Critical and Theoretical Studies
Our students are taught in an immersive, studio and workshop-based environment that offers artists the opportunity to develop their technical and conceptual skills across a wide range of methodologies.
Banner artwork: Indi Jennings and Alula McGlashan-Rabik
Study Visual Art at the VCA
Visual Art at the VCA focuses on independently led studio practice. You will be expected to develop studio projects that require investigation and experimentation with a range of concepts, materials, techniques and processes.
Critical and theoretical studies and professional arts practice skills subjects provide you with the skills to pursue the practice of a professional working artist, and allow you to critically engage in the debates of contemporary visual art.
Regular student exhibitions and the annual end-of-year exhibitions form an important part of the curriculum and offer the opportunity to engage the wider public in your work.
Areas of Study
At undergraduate level, artists work within four distinct mediums: Drawing and Printmaking, Painting, Sculpture, and Photography with the opportunity to explore all mediums through related studies subjects. Graduate students’ practice incorporates the methods and ideas of a variety of these mediums.
Visual Art Courses
Our people
Head of Art
Our people - Graduate, Honours, Breadth
Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery
I never intended to pursue a career as an artist. But I knew art was something I was good at, and knew I wanted to go to university. So, I ended up pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts as an undergraduate. I fell in love with the art making process at university and was inspired by the way others pursued their craft.
Amina BriggsMaster of Contemporary Art student
Want to know more?
Get information on the courses you’re interested in, or ask our team a question.
News
Nicholas Currie: Don’t look in the dark or something will look back at ya: Paintings by a ghost fella
19 December 2024
In Glossary of a Haunting, Eve Tuck and C. Ree describe the structure of settler colonialism as “an ongoing horror made invisible by its persistence.”...
'Young artists should have a right to invent the world, rather than just receive it': Meet Honours coordinator Dane Mitchell
18 December 2024
Dane Mitchell is a multi-award-winning artist and Head of Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). He answered some questions for us about his own practice and the...
'Research for me starts with the body': Meet Honours (Visual Art) graduate Nicole Goode
18 December 2024
Nicole Goode and I are at the 2024 Grad Show, sitting on the grind rail she had made in the metal workshop, as part of her final Honours work....
Showcase
Explore the 2023 VCA Art Grad Show – an extraordinary display of new art by more than 140 graduating students from our Sculpture, Photography, Painting, Drawing and Printmaking, Honours, Master of Contemporary Art, Masters of Fine Art, and PhD programs.