BA (Hons) Fine Art (Central Saint Martins)

Welcome to the Fine Art BA where you will develop the creative and critical skills to challenge prevailing artistic conventions. You and your contemporaries are the creative practitioners of the future and together we can question and remake the cultural landscape of today.

BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins asks two core questions in relation to art; what is the site of production and what is the site of encounter?

At CSM we continually challenge what we think art is. We recognise the broad diversity of social, political, cultural, economic and technological contexts in which contemporary art is made and exhibited. Working together, staff and students interrogate the multiple and varied ways in which artists make work and make work public.

The course is organised into four studios; 2D, 3D, 4D and XD. Each studio engages students with specific critical perspectives and technical inductions. You are encouraged to develop your work in relation to different forms of practice across any range of media. The studios embody an inter-disciplinary approach and this is reflected in the cross-studio events that are structured throughout the course. We make in ways that reflect the full range of materials, technologies and discourses exploited by artists today.

Your studio will provide you with an experimental space where discoveries can occur. For this to keep happening the studio has to be perpetually reinvented, functioning as laboratory, performative site, social space and discursive environment. The notion of studio refers to any space for making and exploration. Artists always find new ways to make work with different resources, finding new places to make work that utilise innovative and established production processes. At CSM, the studios reflect these trends. You will work with staff to develop and model the studio appropriate to the needs of the group.

Experimental forms of exhibition-making take place within each stage of the course. Exhibitions happen both in the University and in public venues, in conventional and non-conventional physical and non-physical spaces. Recent examples include, Camden Collective, Archway Tower, British Library, Camden Arts Centre, performances within the Tate Turbine Hall and Tate Exchange, Arts Media Islington School and Crumbles Activity Playground.

Students can also opt to take the year-long Diploma in Professional Studies between Stages 2 and 3, offering highly focused and personalised work placements which help them develop enhanced communication, networking, and organisational skills. In recent years, students have had placements at Tate Modern, The Royal Festival Hall, professional artist studios and the National Theatre.

We embrace the rapidly changing and broad contexts of the Art-world. Our intention is to radically question, challenge, disrupt and provoke to create answers to art futures and future art practices.

We are committed to developing ethical fine art practices. To achieve this, we are working to embed UAL's Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course.