The Slade Salon is an afternoon of short taster presentations on current research projects at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, with video montages of staff and student work on display. Examples include the Slade Archive Project, Bronze Lab and 'INSPIRED!' a 3 year exchange project between the Slade and the Faculty of Fine Art, Dhaka University.

Programme

14:00 Common - Dr Hayley Newman

Hayley Newman discusses her new publication ‘Common’ (Copy Press, 2013)

Through fact and fiction, questions and answers, writings from the heart and writing from the street, Common chronicles one day of a Self-Appointed Artist-in-Residence in the City of London. Performances occur and reoccur as this book takes us to crashes in global markets, turbulence in the Euro-zone, riots on hot summer nights and the most extraordinary imaginings.

14:20 Islamism and modernism: the case of Anwar Jalal Shemza - Dr Amna Malik

Anwar Jalal Shemza is a British/Pakistani artist whose abstract paintings made between the 1950s and 1960s appeared to be closely modelled on European modernism but which he claimed had their roots in Islamic philosophy.
The aim of this talk is to consider this claim and draw out some of the wider connections and paradoxes when we consider Islamic art and modernist painting together.

14:40 Diagram Research Use & Generation - David Burrows

The presentation will briefly discuss two key interests of the Diagram Research Use & Generation Group (DRUGG), a network of artists and researchers that David Burrows co-founded.

1. Diagramming as interdisciplinary research method or process. The production of diagrams can be considered as a common practice within universities, (potentially) bridging disciplines and epistemological and academic traditions, with art being recognised as one (often overlooked and often very different) approach among others. Diagrams, as bridges or mediations between different modes of thought are common to most disciplines concerned with speculative thought and/or the indexing of relations. DRUGG is interested in discussing existing and new hybrid, transdisciplinary or ‘non-standard’ approaches to research.
2. Diagrams and Art. Diagrams present elements in spatial and temporal relations. Some practices foreground diagrams as affective, four-dimensional (spatial and temporal) processes, a tendency that is prominent in art. Artists experiment with matter, composition, sensation, performance and discourse and research mediation and the way images and presentations become meaningful. All of this might be said to produce a particular (art) knowledge concerning presentation, which is not without importance to a discussion of the limits and potential of diagrams. DRUGG is interested in what artists may have to contribute to an understanding of the index, gesture, performance, abstraction and mediation.

15:00 Slade Archive Project - Dr Melissa Terras

The Slade archive project is an interdisciplinary research project between the Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Centre for Digital Humanities centred on exploring and developing the Slade Archive: an unexplored resource of photographs, records, documents, and objects connected to the history of the Slade. This paper will give an overview about the project, and demonstrate some of the finds and approaches we are taking to delve into this invaluable resource.

15:20 INSPIRED! A 3 year exchange project between the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and the Faculty of Fine Art, Dhaka University
Professor Susan Collins, Lisa Milroy, Dryden Goodwin

The Slade School of Fine Art and the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh were the recipients of a three-year award from 2010-2013 as part of the British Council INSPIRE strategic partnership initiative. The objective of the project was to stimulate collaboration between UK and Bangladeshi artists and academics, and explore the differences and similarities in the educational and artistic challenges faced in these two very different contexts.

This presentation will show images from both London and Dhaka, documenting the project over the course of the three years, and discuss the project's trajectory from expectations to outcomes.

15:40 The Materials Research Project - Jo Volley

The Materials Research Project, based in the Methods and Materials Room of the graduate painting area, spearheads the role of materials within the creative process.

The Material Research Project has three strands: Guided Exploration – This encompasses the testing of new ways in developing the relation between image and material including the exploration of diverse cultural materials and methodologies. Methods Surgery – Research is conducted to resolve a technical materials-based undertaking or problem that a student or staff member has encountered with a particular artwork. Documentation – The results of research are documented and uploaded onto the Slade Knowledge base website.

16:00 Bronze Lab - Professor Ed Allington, Giles Corby, Lilah Fowler

Professor Edward Allington, Lilah Fowler, Teaching Fellow and Giles Corby, Sculpture Technician, will speak about experimental uses of the Slade’s Foundry and draw on some exciting examples for the recent pour during the Bronze Lab week, 11-17 Feb 2013.

16:20 Slade Film - Jayne Parker

A brief reflection on the history of film making at the Slade and the affect of changing technologies.

16:40 Writing the image, place, object - Sharon Morris

Writing from Sharon Morris and Slade students

17:00- 18:00 Drinks Reception