This course is concerned to attract artists with a strong commitment to the discrete objects of painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking. Despite a proportional increase in film and video formats in other Fine Art institutions over the last decade, this particular course sees traditional media as neither more challenged by, nor any less able to challenge cultural orthodoxy than more obviously avant-garde forms. The course prioritises studio practice but supplements one to one tutorials and studio-based group discussions with a programme of Critical Aesthetics seminars. Directly or indirectly, the various forms of discourse are concerned to help identify 'critical models' appropriate to the work of each individual student. The critical model in each case will then, in effect, become the subject of a ten thousand word dissertation and the basis for more confident critical development by the student of their own practice.