The Master of Visual Arts course at Auckland University of Technology encourages a research-based approach to art, offering industry insights and exhibition opportunities.

School: Auckland University of Technology
Course: Master of Visual Arts
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Course dates: February 2026 to June 2027
Application deadline: 28 January 2026

Visual arts research requires students to engage in open-ended exploratory artmaking. The Master of Visual Arts (MVA) supports practices from across the creative fields focused on studio-based research. Students work within a research culture of inclusivity, reciprocity and connectedness with a strong emphasis on community and care.

Visual arts research involves a wide range of cultural, socio-ethical, environmental, political and participatory practices, including material, digital and post-digital, post-human and transdisciplinary, performative, Indigenous, culturally-situated and decolonising practices.

Student projects can focus on drawing, photography, lens-based, cinema, video, interactive technologies, installation, sound, social practice, performance, sculpture, printmaking or painting.

The MVA enables students to progress through a self-determined postgraduate educational journey. Based in the studios, the first semester courses are structured as intensive, practice-rich courses that provide ways to explore your developing proposal from a range of practical and theoretical perspectives.

The core courses Te Ao Mahora/Creative Practice Research Design and Contextual Review are 12 weeks long and are designed to support the development of reflective, methodological and contextual knowledge.

The thesis year involves generating a visual arts research project centred on the student's art interests. Professional practice and industry opportunities, such as exhibitions, event-based and public art projects are also encouraged as part of the study trajectory.

Applications to this course have now closed.

Top image: Naomi Allan, Master of Visual Arts Graduate Show: The Matters That Made It into My Giant Health Soup, 2023.
Bottom image: Master of Visual Arts student, Esther Deans working in studio, 2020.

Dezeen Courses

Dezeen Courses is a service from Dezeen that provides details of architecture, interiors and design courses around the world. Click here for more information.