Audrey Goggin - Fine Arts
Studying Fine Art has allowed Audrey to discover new forms of media and connect with fellow artists, positively influencing her style and techniques.
Key facts:
Programme: Bachelor of Fine Arts
High school: Epsom Girls’ Grammar School
Scholarship: Rosemary Grice Memorial Prize (2024)
“I chose to study at Elam at the University of Auckland partly due to the sense of community here. In my final years of high school, I went on a couple of tours of Elam and was really excited by everything that was going on and I also found the facilities here really interesting.
“There are wood, metal, and casting workshops, a printmaking lab, photography studios and a dark room — the possibilities for what I could create seem endless.
“All the technicians here are so friendly and eager to share their expertise with students, and the lecturers and tutors have their own art practice outside of Elam, which is great to see and learn from when you want to be an artist yourself after graduating.
Elam’s Bachelor of Fine Arts programme covers a wide range of mediums and topics, so I knew I would get a lot out of it. Not even a full semester in, I was already thinking of and developing ideas in different ways than I ever had previously.
“Each of my courses has taught me so much... I both learnt and un-learnt so much in the core courses in our first year (painting, sculpture, text as conceptual art, printmaking, photography, and performance art).
“The experience of those ‘crash courses’ in different mediums has made me approach my courses this year very differently. In painting, for example, I am now a lot more experimental than I used to be in terms of style, materials, and technique.
“From your second year onwards, Bachelor of Fine Arts students get a designated studio space, so a lot of my day is spent in my studio. We have three-hour studio classes, which include crits, seminars, and workshops. There’s always someone else in the studio space, so there’s a really great sense of community and there’s always someone to bounce ideas off or get advice about a project from.
“At Elam, you're constantly surrounded by a diverse range of people, and with that comes a diverse range of ideas. Through conversations in the community here, you’re made aware of different concepts, artists, and resources that inform your work in ways you couldn’t have imagined otherwise.
“I am also able to study subjects outside of the Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University. I’m currently completing a Certificate in Languages in French as well. Other subjects always find a way to inform an art practice, so having access to explore them is so valuable.
“Creativity and art have a huge impact on our society. Not only does it act as an escape for some people, but it can be used to inform people and raise awareness of larger societal issues. Art is critical, it facilitates conversation, provokes thinking, and provides connections across society.”