GRADUATE RESEARCH
MPhil/PhD in Fine Art
The Slade is an outstanding centre for research and has been offering the MPhil/PhD in Fine Art since 1994. Registration is normally for the MPhil in the first instance, with students transferring to the PhD after the end of the first year. Registration for the PhD may be for written thesis only (80,000 - 100,000 words) or for a combination of studio work and written thesis (60,000 words). Registration for the MPhil may also be for written thesis only (50,000 - 60,000 words) or for a combination of studio work and written thesis (35,000 - 45,000 words).
Dr Penny Florence, Head of Research Programmes, History and
Theory of Art, co-ordinates the programme. Each student is allocated
a principle supervisor from within the Slade and a subsidiary
supervisor from the Slade, another department of UCL or, exceptionally,
external to UCL. Students undertaking studio work are also assigned
a studio supervisor from the studio area in which their work
is based. Studio space is not normally available. Research students
may however apply to use project space in the Slade Research
Centre, Woburn Square.>
The aims of the MPhil/PhD programme are to:
enable artists and researchers of the highest quality to pursue
knowledge and understanding through original research into fine
art
facilitate projects that will further understandings of the
practices of writing and art as research and as epistemology,
as distinct from, and as a contribution to, theory, thereby
enriching and clarifying the specificity of both;
provide a creative and critical environment
which promotes the open exchange of ideas, fosters interdisciplinary
initiatives and supports individual student researchers in
both studio and theoretical endeavours;
develop areas of expertise and specialisation in
the subject of fine art through which the School may contribute at national
and international level to the development of concepts, languages
and techniques.
The Slade has an active and lively research community, with various
opportunities to develop skills (including fully supported teaching),
enter into dialogue with other researchers and distinguished
scholars and share the results of research.
In addition to personal tutorials, students participate in:
an ongoing research seminar, the primary forum for intellectual
exchange, fostering understanding of how art practices can be
research and the development of new methodologies, writing strategies,
and objects of study;
an evolving series of events and projects at the Slade Research
Centre, Woburn Square;
joint seminars and events with other Fine Art research programmes,
especially in London, including the AHRC funded ReSKin initiative;
short courses centring on the work of distinguished contemporary
scholars invited to the school;
an annual Research Students' Conference, organised with
The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL;
workshops on research and dissertation writing, including
a new course on writing as a practice.
Research students are encouraged to attend the Contemporary
Art Lecture Series organised by the Slade (speakers have included
Tacita Dean, Michael Newman, Griselda Pollock, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe,
Kobena Mercer, Catherine Yass, Martin Creed, Margaret Iversen
and Slavoj Zizek).
MPhil/PhD students at the Slade are currently pursuing (or
have just completed) research in the following (those marked
* include practice):
Acoustic Syn+Aesthetics and The Myth of
Echo and Narcissus*; Cinema Into the Real*;
Camouflage: the Dis/Appearance of the Visual Field*;
The Semiotics of Line or The Space between Objects*;
Zagreb and the Viennese Opera Ball: Contact - Theory Moving into
Film*;
Italian Conceptual Photography (Luigi Ghirri);
The Ontology of the Portable Art Work;
Existential Spatiality and Photography as a Social Form*;
Contemporary Utopias*;
Studio International and Developments in Art 1965-1975;
Colonialist and Orientalist Views of Israel/Palestine in Photography:
the Construction of States and Representation*;
The construction
of The Sculptural Strategies of Louise Bourgeois; Archiving
Infinities: the Gender Politics of the ëad infinitum' in
Photography*;
The grotesque image and imagination in contemporary art practice*.
There are also projects which are jointly supervised
between The Slade and other UCL Departments.
2005/6 saw the launch of the Slade Research Centre at Woburn
Square. The Centre provides a focus for the extensive research
in art practice and theory that is pursued internationally at
the highest level. History and Theory of Art staff are regularly
involved in interdisciplinary projects within UCL, including
a conference at Tate Modern in 2006 The
E and the Eye: Electronic and Modernist Visual Poetry (with the French Department and The
Slade Centre for Electronic Media), ongoing collaborations with
the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Department of Anthropology
and work with organisations such as Kunsthaus Graz, Kiasma Contemporary
Art Museum in Finland, the Freud Museum, CRASSH (Cambridge Centre
for Research in the Arts, Social Science and Humanities).
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