UK show for graduates of Europe’s first distance learning MA Fine Art

The degree show of the first graduates of Europe's first online MA Fine Art is to take place in Sheffield in November 2014, four years after the postgraduate programme was launched by The Open College of the Arts. The exhibition will occupy all the gallery spaces at Bank Street Arts in the city centre, showing new works to the public, including painting, installation, moving image, sound and drawing.

Collaborating as TheNine, the postgraduate artists, from Canada, the UK and Ireland, have studied for their Masters degrees over the last four years on a part-time basis through online seminars, virtual tutorials and lectures, now coming together to exhibit in the real world.

Bank Street Arts: 32-40 Bank Street, Sheffield S1 2DS

Private view: Friday 21 November, 6pm to 9pm

Exhibition dates: Saturday 22 November and Tuesday 25 November to Saturday 29 November

Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 4pm, admission free

Leading postgraduate academic publisher Prospects has announced today that the OCA MA Fine Art teaching team has been named Best Postgraduate Teaching Team in the Prospects Postgraduate Awards 2014.

Amelia Wilson, the OCA student who nominated the team for the award and one of TheNine whose work will be featured in the degree show opening later this month in Sheffield, said: 'The MA is a new experience for both the students and staff. Delivering a first-class post-graduate programme using every form of technology available to help enrich the experience of students is a tremendous achievement for the teaching team. I'm delighted this award recognises how innovative OCA's MA, Fine Art is. It's a fantastic and fitting conclusion to four years of hard work.'

OCA MA, Fine Art course leader Caroline Wright said: 'The students graduating from the Open College of the Arts' MA in Fine Art are not only pioneers for the first wholly online MA in Europe, but are also highly motivated and capable professional artists making work that is exciting, innovative and engages with the contemporary artworld. Their exhibition, The Nine, brings together four years of study in a show that includes film and painting, drawing, installation and photography.'

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheNineMA

Twitter: @TheNineMA, #theninema

OCA blog: www.weareoca.com

Alexa Cox – creates large-scale paintings which explore storytelling and challenge the boundaries of the body. http://alexacox.com/

Simon Gummer – uses photography to explore the relationship between life, death and our connection with the universe www.simongummer.com

Jo Keeley - fixates on the emotional, using the canvas to articulate her reaction as well as highlighting the plight of the person she is painting

James Kowacz - British tourist destinations are full of idiosyncrasieswhich James humorously represents by remixing clips recorded through Vine http://jameskowacz.wordpress.com

Sarah Lundy - is an Irish multimedia artist whose practice explores systems and spaces: through the use of moving image, assemblage of quotidian objects and ephemeral performance materials, the works endeavour to negotiate provocative arrangement and question autonomy in the face of homogenisation http://www.greyliquidgums.com

Eleanor MacFarlane - is a moving image artist, using layers of video, photography and drawing to see through to the meaning of shadows, and to explore ideas about time. http://www.eleanormacfarlane.com/

Jennifer Mawby – works between painting and photography, making experimental film-based installations that are inconclusive and elliptical psychological portraits. http://www.jjtmstudio.com

Clare Parfree - makes drawings which use suggested and fragmentary narrative to explore the spaces surrounding, and between, humans, animals, landscape and myth http://clareparfree.wordpress.com/

Amelia Wilson - is a colourist concerned with the documentation of everyday life through the exploration of colour: its emotional impact; the jewel-like hidden in the mundane and the effect of adjacent hues on perception http://ameliawilsonblog.com/