Course description
Foundation Material and Making
Approaches to Sculpture
Foundation Material and Making is an exciting introduction to various approaches to sculpture and wider three-dimensional practice. Using materials close at hand and easily accessible, the course helps develop an investigative approach to making. You will build key creative and technical skills, alongside visual and contextual awareness of recent sculptural history.
By learning through doing, you will explore a wide variety of materials and creative processes. You’ll create sculpture, drawing, installation, textiles and photography, as you expand your knowledge and skill set and are encouraged to look critically at the materials in your local environment.
The course is structured into five sections, each focused on a particular theme; Assemble, Modular, Tension, Scale, and Shaping. You will undertake a range of three-dimensional exercises and projects to develop your ideas and understanding. By exploring key theories and methods surrounding contemporary sculpture and wider three-dimensional practices you’ll develop your skills as a sculptor.
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Upcoming start dates
Outcome / Qualification etc.
Course outcomes:
On successful completion of the course you’ll be able to:
- Demonstrate basic technical skills for working in three-dimensions.
- Employ appropriate assembly and construction techniques for a variety of outcomes and compositions.
- Document and present ideas for making sculpture.
- Understand key ideas around contemporary sculpture.
Training Course Content
The course is divided into five parts and you’ll explore a range of topics and complete exercises for each.
Part One:
Assemble, aims to initiate you into the act of collecting together materials from your immediate environment and make an ‘assemblage’ of ideas. The importance of each object and the way it locates itself is key to the beginning of this part. Artists today have an unlimited range of materials and objects to make work with. There are many tools and methods you can use and these exercises will help you relax into using and discovering potential around you.
Part Two:
Modular, looks at the work of Tara Donovan, David Mack and Shirazeh Houshiary. You are asked to make a free-standing sculpture that uses an easily available module (e.g paper clip, cereal box, coat hanger) that can be obtained in abundance and use the act of repetition to initiate and maintain a process of making.
Part Three:
Tension, considers the relationship between objects and space, creating a range of works that explore gravity and balance. Artists that inform this topic include Roman Signer, Fischli and Weiss and Alexander Calder. This approach to making considers these materials as part of a collage and aims to stretch the imaginative outcomes and undermine the preconceived.
Part Four:
Scale, involves making substantial work from small beginnings. Looking at the work of artists using different scales in a variety of contexts, you will develop observational skills and consider where to locate your work and how to install it.
Part Five:
Shaping, looks at the work of Gabriel Orozco 'From my hands are my heart', this final part aims to integrate the body into the act of making using clay as a material to transfer the touch and surface into the act of forming an object. This final part will give you the opportunity to think about your next steps as an artist and student.
Course delivery details
Your course unit requires around 400 learning hours which can be undertaken flexibly, part-time, or closer to full-time study, depending on how quickly you want to learn. You have a maximum of two years to complete these learning hours, but if you spread your learning over too long a timeframe it’s easy to lose momentum. With this in mind, you might want to aim to complete this course unit within 12 months (working approximately 8 hours per week), 8 months (at 14 hours per week) or at a full time rate of around 4 months (at 28 hours per week). These timeframes will depend on how much time you can commit to study, so it’s good to be realistic about what is manageable for you.
Expenses
- Fees for UK students: £900 per course
- Fees for students outside of the UK: £1,050 per course