Print is a central discipline within the School of Fine Art. It offers a unique studio environment - The Print Workshop - where collaborative and peer-to-peer learning is paramount. Students are encouraged to expand the parameters of print to include sculptural approaches, installation and digital media.
What will I study?
The Print programme encourages students to explore print making and print culture – developing each individual’s creative potential while providing a broad range of methods and approaches of value and relevance to an expanded print practice. The Print department emphasises the advantages of evolving your practice – your ideas and methods. Students are encouraged to work across a range of disciplines through the lens of print exploring methods, techniques, skills and approaches to making art, including the traditional print making processes of intaglio-printing, screen-printing, book-arts and photography. Under expanded print methods you will also explore and develop work through collage, digital montage, lenticular imaging, rapid prototyping, video editing, projection mapping, animation, 2.5D animation and audio-visual installation. Drawing as an essential component of printmaking underpins these processes. Print has a reputation for adapting, co-opting and hacking technologies. You will be encouraged to innovate through your engagement with both old and new.
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
In the second year you will focus on skills acquisition, exploring traditional printmaking as well as the most up-to-date approaches of digital image manipulation. You’ll be encouraged to test how print can expand into public space. By the end of Year 2 you will be expected to develop a direction for your personal practice.
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
In the final year you will develop a personal art practice. You will design a personal research and practice project that will form part of your professional portfolio of work, which you will present in the final year Graduate Showcase. 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 and enable you to conduct your practice in a professional manner.
How will I be assessed?
Assessment throughout the programme, in both your studio practice and in Critical Cultures, will be on a continuous basis, at the end of each completed module and at the end of each semester (half-year). Formal assessment results will be issued at the end of each academic year. Modes of assessment will 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
Students who graduate within Print are both creatively and technically competent to produce their own work and engage with the world of contemporary visual art practice. They are computer literate, multi-skilled individuals possessing a range of practical and professional skills relevant to a variety of career options within the creative arts. Many transferable skills are learnt which enable the graduate to engage with the creative industries in a broad and specific manner. Our graduates have found employment in a variety of areas including – as practising artists, in technical roles in print workshops, in theatre and performance companies, in archives and museums, and in publishing. They are also proficient in curating methods, conservation, teaching and lecturing. A number of graduates also go on to postgraduate study within NCAD and outside of Ireland gaining entry to leading art colleges including at Goldsmiths College London, the Royal College of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago.