Application deadline: December 15, 2015 (for January 2016)
Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design
24 Balfour Road, Parnell
Auckland
New Zealand
Applications are now being accepted for the Master of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design.
Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design is an award-winning independent art school located in Auckland, New Zealand. The Master of Fine Arts program is a full-time two-year, low-residency program designed around four week-long seminars per year, each attended and delivered by faculty and guests that are nationally and internationally renowned artists, critics, writers and curators.
Whitecliffe’s MFA program prepares artists for a professional career working within a diverse field of contemporary art practices and across local and international contexts. The MFA program’s interdisciplinary structure and philosophy supports artists to form a greater understanding of how art and artworks operate in the world, and helps students to deepen their knowledge of the contexts that shape contemporary art practices and interests.
The low-residency structure of the MFA programme facilitates the ability of artists enrolled in the programme to live and work anywhere within New Zealand. Each MFA student selects and/or is assigned two supervisors who support students to develop different aspects of their individual art practice and who regularly visit students’ studios and work spaces—wherever they may be.
The quarterly seminar structure of Whitecliffe’s MFA program accommodates enrolled artists to regulary meet and work with internationally respected artists, critics and curators, enabling students to develop their art practice, extend their networks of contacts and recieve critical input that may otherwise be difficult to access. The intensive format of the seminars is structured around themed discussions, guest artist presentations, exhibition visits and studio critique.
Recent esteemed guests of the MFA program include Courtney Johnston, Luke Willis Thompson, Lisa Reihana, Tessa Laird, Judy Millar, Mikala Dwyer, Eleanor Heartney, Grant Stevens, Laresa Kosloff, Matt Saunders and Anders Ruhwald. Supervisors to the MFA program currently include critic and writer Anthony Byrt, and artists Dane Mitchell, Yvonne Todd, Glen Snow, Yolunda Hickman and Imogen Taylor. Whitecliffe faculty also work to support the MFA program through seminar delivery and student supervision roles and include highly respected artists and educators Noel Ivanoff, Matt Ellwood, Dave Cowlard, Julie Downie, Steve Carr, Christina Read, Tanya Eccleston and Becky Nunes.
In 2016, the MFA’s Critic-in-Residence is Auckland-based art writer Anthony Byrt, who will attend each of the four seminars, contribute to research discussions and speak about his current writing projects. International guest examiners on the Whitecliffe MFA program for 2016 are the Melbourne-based New Zealand artist Daniel Von Sturmer (January) and the Columbian artist Juan Fernando Herran (July), who will be exhibiting his work in Auckland Art Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition Space to Dream: South American Art from 1970 to Today.
For further information, or to submit an application to the MFA program, please contact Pam Young, Postgraduate Program Manager, [email protected], or the director of the MFA program and Head of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe, Noel Ivanoff, [email protected].
