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 2016/17 are:
Space - 24 - 28 October 2016
Collaboration - 14 - 18 - November 2016
Body - 30 January - 3 February 2017
Voice - 6 - 10 March 2017

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 elds.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 di erent 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 2016/17 academic year. It demonstrates a range of experimentation, collaboration and discussion, and re ects the spirit of ambition and enthusiasm that has energised the programme.We would like to thank everyone involved, the students and sta 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.

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

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

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Graduate Research 2016 - 17 (5MB)