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To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Facing the World | Self-Portraits Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei thumb

Facing the World | Self-Portraits Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei

Join OCA tutor Wendy McMurdo at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery on the 13 August. We will visit Facing the World | Self-Portraits Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei.

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Study Visit: Winifred Knights thumb

Study Visit: Winifred Knights

There are still spaces available for the study visit this weekend at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Winifred Knights was the most promising painter of her generation at a time when it was difficult for women to have a career in art. Her work embraced the new modernism of the early 20th century together with the traditional concerns and draughtsmanship taught at the Slade School of Art.

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Study visit: Winifred Knights thumb

Study visit: Winifred Knights

Join OCA tutor Jim Cowan on the 2 July at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. We will view the work of Winifred Knights. This is the first major retrospective of the award-winning Slade School artist, this exhibition will reunite all her completed paintings for the first time since their creation, including the apocalyptic masterpiece The Deluge, 1920, which attracted immense critical acclaim.

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Lucian Freud: study visit in London thumb

Lucian Freud: study visit in London

We have a must-see study visit coming up at the National Portrait Gallery in London on Tuesday 22 May to see the retrospective of Lucian Freud’s work. We have a talk in a lecture theatre booked for 11.30 so its imperative that you arrive on time. Please aim to be at the entrance by 11.15am. […]

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A lively debate in the cold – David Hockney gets OCA students talking thumb

A lively debate in the cold – David Hockney gets OCA students talking

We had a lively visit to the Hockney exhibition last week with OCA tutors David Winning and Tony Hogan. The tutors didn’t share the same views on Hockney’s work, which added to the debate afterwards as we huddled together in the Royal Academy forecourt. All this added to the quality of the reflections students had […]

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How does a self confessed tranny potter get a show at the British Museum? thumb

How does a self confessed tranny potter get a show at the British Museum?

You missed a real treat of a study day if you were not with me, a couple of textile tutors and an art history tutor, at what is my exhibition of the year: the Grayson Perry ‘Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’ at the British Museum. I have never seen an exhibition where there have been […]

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OCA welcomes its first student to the new Mixed Media course thumb

OCA welcomes its first student to the new Mixed Media course

OCA tutor Linda Khatir welcomes student Vicky Speirs onto its new Painting 2 course, Mixed Media; one of the options if working towards the BA(Hons) Painting degree, or the BA(Hons) Creative Arts degree. Linda says: ‘in previous modules Vicky has shown an inventive and enthusiastic approach to art practice. This is important when considering the […]

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Why is Nancy Spero so angry? thumb

Why is Nancy Spero so angry?

The rallying call of Spero raised questions for me and the OCA students who came to the Nancy Spero exhibition. Spero confronts in her installation Maypole Take No Prisoners II which is made from steel, silk, wood, nylon filament, handprint on aluminium. It’s composed of hand-printed severed heads with protruding tongues attached to the maypole […]

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Nancy Spero, part one thumb

Nancy Spero, part one

Last Saturday afternoon a small group gathered in front of the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. After a brief exchange of information –how far we had travelled, our connection with the OCA, what courses everyone was on – we were straight in. We were here on a mission — to respond to Nancy Spero’s life […]

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It's complicated being artistic … thumb

It's complicated being artistic …

A recent piece in the magazine Frieze about the concerns contemporary artists have caught my attention, and made me wonder what preoccupies those OCA students who are striving to be better artists? The article contends that artists’ main preoccupations are to have the space in order to do whatever comes next.  But then, what does […]

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