Moreover is the third annual invitation by UCL Art Museum to the Slade to revisit the past masters and create new works in response.

Moreover began with a challenge to all current students at the Slade to develop their own practice using contemporary media and new modes of thinking while taking the time to consider and appreciate what has gone before. Over the Winter term students were given special access to thousands of remarkable and historically important objects within UCL’s art collections. They explored cabinets and archival boxes to discover a number of hidden treasures: an 18th-century print of a Soho drag queen, an annotated drawing by the arts educator and painter William Coldstream, John Flaxman’s neo-classical plaster models, postcards to Stanley Spencer, paper records used by museum staff to chart the shifting locations of art work – plus more. It has been an exhausting process for the students and myself, but in the main it has been productive and highly rewarding. Out of the 35 proposals submitted, 21 finalists were chosen by a panel from UCL Museums & Collections and the Slade to exhibit their works in the Strang Print Room.

Moreover is also about the process of making art. The collaborative project – originally dreamed up by Simon Gould (UCL Contemporary Projects Curator) – was created to provide a professional opportunity for Slade students to work with a university archive and collection and to experience one of the increasingly common ways that artists engage with the world outside of the studio and outside of the traditional gallery space.

On display are the resulting works of 21 students – all of whom have appropriated, undermined and/or marked up past masters to create individual, contemporary works in a range of media, including performance, print, sculpture, and video.

Moreover runs from 11 April – 17 June 2011
The exhibition is located in the Strang Print Room, South Cloisters, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT.
Open to the public Mon – Fri 1 -5 pm. Admission is free.

UCL Art Museum: www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/ucl-art-museum