Honours - Visual Arts

Honours

Honours in Visual Arts offers an opportunity to deepen your Visual Arts practice through a research project that is studio-based, and supported through research training in the arts. Honours year provides practice-based research training with pathways to MA and PhD in order to undertake intensive study on particular areas of artistic focus, and to further explore the history of artistic practice.

Many students undertake practice-based research projects in which they develop an exhibition of original artworks, on a particular theme or experimenting with technique, and this process is supported by a written thesis component.

Career

Students who do Honours in Visual Arts sometimes have postgraduate study in their sights and ultimately perhaps a job as an academic. Many, though, have their sights set on professional work in the visual arts. Demand for advanced communication and collaborative skills, and research and report-writing skills, the kinds of which our Honours graduates possess, are increasing in the twenty-first century.

An Honours degree can enhance students' career prospects not only in various practical fields of media production, but also in the wider arenas of the cultural and communication 'industries', policy analysis, curatorial and arts education services, professional and community arts practice, or they find a place for art in collaboration with other professions, e.g., arts therapy.

Successful completion of an Honours degree also positions students for postgraduate study, whether immediately following or after settling into a career and wishing to develop further their expertise and prospects for professional advancement. Honours students have gone on to further study through Masters Degrees by Coursework, Masters Degrees by research, and PhD.

What is involved?

The normal pattern is to complete two core units comprising AAR410 (Research Methods in the Arts) and AAR411 (Art and Text), and 2 studio units which serve as pre-production units for the 4 credit points of thesis units, which are completed in second semester.

Honours thesis

In Visual Arts, students will produce creative work (e.g., paintings, sketches, experimental work) which will constitute the major component (up to 80%) of the research. However, this creative component must be accompanied by a scholarly written component (an exegesis) which should be in the range of 4000 to 6,000 words.

The exegesis should demonstrate the student's analytical understanding of the discipline and sets the creative work within a disciplinary and developmental framework. Creative works can not have been submitted for credit in other units, courses or awards.

Further information

Further information including units of study can be found in the Deakin course search.

Honours booklet for Communication and Creative Arts

Contact details

Associate Professor Rob Haysom
Coordinator for Honours in Animation and Motion Capture, Dance, Drama, Film and Television, Photography, Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design and Discipline Honours Course Adviser (Visual Arts)