Learn Outside Class
Make discoveries outside your comfort zone.
COFA offers students a range of opportunities to learn outside the class room.
Here are a few examples:
HAVE AN EXHIBITION
Students can get first hand exhibition experience by having a show in a professional gallery open to the public.
COFA students can exhibit in 3 contemporary art and design galleries on campus.
COFASpace
• A professional venue where students of the College can showcase their work and gain experience in gallery procedures.
• The gallery is a public space showcasing works by current COFA students.
3 Foot Square
• A 24 hour a day window gallery space.
Kudos Gallery
• A student run exhibition space managed by Arc (hotlink to ARC).
• Students can exhibit and curate shows in a public gallery just off campus.
• Approximately 30 diverse exhibitions are held each year.
INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE
COFA has strong professional partnerships with the art, design and media industry.
Industry-based experiences are integral to COFA’s programs across studio, theoretical and educational programs.
Here are a few examples:
COFA students worked on the 2009 Venice Biennale.
• 5 Postgraduate Art Administration students travelled to Italy and worked with professional Australian artists and COFA curator and lecturer Felicity Fenner on the exhibition Once Removed , for the world’s oldest biennale.
• All Postgraduate *Art Administration students undertake an industry placement. *
Design students get paid to learn
• Bachelor of Design and students undertake more than 550 hours of paid industry employment as part of their degrees. Bachelor of Design/Bachelor of Art Education students’ internship is 200 hours.
• This Professional Experience Program experience may be taken in Australia or overseas. For example: COFA students have worked at the Sydney Festival and in the Amsterdam studio of world famous designer Marcel Wanders.
Art Education students gets hands on teaching experience.
• All Bachelor of Art Education and Bachelor of Design/Bachelor of Art Education students undertake Professional Experience Internships in NSW high schools.
• Students may also apply for a program variation enabling them to work also in a museum, cultural, industry, media or community setting.
PROJECT X
Project X students learn outside the traditional studio and work for a real client on a large scale project.
This collaborative teaching initiative involves students from 3 UNSW faculties:
• The College of Fine Arts COFA
• The Faculty of the Built Environment FBE
• Engineering
“Project X has certainly taught me to appreciate the true benefits of integrating design, the built environment and engineering technology; many lessons I would never have learnt without the hands on and real life experience the project offered.” Lauren Austin, COFA student, Bachelor of Design 2008.
For more info visit the Project X website
GO TO THE OUTBACK
Students can study in the outback through the Imaging the Land International Research Initiative (ILIRI)
• All COFA students are invited enrol and experience two weeks in the arid landscape of Fowlers Gap) in far west NSW.
• The aim of ILIRI is to teach students new ways of seeing the land.
• “This trip has changed not just my work, it’s changed my life,” students tell ILIRI director Louise Fowler-Smith.
For more info visit
WORK WITH INDIGENOUS ARTISTS
COFA’s print workshop elective Cicada Press has an ongoing relationship with Indigenous artists at the Papunya Tjupi Art Centre in the Northern Territory.
• Cicada Press students work with master printer Michael Kempson to produce custom prints for well known Aussie painters such as: Adam Cullen, Ben Quilty, Reg Mombassa and Michael Nelson Jagamara.
• Most years, students either travel to the outback to work with Papunya Tjupi artists, or the artists come to COFA.
• Cicada Press is an elective open to all COFA students.
Aboriginal Art and Art Education
All COFA students are invited to enroll in the Aboriginal Art and Art Education course.
This course is a pre-requisite for all students seeking a placement for professional experience in a remote Indigenous community.
3 students from the course worked at the Papunya Tjupi in the Art Centre, NT in 2009.