UCL will commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death with a study day on 13 February 2014 focused on the spaces of his life and work. Through talks, readings, installations and screenings the study day will consider the sites Jarman inhabited as he produced his art, films, writing, gardens and activism, including the Slade where he studied between 1963-67. Which places and material conditions attracted him and how did they provide the field for his experimental and radical practices? The day will be structured around different spatial scales, from the urban to the rural.

It will begin with a talk by the novelist Alan Hollinghurst on The Garden House, a documentary Jarman made about the modernist house his art master Robin Noscoe designed and lived in. Alan Hollinghurst is the author of 5 novels, including The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), and The Line of Beauty, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2004 and was adapted for BBC2 by Andrew Davies.  His most recent novel is The Stranger's Child (2011).  Like Derek Jarman, he went to Canford School, to whose inspirational art master, Robin Noscoe, Jarman pays tribute in The Garden House.   

This will be followed by a number of other artistic and architectural reflections on Jarman's work, featuring a theatrical installation–'A Heap of Broken Images: Prospecting Past and Future England'–by Dr Hilary Powell (artist and AHRC Fellow, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture) and a lecture, 'Garden of Vanished Pleasures', on the garden Jarman created at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, by architect, academic and author of Weather Architecture (2012), Professor Jonathan Hill. 

Other confirmed talks include Dr Bob Mills (UCL History of Art) on 'The Wandering Jarman', Dr Ben Campkin (UCL Urban Laboratory), on Jarman's late 1980s music video depiction of a journey through King's Cross, Nigel Green on his photography of the Dungeness landscape, published in Dungeness (2003), Henry K. Miller (film historian and critic) on 'The Slade Connection' and Professor Stephen Farthing RA, co-editor of Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks (2013) on 'The Albums'. Slade and Bartlett students will also show current work that resonates with aspects of Jarman's oeuvre.

This event is free, all welcome, but places are limited. Registration required, early booking recommended: urbanlaboratory@ucl.ac.uk 

Venues: Room G07 Pearson Building, UCL (am) and G04 Wates House, UCL (pm).

Organised by Ben Campkin, Jayne Parker, Brighid Lowe, Bob Mills and Sabina Andron.