School of Art - Masters Program Options

The following programs include Masters program options:

Master of Photography
Master of Fine Art
MA (Arts Management)
MA (Art in Public Space)

On this page you will find information about these postgraduate program options, as well as postgraduate University Electives.

Please note that offerings can be subject to change.

To add a University Elective in Enrolment Online, choose the 'Class Search' tab, select the relevant Term, and search for the name or course code of the course you are interested in.

For more information about a course, please contact the Offering Coordinator.

Please note: although we would like to offer all of the courses below, courses are subject to viability and may not run if numbers are too low.

Course Information

2023 Masters Program Options

Semester 1  -  Masters Program Options

• VART3616: Critical Frameworks B
• VART3717: Cultural Planning and Evaluation
• VART3638: Digital Imaging Strategies
• VART3709: Fieldwork
• VART3640: Internship
• OART1067: Introduction to Curating Contemporary Art
• VART3741: Studio Skills Specialisation
• VART3711: Themes in Contemporary Creative Practice A
• VART3713: Themes in Contemporary Creative Practice B

Semester 2 - Masters Program Options

• VART3707: Applied Industry Engagement
• OART1066: Arts Management Fundamentals
• VART3616: Critical Frameworks B
• VART3717: Cultural Planning and Evaluation (Cancelled)
• VART3638: Digital Imaging Strategies
• VART3640: Internship
• VART3741: Studio Skills Specialisation
• VART3711: Themes in Contemporary Creative Practice A
• VART3713: Themes in Contemporary Creative Practice B

Semester 1 - Masters Program Options

So, there’s you, and then there’s everything else. With use this in mind we divide this lecture series into exploring models of subjectivity – that’s you - throughout the modern period and their various assaults on our received notions of selfhood. Of course, not everyone gets to decide for themselves who they will be, and so we explore theoretical models that have attempted to address the subject position of those who have been assigned to play ‘other’ to the privileged white male. We look at feminist art and ideas, and their heritage in post humanism as well as theories of the ‘other’ as developed through post-colonialism here and elsewhere. To address everything external to the self – that’s the everything else - we also take in a variety of models of realism over the last 170 years of art history and theory as they attempt to address the world external to our thoughts and representations and how we might approach it.

This lecture series was previously offered in Sem 1, Year 2021 and 2022. If you studied Critical Frameworks in that semester, we don’t recommend you enrol in this course.

Do not enrol in Critical Frameworks A and B at the same time, as they cover the same lecture content in the same semester.

VART3616 Course Guide

This course aims to build participant’s capacity for effective cultural development planning and in doing so achieve better outcomes. Using frameworks developed by the Cultural Development Network (CDN), Students learn an ‘evidence-based and outcomes focussed’ approach to planning that is consistent and integrated within an organisation’s planning activity, and evaluate the overall effectiveness of a plan and its activities. The Frameworks offered in this course have been developed with sector in the context of key national and international policy agendas and are informed by contemporary approaches to planning and governance and ideas about evidence-based planning. 

VART3717 Course Guide

Grounded in digital photography, this elective course introduces you to both foundational and advanced concepts and strategies in digital imaging. The classes foreground understanding over recipes – we want you to understand how computers handle images in order to equip you with the skills to be digitally literate creators.

VART3638 Course Guide 

Fieldwork is a process driven elective course that encourages you as an artist/curator to explore your creative practice in response to a site. You will experience and develop methodologies that interrogate site specificity. For example, you will learn to understand the whole process of knowing a site from the journey to the site, the time spent on site, its socio-historical, cultural, environmental and political context and the ensuing impact that those experiences and knowledges can have on your creative practice. You will then learn to adapt and apply those methodologies that are appropriate for your creative development and practice.

VART3709 Course Guide

In this course you will participate in an internship or artist in residence program in an arts or cultural organisation, company, festival, gallery, museum or studio, through dual negotiation with the industry and School. You will be expected to work as directed by the host organisation, to address and solve real issues in an arts industry workplace environment. Students will undertake a 'self-placement' of 42 hours with a host organisation and reflect on their experiences through three key tasks and expected to meet with the co-ordinating Lecturer four times over the semester to share and discuss their experiences. Assessments include arranging an Internship agreement with an Industry Host, keeping an Internship Journal and critically reflecting upon the experience. 

This is a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) course designed to facilitate a practical working relationship between you and selected arts and cultural organisations. As a self-placement students find their own industry hosts appropriate to their area of study, with support from the co-ordinating Lecturer.  

Also on offer in Semester 2 2023.

VART3640 Course Guide

In this course, you will undertake a theoretical and historical examination of contemporary art curation across different contexts in Australia and overseas. Your theoretical investigation will be supported by project-based work to give you a critical and practical appreciation of the issues involved in conceptualising, developing and presenting exhibitions, including spatial thinking and planning. 

NOTE: If you are enrolled in, or have previously completed VART3413, you are not eligible to complete this course.

OART1067 Course Guide

This course will enable masters' students to undertake a specialised skills development workshop offered in the relevant undergraduate program. Students may undertake this course with the approval of their program manager after consultation and academic advice. The course may be undertaken if both the student and program manager identify a skills gap that is relevant to the student’s studio project that can be addressed by undertaking a workshop offered in an undergraduate program as a vertically integrated studio course.

NOTES:
Program Manager approval (and supervisor approval, if you have one) is required to enrol in this course, and additional conditions and practicalities need to be considered, so enrolments are not automatically open. Please contact your supervisor and program manager to start the conversation.

Following is an overview of the process for this course:

• Workshop information is usually released much later than information about other Option courses, we can’t control this timeline differently. You may want to enrol in your second-choice Option course, so not to lose a space there, and drop this course if you are successful in enrolling in Studio Skills Specialisation.
• We will alert the student body when Workshops have been announced/updated.
• When workshops are announced, you need to check if there are any courses you feel would benefit your practical skills, specifically related to your developing Masters studio work/project. To be eligible to enrol, you need to ensure that a workshop is relevant to your particular practice and needs. These workshops are not designed to simply try out new media or techniques that are unrelated, or only tangentially-related, to your Masters project.
• Next, check if the course timetabling makes it possible for you to enrol, or if there will be a clash. If there is a clash, please consult with your program manager. Because these are undergraduate workshops, timing may not always work out.
• Next, if you have a supervisor, ask them if they think the Workshop you are interested would support your technical skills and your developing Masters project.
• Then contact your program manager to register your interest.
• If everyone agrees to progress, your program manager will inquire if it is possible for you to enrol in the course. Enrolment permission is then subject to a number of conditions and practicalities outside our control, and can’t be assured.
• If we receive permission for you to enrol, you will be contacted with instructions on how to enrol.
• Again, to start a conversation about this course, please contact your program manager and supervisor.

You can only enrol in 1 Studio Skills Specialisation course during your Masters program.

Preferencing processes listed on the undergraduate pages are not relevant for Masters students, please follow the process above.

Fine Art - Workshops

Photography - Photographic Lighting

Photography - Photographic Fine Print

VART3741 Course Guide

The theme for this course is Body, Self, Psyche, Culture, Identity and … . Beginning with the body and art, the course will invite you to situate your practice through a range of different subjects and thematic discussions on how we discern, represent, understand and provide creative platforms to engage with broader notions of the socio-cultural landscape we live in.  

Themes in Contemporary Creative Practice A and B are just two different names for the same underlying theme offered. If you want to enrol in the course, but it is showing fully enrolled in your Enrolment Online, please contact art.postgradadmin@rmit.edu.au to enquire if a space might be available.

VART3711 Course Guide

VART3713 Course Guide

Flexible Term - Masters Program Options

Working in First Peoples contexts: creative partnerships and cultural production

This course has been developed by Worimi artist and educator Genevieve Grieves of GARUWA in collaboration with RMIT University. This Indigenous-led course provides opportunities for you to learn and apply knowledge and skills across a range of cultural and social frameworks, including settler-colonialism and race, that inform Australian society. You will begin to evolve a self-reflexivity that positions you in relation to these national issues as well as with regard to broader, global, First Peoples contexts. By developing your understanding of these factors in Australia, you will build a transferrable set of skills that encompasses intercultural, collaborative, self-determining approaches to working with local, national and global communities.

By considering the historical and contemporary contexts of the Australian case studies, you will expand your ideas of content production, curation, arts management and design in local, national and international contexts. The course supports professional learning and career development learning in fields and roles such as: managers in the arts, design, creative, cultural, festival, public art, and arts education industries; as well as designers, curators, cultural producers, artists, education and community workers.

For more information contact marniebadham@rmit.edu.au for more information or review the course guide.

To add a Flexible Term Course in Enrolment Online, choose the 'Additional Term' PGRD flexible term 2023 tab, select 'add classes', then 'class search' when looking for an elective. 

Semester 2 - Masters Program Options

This course explores ways to engage with expanded notions of industry for creative practitioners. You will interact with a variety of voices and positions from within the art, photography and wider arts industries to contribute to your evolving relationship to professional practice.

VART3707 Course Guide.

The course will examine key aspects of national and international arts management with particular reference to arts organisations in a cross-cultural context. This will entail a consideration of current practices in Australia and overseas with respect to economic, political and socio-cultural factors. You will be introduced to issues relating to: resource and fiscal management; fund raising; policy development and implementation; entrepreneurship; and marketing and communication. 

NOTE: If you are enrolled in, or have previously completed PERF1025, you are not eligible to complete this course.

OART1066 Course Guide

What does it mean to mean? How does meaning arise in material culture, and how has this question been approached in the western tradition? Over the course we consider this problem from a variety of vantage points: material culture as language; material culture as feeling; material culture as an extension of the body; material culture as form. This frame allows us to take in a number of elements of history that have affected our understanding of what art does: the linguistic turn that was so influential on twentieth century-culture and thinking; the history of modernism seen through a variety of lenses; the relationship of culture to philosophy since the renaissance; and the relationship of culture to embodiment before and after feminism. We weave the threads together with themes emerging and re-emerging across the weeks to build a series of interrelated narratives and contrasting positions that problematise and deepen our relationship to our making.

NOTES:

• Do not enrol in Critical Frameworks A and B at the same time, as they cover the same lecture content in the same semester.
• This lecture series was previously offered in Sem 2, 2021 and 2022. If you studied Critical Frameworks in that semester, we don’t recommend you enrol in this course.

VART3616 Course Guide

This course aims to build participant’s capacity for effective cultural development planning and in doing so achieve better outcomes. Using frameworks developed by the Cultural Development Network (CDN), Students learn an ‘evidence-based and outcomes focussed’ approach to planning that is consistent and integrated within an organisation’s planning activity, and evaluate the overall effectiveness of a plan and its activities. The Frameworks offered in this course have been developed with sector in the context of key national and international policy agendas and are informed by contemporary approaches to planning and governance and ideas about evidence-based planning. 

VART3717 Course Guide

In this course you will participate in an internship or artist in residence program in an arts or cultural organisation, company, festival, gallery, museum or studio, through dual negotiation with the industry and School. You will be expected to work as directed by the host organisation, to address and solve real issues in an arts industry workplace environment. Students will undertake a 'self-placement' of 42 hours with a host organisation and reflect on their experiences through three key tasks and expected to meet with the co-ordinating Lecturer four times over the semester to share and discuss their experiences. Assessments include arranging an Internship agreement with an Industry Host, keeping an Internship Journal and critically reflecting upon the experience. 

This is a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) course designed to facilitate a practical working relationship between you and selected arts and cultural organisations. As a self-placement students find their own industry hosts appropriate to their area of study, with support from the co-ordinating Lecturer. 

Also on offer in Semester 1 2023.

VART3640 Course Guide

This course will enable masters' students to undertake a specialised skills development workshop offered in the relevant undergraduate program. Students may undertake this course with the approval of their program manager after consultation and academic advice. The course may be undertaken if both the student and program manager identify a skills gap that is relevant to the student’s studio project that can be addressed by undertaking a workshop offered in an undergraduate program as a vertically integrated studio course.

NOTES:
Program Manager approval (and supervisor approval, if you have one) is required to enrol in this course, and additional conditions and practicalities need to be considered, so enrolments are not automatically open. Please contact your supervisor and program manager to start the conversation.

Following is an overview of the process for this course:

• Workshop information is usually released much later than information about other Option courses, we can’t control this timeline differently. You may want to enrol in your second-choice Option course, so not to lose a space there, and drop this course if you are successful in enrolling in Studio Skills Specialisation.
• We will alert the student body when Workshops have been announced/updated.
• When workshops are announced, you need to check if there are any courses you feel would benefit your practical skills, specifically related to your developing Masters studio work/project. To be eligible to enrol, you need to ensure that a workshop is relevant to your particular practice and needs. These workshops are not designed to simply try out new media or techniques that are unrelated, or only tangentially-related, to your Masters project.
• Next, check if the course timetabling makes it possible for you to enrol, or if there will be a clash. If there is a clash, please consult with your program manager. Because these are undergraduate workshops, timing may not always work out.
• Next, if you have a supervisor, ask them if they think the Workshop you are interested would support your technical skills and your developing Masters project.
• Then contact your program manager to register your interest.
• If everyone agrees to progress, your program manager will inquire if it is possible for you to enrol in the course. Enrolment permission is then subject to a number of conditions and practicalities outside our control, and can’t be assured.
• If we receive permission for you to enrol, you will be contacted with instructions on how to enrol.
• Again, to start a conversation about this course, please contact your program manager and supervisor.

You can only enrol in 1 Studio Skills Specialisation course during your Masters program.

Preferencing processes listed on the undergraduate pages are not relevant for Masters students, please follow the process above.

Fine Art - Workshops

Photography - Photographic Lighting

Photography - Photographic Fine Print

VART3741 Course Guide

Figuration, Representation & Virtuality.

In this course we will investigate the overlapping fields of figuration and representation in relation to contemporary contexts and technologies. We will investigate how the human form collides with various ‘representational’ technologies. What are the results of this collision? What can be salvaged from the wrecked image and what is Post–Representation? What reality do we want to prioritise and activate when encountering images of the human form? We will study and discuss various theorists, artists and academics who have been problematising the relationship between images and reality. You will have the opportunity to develop methodologies and outcomes in a form that is appropriate to your chosen interest and/or creative practice.

If you want to enrol in the course, but it is showing fully enrolled in your Enrolment Online, please contact art.postgradadmin@rmit.edu.au to enquire if a space might be available. Sometimes this course may show as fully enrolled in Enrolment Online, despite enrolment spaces being available.

VART3711 Course Guide

VART3713 Course Guide

Flexible Term - Masters Program Options

Future Ancestors is a global intensive program taking place in Hanoi in Nov/Dec 2023 which brings together RMIT students from creative disciplines in Melbourne and Hanoi into an interdisciplinary studio where they will work with industry guest mentors on real-world collaborative projects.

The project sets out to explore issues at the intersection of contemporary creative practice and questions of cultural heritage. Our starting point is to speculate about the city – Hanoi – in 25 years time, and ask what role creative practitioners might play in preserving and/or creating ‘future heritage’. Effectively, we ask, how can we be ‘good ancestors’ through our practices?

We will be introduced to contemporary debates in this field through a series of guest lectures from leading thinkers and makers (online, throughout November), with particular emphasis on questions of intangible cultural heritage in storytelling, craft and lens-based practices. Students will then have the opportunity to take part in real-world, transdisciplinary and industry-connected projects in and around Hanoi for two weeks (27 Nov- 9 Dec 2023) while also participating in the Vietnam Festival of Creativity and Design. 

Each small team will be made up of students and staff from both Melbourne and Hanoi along with industry guest mentors and get involved in a specific project including: 

• Weaving the Future: Sustainable Textile Craft and Fashion Design in Việt Nam 
• Extending Heritage: XR & Expanded Imaging for communication 
• Inner-city Commute: How do questions of history, urban design, climate change and inclusivity influence movement around the city now and into the future? 

To add a Flexible Term Course in Enrolment Online, choose the 'Additional Term' PGRD flexible term 2023 tab, select 'add classes', then 'class search' when looking for an elective.