BA Art
About this course
Art as a degree subject is concerned with the practice, theory, and history of making: creating visual and material work that communicates ideas, emotions, and ways of seeing the world that resist reduction to words alone. A studio art degree asks you to develop your own creative practice while engaging critically with the history of art and the ideas and questions that contemporary art raises. It is a demanding programme that requires both rigorous self-reflection and the willingness to make work that is original, take risks, and respond to feedback with intellectual honesty. The University of Reading's four-year full-time Art programme develops your creative practice within a critical and historical context. You will spend significant time in the studio, working across media and developing your own artistic voice and set of concerns, while engaging with the history of art and the theoretical frameworks that contemporary art practice draws on. Reading's art department has a strong tradition of connecting studio practice with critical inquiry, and you will be expected to be as thoughtful about what your work means as about how it is made. The programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and a work placement, which provide rich professional and international experience: the year abroad in particular can be genuinely transformative for an artist's practice, exposing you to different creative traditions, institutional contexts, and ways of thinking about art. A typical entry tariff of 104 points reflects an accessible entry point to a serious creative programme, and you will be expected to develop a portfolio that demonstrates your creative development across the four years. Graduates from art programmes pursue careers as practising artists, art educators, arts administrators, curators, gallery workers, community arts practitioners, and in the wider creative industries. Many also go on to postgraduate study in fine art, and the MFA is an established route into professional artistic practice.
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