Studio Disciplines
As New Zealand’s oldest public art school, we have a tradition of teaching excellence with the support of world-class facilities – ensuring that you reach your full potential. Teaching is across eight specific studio areas.
Our studio disciplines are supported by:
Art History and Theory
Researching, writing, debating and critiquing are essential skills if you work in the visual arts, helping you to position your own work in the wider context of contemporary art. We offer semester-long courses and shorter seminar blocks enabling in-depth consideration of specific art movements and concepts. In the final year of our degree programmes, you will contextualise your own artwork in a longer research essay.
Your learning will be informed by our renowned artist seminar series, delivered as a public lecture programme. Artists and theorists deliver presentations in this weekly forum, often followed by in-depth tutorial discussion in an afternoon session.
Our programmes recognise the bicultural nature of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Otago Polytechnic/Te Kura Matatini ki Otago and its relationships with Kai Tahu. We look at the recent past and the legacies of modernism, and also consider earlier histories and contexts.
Lecturers: Alex Kennedy, MFA and Ed Hanfling, PhD.
Studio Methodologies
Studio Methodologies introduces students to a range of key making, writing, reading, documenting and research skills and to some ideas from the history of art. It develops students’ ability to use a range of media and approaches to create and extend concepts in visual form and to use drawing and other skills as research tools.
