The Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, has hosted collaborations and events involving researchers from many different fields, from the Slade School of Fine Art and UCL, as well as researchers and practitioners from the wider community nationally and internationally.

The Slade Research Centre is also used by all our courses from undergraduate through to masters and doctoral level to facilitate our students and help them develop their ambitions as artists and researchers of the future. One of the aims of the Slade Research Centre is to encourage and teach our students to make museum standard work, and in doing so to strive towards and achieve artistic research of the highest level.

This publication represents the work of MFA and MA students across all three areas of the graduate programme: Painting, Sculpture and Fine Art Media. The aim was to present research themes, which could be productively explored in the space; basic notions which continually inform the production of art, and hence are key to the development of artistic research:

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Fine Art is about the exploration of the visual, the physical, the aural; in short the sensory world. Fine Art’s continual conversation with design, with architecture, with fashion, with the development of culture and their related industries is often overlooked. Virtually everything you see around you has been made by some one who went to art school, often working with experts in other fields. A central aim of the Slade Research Centre is to support brilliant emerging artists and in doing so construct the thinking which will allow them to engage positively with other disciplines.

There are constant themes and continuing questions which run through artistic practice. However the exploration of these themes, questions and ideas change. While the context and materials are subject to change, new artists also bring new questions and answers, interrogating these issues in new ways.

An art school, and one situated in one of the worlds great research universities, is here to question existing paradigms and to enable new approaches, supporting our students to invent the art of the future.

It has been an exciting year. The publication represents a range of experimentation, risk, and the spirit of ambition, collaboration and discussion which all participate in the production of excellent work.

We would like to thank everyone who has made this possible. This is a whole school effort, all the students, all the staff within both the Slade and UCL who have so generously supported us, as well as all the artists and researchers from outside the university who have engaged with our debates, and who have given so generously of their time and expertise to help us achieve our aims. Art is a social activity, it is about action and communication. Thanks also to all the friends and family who have supported our work, and to Martin John Callanan for editing and designing the publication.

Edward Allington, Head of Graduate studies, Head of Graduate Sculpture
Lisa Milroy, Head Of Graduate Painting
Jayne Parker, Head of Graduate Fine Art Media

Postgraduate Research 2011 publication