoken presentations.
Visual Studies empowers students with the vocabulary and the perspectives for looking at art and design and writing about it. We ask questions about what purposes art and design have served, in the past, in the present, and in the lives of our students. We are sensitive to how art and design tell us a story about the world and its cultures, especially about how different kinds of power can express itself. Through art and design we learn how different societies think about topics that affect our lives today, such as identity, gender, class and race, the digital world, transformation and even sustainability.
All art and design is made in a context. No one creates outside of the world around them, without being influenced. Therefore, we look at examples of art and design from around the world to enrich students’ experience. Students learn to interpret and analyse the creative work of other artists and designers. They are introduced to the writing of authors who have thought about their very questions, and different questions, and who help us see the visual world around us in new ways.
Visual Studies aims to sharpen students’ critical thinking tools so that they can connect their creative vision to the bigger questions of our time. In doing this students develop a strong sense of themselves as creatives in both local and global contexts, and in relation to what matters. We support growing an understanding of ourselves and others (fostering understanding and critical empathy) through looking at art and design made today while always reflecting on how art and design can serve as agents of change.