Master of Visual Arts at Auckland University of Technology
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.
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