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Find out about Creative Spark, our annual graduate showcase of final year students' work, and Brightest Spark, an exhibition featuring projects completed by our elite students.
View the Creative Spark image gallery, taken from the 2010 graduate showcase of final year students' work.
Find out about the Sheffield Institute of Arts (SIA) and view a 360 degree tour of the SIA gallery, where our students exhibit their work.
View a 360 degree tour of our print making studio.
View a 360 degree tour of our print making studio.
View a 360 degree tour of our model making workshop used to make prototypes of students’ designs.
One of our fine art graduates, George Shaw, has been nominated for the 2011 Turner Prize. Read more about it.
Our Digital Design Centre can print medium to large format high quality outputs on a range of different media. The laboratories have software supporting 2D and 3D engineering and creative design applications. Find out more.
One of the most valuable resources available for you to access is our highly experienced technical support team. Find out how they can help support your development.
Our MArt combines undergraduate and postgraduate study in a single course. It is informed by critical theory and research, and includes an industry placement or international exchange.
In your first level we introduce you to various approaches to fine art production and thinking through • lectures • tutorials • group critiques • seminars • reading groups • specialist workshops.
We encourage you to question and challenge existing practices and develop approaches of your own.
Practical workshops introduce you to skills in • drawing • printmaking • painting • photography • sculpture • video • audio • film • performance • digital imagery.
From day one, all your work ideas and direction come from you, with support from tutorials, seminars and critiques. In the second year, we encourage you to take creative risks, push your practice and your contextual understanding, and help you exhibit and articulate your work.
You take advanced workshops and sessions on exhibition theory and practice, to prepare you for the professional world of art exhibiting.
In the third level, we combine BA and MA teaching with the emphasis moving towards research and professional practice. You take an optional module from writing art, curating art or art in space and place, and prepare for professional placement exchange.
In the final level, you spend the first half on placement or international exchange. During the second part you develop your final exhibition of work.
We try to offer all applicants an interview, where geographically possible. We like to see samples of your work. Provided you meet our minimum entry requirements, we base our offer on your application, interview and work portfolio.
Come and see for yourself
We welcome visitors between October and Easter. You can bring a selection of work with you and discuss how you might prepare for an interview. Please visit the Sheffield Institute of Arts open days for dates and details of how to register.
There is also a full-time version of this course.
Professional artists' talks introduce you to the highest levels of artistic practice while guided trips provide inspiration.
Find out more about MArt Fine Art
Related courses
Typically eight years part-time
Complete the application form available at www.shu.ac.uk/study/form
2013/14 academic year
Typically £4,500 a year
The course fee may be subject to annual inflationary increase. For further information on fees and funding see www.shu.ac.uk/funding
• exhibition • studio work • essays • assessed seminars • report
Fine art student working on a project
Spark - be creative
Subjects included are • animation • architecture • computers • creative writing • digital media production • engineering • fashion design • film and visual effects • film and media production • fine art • furniture and product design • games design • graphic design • interior design • jewellery and metalwork • performing arts • photography • product design.
Creative Spark
Creative Spark is an annual showcase of student work and celebrates the innovation, creativity and imagination of our most talented graduates. Creative Spark is hosted across four university venues • Owen • Cantor • Sheaf • Arundel Gate Court and S1 in the city centre.
For further information visit the Creative Spark website.
Brightest Spark
Brightest Spark is an exhibition housed in the SIA Gallery and Cantor building. This exhibition features the elite students in each Sheffield of Institute of Arts course as chosen by industry professionals.
For further information visit the Brightest Spark website.
Project Spark
Sheffield Hallam students have the opportunity to play a key role in the promotion of the Creative Spark and Brightest Spark exhibitions by submitting entries for Project Spark. The 2012 competitions included • concept design • branding and wayfinding • creative writing • image • brightest spark logo and branding.
For further information visit the Project Spark website.
Students' work on display at the Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery.
BA (Hons) photography students exhibited their work in the Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery.
An example of a contemporary fine art project.
Laura Hayes final year project for BA (Hons) Contemporary Fine Art.
An example of an animation modelling project.
BA (Hons) Animation modelling work on display for Thomas Lloyd's final year project entitled The Window Pianist.
An example of a metalwork and jewellery piece.
Emma Middleton's jewellery piece for BA (Hons) Metalwork and Jewellery.
The concept behind Emma's work is based on the idea of sentimental jewellery and the burden this can become on the wearer.
An example of an animation modelling project.
BA (Hons) Animation modelling work by Luke Adams for his final year project entitled Uneasy Rider.
Part of the Creative Spark exhibition.
Graphic students work on display.
Part of the Creative Spark exhibition.
Work displayed by engineering students.
Four students' workbooks on display.
BA (Hons) Interior Design student workbooks (Shamila Hussain, Faiza Khan, Naomi Nunn and Helen Genia Austin).
A collaboration between fashion and engineering students.
A collaboration between fashion and engineering students creating a wedding dress that could be dissolved after the wedding to transform it into five new fashion pieces.
This went on to achieve international acclaim.
Part of the Creative Spark exhibition.
Work displayed by interior design students.
Part of the Creative Spark exhibition.
BA (Hons) Metalwork and Jewellery students work on display.
Part of the Creative Spark exhibition.
BA (Hons) Product Design work.
Students' workbooks on display.
A visitor to Creative Spark looking at students' workbooks for BA (Hons) Product Design.
Part of the Creative Spark exhibition.
Work on display from the Extended degree in Design.
An example of a final year metalwork and jewellery project.
Final year project for BA (Hons) Metalwork and Jewellery.
Gallery
Sheffield Institute of Arts
Sheffield Institute of Arts at Sheffield Hallam University is one of the oldest and most well-established centres of creative learning in Britain. Since 1843, we’ve built an excellent reputation and nurtured generations of students in a culture where anything is possible and with the resources to make it happen. To find out more about the Sheffield Institute of Art and its creative community visit the website.
Sheffield Institute of Arts gallery
The gallery offers and exciting programme of changing exhibitions of the best in art, design and creative practice. Located in the Cantor building, it hosts exhibitions throughout the year.
Print making studio
Our print making studio supports a wide range of print activities including etching, drypoint, cyanotype, lithography and screen printing.
Art and design print making studio 1
Our print making studio supports a wide range of print activities including etching, drypoint, cyanotype, lithography and screen printing.
Model making workshop
Model making workshop used to make prototypes of students’ designs.
Fine art graduate nominated for prestigious Turner Prize
Fine art graduate George Shaw
George Shaw, The New Houses 2011. BALTIC presents Turner Prize 2011 © BALTIC & the artist. Photo: Colin Davison
A former Sheffield Hallam University fine art student will find out next week whether he has won one of the art world's most high-profile awards.
George Shaw, who studied at the University between 1986 and 1989, has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize alongside three other artists.
The Turner Prize is a contemporary art award that was set up in 1984 to celebrate new developments in contemporary art.
The prize is awarded each year to a 'British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding'.
Previous winners include Tomma Abts, Gilbert and George, Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Steve McQueen, Gillian Wearing, Rachel Whiteread and Richard Wright.
George was born in 1966 in Coventry and is noted for his highly-detailed naturalistic approach and English suburban subject matter. His favoured medium is Humbrol enamel paints, which lend his work a unique appearance as they are more commonly used to paint Airfix models.
George studied Fine Art at the University, graduating in 1989. He also completed a PGCE in Design and Technology in 1992.
Professor Chris Rust, director of the Sheffield Institute of Arts (SIA) at Sheffield Hallam, said: "To be shortlisted for the Turner Prize is a very great distinction so of course we are absolutely delighted to see one of our alumni in that company. George's work has already received a great deal of national and international acclaim and I'm sure that this heralds a great many more successes in the future."
The Turner Prize 2011 exhibition will be held at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead and the winner will be announced on Monday 5 December 2011.
The Digital Design Centre
The Digital Design Centre comprises a suite of 6 IT laboratories (4 PC and 2 MAC) together with the Print Output room, an area for printing medium to large format high quality output on a range of different media. The laboratories have a wide range of software supporting 2D and 3D engineering and creative design applications.
The Digital Design Centre runs a high quality computer printing facility and has the ability to print sizes between A4 and A0 and wide format banners. A3, A2, A1, A0 and Banner photo quality printing is available on a range of papers, as well as AutoCAD type plans ( B & W ) on standard paper.
Technical support team
While you will find excellent facilities throughout, the most valuable resource you will have at your disposal is access to our extremely dedicated, highly experienced technical staff.
All the staff are there to support you during your time in the workshops. The technical team with its professionally qualified staff and practicing professionals, has a wealth of knowledge and expertise across all areas of our provision and comprises engineers, designers, silversmiths and jewellers, fine artists, media arts specialists and IT experts.
The team are committed to using their diverse range of skills and knowledge to support practical aspects of your
course work, whether solving a simple software problem, producing a complex engineering project or creating design work for an international exhibition. There are currently 50 technical staff directly supporting the Technical Resource Centres and the research institutes of the faculty.
Mark Purcell
Subject group leader, Fine Art
Professional biography
Chair of a housing co-operative, freelance antique dealer and substance abuse counsellor until my late twenties before studying for a BA Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. I went on to work as a curator at Manchester Metropolitan and Leeds Metropolitan Universities before returning to Sheffield Hallam as a PhD student and joining the academic staff in 1999.
Teaching interests
How technology informs art practice and developing employability skills for the cultural industries.
Research and scholarly activities
Having partially completed my PhD many years ago I intend to return to PhD study in the near future. My current research interests are in the area of scientific methods and their relationship to creative practice.
Other responsibilities
Chair Extenuating Circumstance process and carry out Student Complaint investigations for the ACES Faculty. A nominated Independent Investigator for staff complaints at Sheffield Hallam.
As Robert Rauschenberg famously stated 'It is extremely important that art be unjustifiable'
In my current role I aim to justify the unjustifiable when it enables creative practices at Sheffield Hallam.
Lise Autogena
Reader in Fine Art, Cultural, Communication & Computing Research Institute (C3RI)
Academic and professional qualifications
MA Art in Architecture, University of East London, MA Fine Art Curating, Goldsmiths College, Ba Hons Fine Art, Surrey Institute,
Professional biography
Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University since 2012
Research and scholarly activities
Lise moved from Denmark to the UK in 1987, where she pursued research in glass until the early 1990s. She was nominated for the Jerwood Prize and awarded an Arts Foundation Award for her experimental work in glass.
Between 1994 and 1997 she curated a cross-disciplinary art venue ‘Autogena Projects’ from her home in Neal's Yard in Covent Garden.
She co-founded the Christiania Researcher in Residence programme (CRIR) in 2004, an ongoing international research facility, enabling cross disciplinary research into the counter-cultural social experiment Christiania, in Copenhagen. Between 2003 and 2009, she was co-founder of the floating community 'Hermitage Moorings' on the river Thames in London.
She has since 1991 worked in collaboration with the artist Joshua Portway, developing large scale performances and multimedia installations that have involved collaborations across many different specialist fields. These projects have often used new technologies and visualisations of global realtime data, to explore how the economic, geographic, technological and societal systems we have created, impact on our human experience and sense of self in the world.
Lise has experience as a consultant, advisory and steering board member in many different cultural organisations and contexts
Homepage: www.autogena.org
Other responsibilities
Member of the The Art and Design Research Centre Steering Group
Sharon Kiveland
Reader in Fine Art
'I am Reader in Fine Art, a research associate of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London, and editor of the journal Transmission Annual (London: Artwords). I have exhibited widely in Europe and North America. I have dreamt of Rome, been melancholy in Trieste, and had a disturbance of memory in Athens, which can be traced in the publications in the series Freud on Holiday, I forgot my shoes on the steps of the Freud Museum, London, and thought of witty remarks too late on the stairs of the Freud Museum, Vienna, events that are recounted in L'esprit d'escalier and An Agent of the Estate, the flowers Freud did not send are recorded in Freud and the Gift of Flowers (published by (information as material and cubearteditions).
'My practice appears in the intersection of public political action and private subjectivity. Recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions: Un Vent de revolution, Centre d’art Passerelle, Brest (2012), and at Galerie des petits carreaux, Paris, DOMOBAAL London, Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf (2012–13). My work is represented by DOMOBAAL, London, and Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, and is held in many public collections, including FRAC Bretagne, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Tate Library Special Collections.'
Gary Simmonds
Senior lecturer, Creative Art Practice and Fine Art
'I am a senior lecturer working across the creative art practice and fine art degree courses, from undergraduate to postgraduate level. I am level and module leader for the first year of the creative art practice degree course. I teach on both studio and theory modules across the fine art subject area, including supervising PhD research student. I have had a number of roles including course leadership of the Extended Degree in Art and BA (Honours) Creative Art Practice. I am currently the link-tutor to Hillsborough College in creative art practice and level and module leader for the first year of the creative art practice degree course.
'My own research is in painting. My practice is concerned with abstract painting’s relationship to geometry, design and ornamentation. I make paintings that flirt with: formal abstraction, beauty decoration and disorder. I have exhibited my work both nationally and internationally including solo shows in London and Milan and group shows at the South London Gallery, London and LoBe projects in Berlin. I have a forthcoming exhibition at the Westlane Gallery South Gallery, London in June 2013.'
Chloe Brown
Course leader and Senior lecturer in Fine Art
Main duties
I am currently: Fine Art course leader, Level 6 co-ordinator
Module leader: Art Context 1 • Professional Art Practice 1 • Fine Art Studio 3 • Art Context Placement 3.
Academic and professional qualifications
MA in Sculpture from Chelsea College of Art, London
BA in Fine Art from the University of Reading
Professional biography
I joined the BA Fine Art Course at Sheffield Hallam University in 2008. Prior to that I was a senior lecturer at Derby University from 1995 and fine art course leader there from 2002-2008. I have been a visiting artist and tutor to many fine art courses including University of Humberside, Norwich School of Art, De Montfort University, Bretton Hall, Nottingham Trent University.
Teaching interests
I teach across all levels of the BA Fine Art course, teaching both art theory and practice. I run workshops in artist's publications and how to make books. I also supervise PhD students.
Research
Using a range of media including film, sculpture, taxidermy, book works and drawing, there are various strands of interest in my practice as an artist. These strands can be defined as research concerning the following
• animal and human studies
• post-industrial ruins
• looking for Hyperborea – a search for northerness
• artists publications
I have exhibited widely in Europe and in the UK and collaborate with researchers from other institutions including: Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen, Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel Germany, The Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway, Alfred University, USA, University of Newcastle and the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University, The University of Sheffield and London Metropolitan University.
Professional activities
From 1995 to 2013 I was a member of the Research Group for Artists Publications (RGAP).
Other Responsibilities
I sit on the SIA Gallery board and on the Creative Spark board.
I am a trustee of Sheffield Civic Trust.
Other responsibilities
I sit on the SIA Gallery board and on the Creative Spark board.
I am a trustee of Sheffield Civic Trust.
Michelle Atherton
Senior lecturer, Fine Art
'I teach art practice and theory on the undergraduate and postgraduate fine art courses. I am a practicing artist whose artwork underpins my teaching.
'My interest in art stretches across all areas and I am interested in working with students who work any media. Recent theoretical inquiries have included the rise of the experiential in art, the material and intolerant Image, and humour in art.
'My artwork is lens-based and aims to objectify cultural phenomenon, exploring the way we move and are moved in our everyday life. I sometimes, quite literally, use different transport systems as case studies for investigating contemporary concerns, preoccupations, and obsessions, (that are often taken for granted), as a means to talk about the complexities of relations and their representation. Recent video projects include Absorbing Red Photons exploring what is involved in a brief act of submersion at 2,000ft below sea level and Dreams of Flying – an investigation into what dreams are played out by taking a ride in a MiG Fighter.
'My writing has been published in the art press and my artwork has been supported by the Art and Humanities Research Council and exhibited widely in Europe.'
Hester Reeve
Senior lecturer
'My practice explores art as a species of philosophical agency, invested first and foremost in the task of radical thinking. But this does not mean I abandon making for writing, my passion here is how such thinking forms new types of subjects, mediums and behaviors for artists. My practice is necessarily wide ranging - incorporating live art, drawing, sculpture, writing and performance for camera.
'I have specific research interests in the relationship between art and philosophy (and belong to the newly established international research network 'Performance Philosophy'), in the suffragette as a militant artist (working in collaboration with Olivia Plender under the umbrella of the Emily Davison Lodge and in association with Tate Britain amongst others), in David Bohm’s Dialogue (I trained with the charity Prison Dialogue, facilitate groups in a variety of national contexts and run Dialogue groups within the art school) and in drawing as live notation (gaining funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board to investigate).
'In the mid to late nineties I was based in Prague working with environmental NGOs and I co-authored a major publication exploring through interviews the transition from communism to democracy (‘Libkovice: Zdar Buh,’ DIVUS 97). Public showings of my work include former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, Women’s Library Gallery London and most recently Arnolfini Bristol.'
Penny McCarthy
Course leader, Fine Art
'I am the course leader for postgraduate studies fine art. I teach on both studio and theory modules across the fine art subject area, including supervising PhD research students. I run the Art and the Body context option for level 6 students and the studio modules for PG students. I am also one of the leaders of the Gravity Lecture series with Becky Shaw and Andrew Sneddon.
'My own research uses drawing, photography and writing. My recent works have appropriated texts that describe scientific discovery, historic expeditions and the fictions of Borges. For the past few years my work has explored the imaginative space of the book in a series of pencil-drawn copies of texts. Encyclopaedia of Dust (RGAP 2001) and Shadow Book (RGAP 2004) are volumes that bring together my images and writing. My work has received awards from the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England and Arts and Humanities Research Council and exhibited extensively widely including a new site-specific work for the exhibition Nothing is Forever at South London Gallery. My current project Penelope/Odyssey will be shown as part of Ulysse(s): L’aute mer at the FRAC Bretagne in May 2013.'
Andrew Sneddon
Senior lecturer, Fine Art and Creative Art Practice
'I am a Scottish artist and senior lecturer in fine art and creative art practice at Sheffield Hallam University and also lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art. I have an MA and a BA (Hons) in fine art from Glasgow School of Art and studied at the British School at Rome. I have exhibited nationally and internationally, and currently engaged in a practice-led PhD at the University of Edinburgh. My practice and PhD are concerned with exploring our complex relations with place and the decision-making process of the artist in response to context and situation.
'I have also contributed to three chap-book publications that feature Alec Finlay, Jeremy Millar and Roddy Buchanan. I have recently contributed to a number of conferences with papers entitled ‘Two naked men and an open fire’, ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for but I’ll know it when I see it’ and ‘The act of improvisation in the work of Tacita Dean’. I also co-organise an interdisciplinary project called ‘GRAVITY’ that was launched in 2010 as a forum for debates about the visual as a critical domain within the creative industries. This research project examines the myriad ways the art world deals with its ambivalent and yet enduring relationship with the artefact.'
Profiles
Mark Purcell
Subject group leader, Fine Art
Lise Autogena
Reader in Fine Art, Cultural, Communication & Computing Research Institute (C3RI)
Sharon Kiveland
Reader in Fine Art
Gary Simmonds
Senior lecturer, Creative Art Practice and Fine Art
Chloe Brown
Course leader and Senior lecturer in Fine Art
Michelle Atherton
Senior lecturer, Fine Art
Hester Reeve
Senior lecturer
Penny McCarthy
Course leader, Fine Art
Andrew Sneddon
Senior lecturer, Fine Art and Creative Art Practice
