Dunedin School of Art

What you can learn – studio disciplines

We have fully equipped art studios where we offer a range of courses, from short programmes to formal diploma or degree-level qualifications.

Ceramics

We have the largest ceramics arts department in New Zealand with wood, salt, electric and gas kilns, electric wheels and online research facilities. You will benefit from an emphasis on hands-on experimentation in clay-making workshops which explore ceramics as a medium with its own language, skills and history.

Electronic arts

Specialise in Electronic Arts, which inhabit a constantly shifting location in art and media practice. You may choose to explore 2D and 3D animation, film, installation, electronics, projection and online media and audio/video production. You will engage with media arts and reflect on their historical and contemporary position in the art world.

Jewellery

Contemporary jewellery uses an unlimited palette of materials from precious metal and stone to recycled waste. Jewellery uses a visual language based on interaction, communication and contact, and may be expressive and intimate or aggressively provocative. With this knowledge, you’ll develop your artistic eye and practical making skills.

Painting

Develop your artwork in the context of today’s society and contemporary art practice. You will also be encouraged to investigate painting movements and methodologies from recent centuries, gaining confidence in a range of mediums and techniques.

Photography

Gain a solid foundation in the practical and theoretical components of black and white, colour and alternative photographic processes. From darkroom to digital, you’ll develop a photography practice that is informed and engaged. Our studio includes darkrooms, large-scale colour printing, computer labs and a lighting studio so that you’ll get hands-on with a variety of technologies.

Printmaking

The Print Studio comprises a large workshop facility so that you can engage with a comprehensive range of print processes and techniques. Traditional media such as metal plate etching, relief printing and screen-printing sit comfortably alongside contemporary digital print and image development technologies. Our internationally renowned Printmaking Department is one of the leading departments of its kind in New Zealand.

Sculpture

Develop a sculptural language through studio workshops focusing on drawing, form and spatial analysis. The studio is equipped to international standards with separate workshops for wood, metal, plaster and clay, plastic and bronze.

Textiles

Major in textiles in a visual arts context, examining the value of cloth and its relationship to the body, gender and class, and material culture. The field of textile practice can encompass many approaches such as sculptural, 2D and site-specific artworks. We specialise in construction and a variety of print processes such as screen-print methodologies using pigment ink, dye, discharge and burnout applications, manual and digital embroidery and 3D sewing.

How we support our studio disciplines

Art History and Theory

Researching, writing, debating and critiquing are essential skills if you work in the visual arts, helping you to position your own work in the wider context of contemporary art. We offer semester-long courses and shorter seminar blocks to consider specific art movements and concepts. In the final year of our degree programmes, you will contextualise your own artwork in a longer research essay.

Your learning will be informed by our renowned artist seminar series, delivered as a public lecture programme. Artists and theorists deliver presentations in this weekly forum, often followed by in-depth tutorial discussion in an afternoon session.

Our programmes recognise the bicultural nature of Aotearoa New Zealand and Otago Polytechnic | Te Kura Matatini ki Otago and its relationships with Kāi Tahu. We look at the recent past and the legacies of modernism, and also consider earlier histories and contexts.

Studio Methodologies

Studio Methodologies introduces students to a range of key making, writing, reading, documenting and research skills and to some ideas from the history of art. It develops students’ ability to use a range of media and approaches to create and extend concepts in visual form and to use drawing and other skills as research tools.

Professional Methodologies

The Professional Methodologies course supports final year students to gain work-ready employment skills and develop confidence to work both independently and collaboratively.