Sculpture and Expanded Practice

Sculpture provides you with a framework to engage contemporary art practices.  To understand how you choose materials and processes of all kinds, evolving towards a professional standard. Sculpture is idea led, meaning that you learn to make choices and decisions, and this requires self motivation and determination and a willingness to experiment and test ideas and actions and to connect experiences.

Our lives are complex negotiations with places, spaces and people and sculpture sits in this junction.  This programme is about learning how we make work matter, figuring out who it matters to, beyond ourselves and considering where we put it to test how it matters both within the gallery and beyond it.  Students will be supported to create contemporary exhibitions, make proposals, apply for postgraduate study, make and develop opportunity as a way of meeting the world.

Year 1

See First Year

Year 2 & Final Year

Through years 2 and 3 students should continue to gain confidence and fluency in a broad range of 3D skills. In these years you will be asked to identify a strong personal direction for your sculptural practice through directed learning and independent self-directed study. You will have your own generous studio space and large workshops to access daily. Modules, projects, formal lectures and informal seminars will expose you to distinctive approaches, theories and techniques specific to contemporary sculpture and also expanded practices like installation, socially engaged practice and lens based media. There is a distinct emphasis on research skills which will help you navigate through questions like: How do I test this material? Who is my art for? How do I make work for the public domain?

Year 3: Studio + & International

Studio+ is an optional year between the second and final year of your degree. Open to all Fine Art students, it offers the opportunity to gain experience in a range of social and cultural contexts in the world beyond NCAD. This experience will be gained through work with different organisations with links to the School of Fine Art and will help you to build your skills as an artist. Studio+ can also include a period of study abroad through the Erasmus programme with internationally recognised art faculties partnered with NCAD.

How will I be Assessed?

Assessment is usually at the half year and full year semester points and will focus on your creative processes, your tests and trials and the artwork produced. Assessment is centred around your art activities, what you have discovered by doing these activities, how you critically reflect and link to this. There are also requirements to participate in ongoing course dialogues and to communicate and evolve views and perspectives.

Download NCAD Prospectus