The Slade Research Centre in Woburn Square hosts collaborations and events that involve researchers from many different fields, from the Slade and UCL as well as from the wider national and international community. One of the aims of the Slade Research Centre is to encourage and teach students to create artworks of the highest quality, to help them develop and achieve their ambitions as artists, and in so doing to engage in artistic research at the highest level.

The Slade Research Centre is used by students on all our programmes, including undergraduate, graduate and doctorate. Graduate Research Weeks are held at the Slade Research Centre in the Autumn and Spring Terms and provide MFA, MA and PhD students across all three areas, Painting, Sculpture and Fine Art Media, the opportunity to explore an aspect of their work under a particular research theme, which can be imaginatively developed in the unique studio space of the Centre.The research themes involve basic notions that continually inform the activity of making art, and hence are key to the development of artistic research.

The research themes for the academic year 2015/16 were: Body, Colour, Drawing, Scale.

The continual conversation of Fine Art with design, architecture, fashion, and the development of culture and its related industries is often overlooked. Much of what we see around us has been made by someone who went to art school, often working with experts in other fields.The Slade Research Centre and Graduate Research Weeks support emerging artists in providing a forum to help construct the thinking and making which will allow them to engage positively with other disciplines. In light of exploring the constant themes that run through artistic practice, related questions and ideas shift and change. Context and materials change too, and through this dynamic, artists bring new questions and answers to the fore, interrogating familiar issues in new and different ways, and fostering innovative research.

This e-book represents a selection of the work of MFA, MA and PhD students who participated in one or more of this year’s Graduate Research Weeks during the 2015/16 academic year. It demonstrates a range of experimentation, collaboration and discussion, and reflects the spirit of ambition and enthusiasm that has energised the programme.We would like to thank everyone involved, the students and staff within the Slade and UCL, as well as the artists and researchers from outside the university who have engaged in our debates and given so generously of their time and expertise to help us achieve our aims.

Special thanks goes to Professor Edward Allington for leading “Body Week”, and to Professor Chris Dean and Dr. Wendy Birch, UCL Anatomy for their generous support in hosting Anatomical Drawing for Slade students in conjunction with “Body Week”.

Thank you to Patrick White for editing and designing this year’s Graduate Research Weeks e-book.

Lisa Milroy, Director of Graduate Studies and Head of Graduate Painting
Jayne Parker, Head of Graduate Fine Art Media
Karin Ruggaber, Acting Head of Graduate Sculpture

Download
Graduate Research Weeks 2015 - 2016 (full version pdf 15MB)