A central discipline within the School of Fine Art, Print spans autographic (hand-drawn) arts, mechanical reproduction and digital media. It is taught as a distinct subject while also encouraging the integration of a broad range of disciplines including sculptural approaches, installation and media.
What will I study?
The programme encourages you to explore printmaking and print cultures while providing a broad range of methods and approaches of value and relevance to an expanded art practice. The Print department emphasises the advantages of developing your creativity and evolving your ideas and methods through multiple iterations, versioning, image manipulation and mutation. With this dynamic approach to art making, you will test and reflect on your ideas in depth and with integrity. Students are encouraged to work across a range of disciplines exploring methods, techniques, skills and approaches to making art, including traditional processes of intaglio-printing, screen-printing, book-arts and photography. You will also explore and develop work through collage, digital montage, lenticular imaging, rapid prototyping, video editing, animation and audio-visual installation. Drawing is an essential component of printmaking.
Year 1
The first semester explores interdisciplinary Art and Design research, observation and analysis. In the second semester, all Fine Art students get a working taste of subjects with six weeks of workshops in two pathways selected from: Ceramics and Glass, Media, Painting, Print, Sculpture and Textile Art & Artefact. The balance of the semester is spent exploring specific print-related ideologies in preparation for specialism in Print.
Year 2
You will acquire skills across a range of processes. Explore traditional printmaking as well as the most up-to-date approaches of digital image manipulation. Projects emphasise the use of the most appropriate processes to expand and express your ideas.
Year 3: Studio+ & International
An optional opportunity to gain experience in a range of social and cultural contexts in the world beyond NCAD. Build your skills as an artist while working with an organisation with links to the School of Fine Art. Studio+ can also include a period of study abroad through the Erasmus programme with internationally recognised art faculties partnered with NCAD. Students who choose Studio+ will complete a 4 year BA Fine Art or a 4 year BA Fine Art (International).
Final Year
Develop your personal art practice. Your personal research and practice project will form part of your professional portfolio of work and be presented in the final year Degree Exhibition. Although largely self-directed, this project is under constant tutorial guidance and supervision. Professional practice lectures will prepare you for life as a practising artist.
How will I be assessed?
Assessment in both studio practice and in Critical Cultures is continuous: at the end of each completed module and each semester (half-year). Formal assessment results are issued at the end of each academic year. Modes of assessment include practical and written assignments, oral and visual presentations, portfolios and exhibitions.
Critical Cultures
Become a critically engaged, reflective and effective practitioner through studying the connections between history, theory and practice in modern and contemporary contexts.
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Opportunities after graduation
Graduates have the creative and technical competence to produce their own work and engage with the world of contemporary visual art practice. They are computer literate and multi-skilled, with transferable practical and professional skills relevant to a range of careers within the arts and creative industries. Print graduates have found employment as practicing artists, and in technical roles in print workshops, theatre and performance companies, archives and museums, publishing, curating, conservation, and in teaching and lecturing. Graduates also go on to postgraduate study at NCAD and other institutions nationally and internationally, including Goldsmiths College London, the Royal College of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago.