Making Meaning: The Journey Through MA Fine Art at OCA

In September 2025, a cohort of internationally based OCA students completed their MA Fine Art degree. Over a period of two years, they have studied together, engaging in various forms of learning, including critiques, discussions, presentations, lectures, and interactive workshops. Each student worked on their unique and individual ideas, bringing these to the programme as their work developed, continually deepening their understanding through dedicated and extensive research. A rich mix of sculpture, video, painting and drawing, immersive installations, digital animation, sound, writing and video is on view in their concluding exhibition Journey. You can view the exhibition here.

What does it mean to complete a Master’s programme in Fine Art? I asked each student to describe their thoughts at this milestone point in their artistic practice. These are their responses.

Yvonne Pethulis was already familiar with OCA when she enrolled on the MA programme, having completed a Creative Arts undergraduate degree. She responded to the question by saying, “Completing the Master’s in Fine Arts degree brings both a sense of accomplishment in concluding my studies and an awareness of the challenges associated with embracing life as a professional artist. My journey through the course has been an exploration through research and an ever-evolving practice. The culmination of creative and academic challenges has paved the way to a new and exciting way of working and thinking.”

MA Fine Art student Shelley Lafferty practices as an architect. She came to OCA after taking part in informal art classes. “After years of classes not providing the direction or development I longed for, embarking on this Master’s was the best investment and gift to myself.  An enriching 2 years of MA Fine Art, fundamental for finding my voice as an Artist and providing direction to aspirations beyond any expectations possible.  Through much contextual research and critical reflection on my making, I have great plans to push my works further.  The curation of my final exhibition for submission, developed intuitively from initial plans, really helped cement the direction of travel for my making.  A journey of my investigations, growth and development, but also as a journey with my ambition for participatory interaction by the audience, and the speculative output of tokens. This became the title of our group final exhibition and website.”

For Stavroula Consta, based in Athens, Greece, the weekly sessions and the tutorials gave her ideas to move forward and evolve her making. She says, “I always enjoyed the Making Day(s) even though we did not have that many towards the end. I felt a kind of connection and intimacy with my fellow classmates. I will miss them. During the last unit, I spent more time on my MA Journal than before. I liked the various exercises and was pleased to work on the provocations project and other exercises too. I want to give you advice: no matter what, never give up on your dreams. Completing a master’s course later in your career is a life’s achievement.”

Michelle Johnson found that reaching the end of the programme was more than just finishing a course — for her, it was a journey of reclaiming voice, remembering, and returning to the self. She spoke of the final weeks of study, saying, “Preparing for the final show involved making tough decisions about what to reveal, what to hold back, and how to honour the work I have created. Presenting online challenged me to consider presence without physical space and visibility without spectacle. Every part of the process — editing, writing, collaborating — was rooted in care.”

The final response is from Deborah New, who spoke about the preparation of works for the final exhibition and final assessment, saying, “It was a rigorous process, and challenging to shave down my choices – it’s tempting to simply include everything! However, I feel that I presented a wide enough variety of work, including a written piece entitled The Stardust Manifesto, to showcase the crux of my research to date. 

Completing this MA is the greatest gift I have ever given myself. It has taken so many surprising and delightful turns, and so as the course has come to an end, I have found myself feeling excited to graduate, but sad to leave. The level of support from our lecturers has been phenomenal – each of them are incredible teachers.” 

I encourage you to visit the exhibition of work by these students to experience the rich diversity of ideas, the many ways of making, the deep thinking and the detailed research they have undertaken. The exhibition celebrates their creative journeys and showcases their innovative work. We wish them well in their future endeavours.

View the MA Fine Art Exhibition Showcase here.