This Fine Art and Photography module will extend the outcomes of your summer project and will require you to explore your emerging context and related research interests through both practice and theory. Your Fine Art or Photography concerns and interests will therefore be negotiated through, and exemplified in a 4000 word essay, whilst your practice will feature in a public exhibition of work in progress towards the end of the module.

The work that you produce for your summer project will inform a position relating to the things you are interested in, allowing you to examine content, context, form and agenda. Thus you will have explored possibilities in terms of your approaches to your own Fine Art or Photographic practice in the third year. At the start of this module you will be in a good position to outline your thinking, your aspirations and ambitions for your independent practice and the possible directions you see it taking. Through studio based tutorials you will be tasked with extending these possibilities, examining them through active practice and a suitably critical discussion, with the resultant work being exhibited and assessed in an interim exhibition near the conclusion of the module. 

This module and the interim exhibition sees you developing autonomous approaches relating to your practice with associated feedback and feed-forward promoting support for further independent practice in subsequent L6 modules. 

This module will therefore see you setting, activating, speculating on, and experimenting with a position that will define you as an artist or photographer as you plan forwards to your degree show exhibition.

During this module you will research and formulate a Career Development Plan, which draws on your Level 5 placement experience, and outlines your ambitions and aspirations as you move towards graduation and beyond. This plan will help you conceive and design the way in which your practice is disseminated through ‘promotional’ materials and artefacts, and how your programme based experience can enhance your employability both directly and via transferable skills. Such materials will facilitate and extend networks for employability, independent practice, community or socially engaged practices, commissions, sales, or a combination thereof. Your promotional materials and artefacts will collate, parallel, complement or function as a subsidiary dimension of your practice as a body of work, defining your distinct visual identity and direction.

Your practice based modules will see you developing, making and delivering your practice, ultimately in a degree show. This module will support strategies for the broader dissemination of that work to an audience and afford you an opportunity to consider your trajectory both towards and beyond graduation. 

Following an initial period of testing, ideas and experimentation based in the first semester which leads to the Interim Exhibition at the end of Autumn term. At the beginning of this module you will reflect on the Interim Exhibition feedback and feed-forward advice to guide and support your project as it enters the next phase of its development. As you further develop your practice in its scope and relationship with your subject and ideas you will consolidate your project at the same time as refining your skills and craft as photographers. During this phase of your journey the potential for changes in direction, risk and experimentation still form part of your practice but you will have now established a clear direction as you approach the degree show exhibition. By the end of the module you will have resolved a body of work and research related to art, industry and contemporary practice, which will then lead to the degree show exhibition.

In the lead up to the degree show all Level 6 students are required to  submit an Exhibition Proposal for their Degree Show Exhibition, which is the culmination of your assessment and studies as a BA Photography student. Your Proposal follows, and is based upon the Position Statement, which has been redrafted at key staging points in your project development throughout the year; This normally follows an initial Position Statement drafted at the beginning of the year, Individual Tutorials or Group Critique (work-in-progress review) sessions.

In this module your activities are focussed on the logistics of your individual preparation for the degree show. This is also a collective cohort-based endeavour as a group, which is also coordinated through module AD6120 Audience, Networks and Employability.

Having refined your project you will have finalised a body of work from which you will edit and finalise a select number of photographs and artefacts for a physical and / or online 'portfolio' submission. A finite selection of pieces will then be decided upon for the degree show exhibition and outlined in your Proposal relative to your individual exhibition requirements.

The method of display and exhibition is defined by your process, subject matter and its material form. The way in which the work is presented might include matting (window) mounting and framing, or other methods of display and exhibition. The knowledge and skills required in making these decisions forms part of your professional practice development. Other ways in which your work is presented can include but is not limited to portfolio, photobooks, projection or online / virtual realms of dissemination.