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UCL Letters, July 2023, designed by Yiwen Li
UCL Letters, July 2023, designed by Yiwen Li, 2023

Photo: Giles Corby

Congratulations to recent MFA graduate Yiwen Li, whose design for UCL's standalone large-scale letters was unveiled in front of the Portico on the Main Quad on 3 July.

The UCL letters have increasingly become a part of the campus landscape and will remain in the Main Quad throughout the summer, providing a perfect photo opportunity for any visitors to the Bloomsbury campus.

The competition for students at the Slade School of Fine Art was set up in recognition of the interest from students across the year and particularly during the graduation period to create memories of their time at UCL. They are also vital tools in signposting, with the letters acting as an “arrival point” to students and visitors on campus.

The competition to design the letters, which was announced at the beginning of this year, was a collaborative project between UCL Campus Experience & Infrastructure (CE&I) team and the Slade. The project was facilitated by Sam Wilkinson, Head of Public Art, UCL, Slade's Jo Volley, Deputy Director (Projects), and Giles Corby.

Jo Volley, Deputy Director (Projects) said:

“We are pleased to give our students the opportunity to participate in this public art project. Congratulations to the winners on their designs! Many thanks to Sam Wilkinson and UCL Estates Campus Experience & Infrastructure for supporting this project. The UCL large letter sign is now an iconic part of the UCL estate, and an integral part of student, staff and public's experience – especially now at graduation time."

Tracy Smith (Director of Campus Experience and Commercial Services) said:

“Campus Experience are working with colleagues across UCL to develop collaborative projects that inspire students to create work that enhances our campus and community engagement. This project was particularly successful, as the final artwork unveiling created the perfect backdrop for new graduates (and others) to take memorable photos on the Main Quad.”

Student winner, Yiwen Li, said:

“I am so honoured to have my design selected by the UCL letters competition. It’s been a pleasant cooperation with UCL Team and a massive relief to have their support with the process and installation. Thank you so much for this great opportunity!”

Following the success of this initial project, CE&I will be leading a festive bauble competition at UCL. The winning bauble design will be featured at the Festive Lights Switch-On in November in the Main Quad and there are plans in motion for it to be produced as a limited-edition item from the UCL shop.

CE&I look forward to seeing the other winning designs around UCL in the future, as they continue to co-produce with students and staff to improve the campus experience for all.

Installation photograph: Lydia Merrett (paintings) and George Richardson (sculptures), MA/MFA Degree Show
Installation photograph: Lydia Merrett (paintings) and George Richardson (sculptures), MA/MFA Degree Show, 2023

©Thomas Jenkins

Congratulations to the students who have been awarded as follows:

Boise Scholarship: Chantal Goulder and George Richardson
Dolbey Scholarship: Enzo Vieira Medeiros
Jeanne Szego Scholarship: Bowen Zhang
Painter Stainers: Beth McAlester
Almacantar Studio Award: Lydia Merrett (Studio Prize) and Rosie Kennedy (Runner up prize)
Adrian Carruthers Award: Sam Meredith
Cass Art: Alessia Marullo
Kenneth Armitage: Elinor Haynes
The Olive: Antonia Holguin Caicedo
Bartolomeu Dos Santos: Raphaella Pester
Max Werner Drawing Prize: Jack Kinsman
Michael Farrell: Scarlet Griffiths

Horror Flick
Horror Flick, Joe Moss, 2023, moving image

©the artist

Current MFA student Joe Moss and alumni Cai Arfon Bellis, Ranny Macdonald, Jil Mandeng, Joe Moss, James Dearlove and Korallia Stergides have been selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023. 

The exhibition will launch at Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, from 30 September to 16 December 2023 before travelling to the Camden Art Centre, London, from 19 January to 31 March 2024.

Details of artists can be found on the New Contemporaries website

Zone Out
Zone Out, Małgorzata Dawidek, 2022

©the artist

Małgorzata Dawidek is showing in "spaces of (dis)connection", at Art27 Gallery, 40-42 West Crosscauseway, Edinburgh EH8 9JP until 8 November 2022.

The exhibition follows a pioneering project conducted by researchers from the University of Glasgow, Middlesex University London, and the University of Sheffield to investigate how the pandemic has affected the everyday lives of Polish key workers in the UK. This show combines newly commissioned photographic work by Małgorzata Dawidek, Paulina Korobkiewicz, and Sylwia Kowalczyk alongside anonymous testimonies given by Polish essential workers across the UK.

See the Art27 Gallery website for further details.

Image: Małgorzata Dawidek, Zone Out, 2022

Slade 2022 scholarships awardees
Slade 2022 scholarships awardees, 2022

Photographs:
Top left: Selina Scott, A Change in the Wrong Place (2021); Niki Kohandel
Middle: Gillies Adamson Semple, Round Music, 2022; Jonah Alexander, Time Time Doesn't have a Stop, 2022
Bottom: Josephine Rock & Max Norton; Blythe Cheung & Ivan Kashdan

We are delighted to announce recent graduates Gillies Adamson Semple (MFA), Jonah Alexander (BA), Josephine Rock & Max Norton (MFA), have been awarded Boise Scholarships, and Selena Scott (BFA) the Dolbey Scholarship. Current students Blythe Cheung (Blithe Germ) & Ivan Kashdan (MFA) and Niki Kohandel (BA) have been awarded Jeanne Szego Scholarships.
Many congratulations to all of our awardees, we look forward to seeing their future projects.

Photographs:
Top left: Selina Scott, A Change in the Wrong Place (2021); Niki Kohandel
Middle: Gillies Adamson Semple, Round Music, 2022; Jonah Alexander, Time Time Doesn't have a Stop, 2022
Bottom: Josephine Rock & Max Norton; Blythe Cheung & Ivan Kashdan

Poster for Parade by Ivan Kashdan
Poster for Parade by Ivan Kashdan, October 2022

Current MA student Ivan Kashdan is showing ‘Parade’, a 17m mural made over August 2022 for the Big Walls Project, organized by Jo Volley and Stephanie Nebbia. The mural responds to its setting – the internal courtyard of Lamington Group’s net zero carbon hotel. On Wednesday 19 October 2022, 3 - 6pm. ‘Parade’ will be open to the public for 3 hours at room2 Hometel, 10 Windmill Rd, Chiswick, London W4 1SD.

For more about the project see the Ivan Kashdan Big Walls Project page.

Poster, MA/MFA Interim Show 2022
Poster, MA/MFA Interim Show 2022

James Graham Keith

Open to the public 6 - 11 October
Weekdays: 9:30am - 8:30pm
Weekend: 9:30am - 6:30pm

Interim website

Poster, Objects of the Misanthropocene - Octagon Gallery, September 2022
Poster, Objects of the Misanthropocene - Octagon Gallery, September 2022

Objects of the Misanthropocene: Unearthing futures (2022), curated by former Slade Scientist-in-Residence Dean Sully, and Jo Volley, is showing at the Octagon Gallery, Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, from 26 September 2022 - 10 February 2023. See the UCL Culture website for details.

Poster, Muddy Mudlarks, Candid Arts Trust, September 2022
Poster, Muddy Mudlarks, Candid Arts Trust, September 2022

Adam Bird, Annie Lee, Ben Coleman, Christine Chua, Katie Mess, Xiao Yuhan, curated by Christine Chua, are showing in Muddy Mudlarks at Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ from 23 - 26 September 2022, 12 - 6pm.

Congratulations to Slade PhD student Małgorzata Dawidek, who has been chosen as one of 4 finalists from universities across London in this year’s Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize. She’s also been awarded a grant from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, recognising her contribution to the dissemination of Polish culture by presenting her collection to the English public. 

She will be presenting her collection as part of UCL Rare Books Club on Wednesday 27 July 2022 at UCL Special Collections' South Junction Reading Room. Drop in any time between 12:20 - 2pm.  Reserve your ticket via Eventbrite.

Animula Series
Animula Series, Hannah Morgan, 2022, hand carved alabaster, sgraffito acrylic, hand cold bent ground steel, vortex pewter cast fragments, ceramic ears. Sound work in collaboration with Rosa Slade

photo: Thomas Jenkins

Congratulations to Hannah Morgan, recipent of the the Adrian Carruthers Award 2022/23⁠.The Adrian Carruthers Award is a partnership between Acme and the Slade, generously supported by the Adrian Carruthers Memorial Fund. This award was instigated by Adrian Carruthers’ family with the goal of providing a bridge between college and professional practice for MFA graduates from Slade School of Fine Art. The award includes a bursary, rent-free studio space and mentoring programme tailored specifically to the graduate’s practice.

Hannah was selected from a shortlist of artists by a panel including independent cultural producer and commissioner Nephertiti Oboshie Schandorf.

Hannah Morgan's work consists of sculptural installation. Her degree show presentation Animula is a series of propositions, drawing on geographic entanglement of matter and organisms, emergence and decay, of a cave site in the Moray Firth, Scotland. Text written in the back of the cave feeds the structures and forms. Navigating in-between spaces, volatile timelines, and questioning material contamination in relationship to the strata.⁠

...you ate three hundred devils
...you ate three hundred devils, Katarzyna Depta-Garapich, 2022

©the artist

Katarzyna Depta-Garapich is showing  ...you ate three hundred devils, a two-person show at Wladyslaw Hasior Gallery, Tatra Museum, Zakopane, Poland. The work forms part of her PhD research and the project was supported by Malcolm Hughes and Jean Spencer Memorial Bursaries. See the Tatra Museum website for information about the show.

Slade 150 documentary trailer, directed and produced by Kate Stonehill & Justin Hardy, 2021, film
Transcript (Word doc.)

Slade@150 commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL.

The film has been commissioned by Professor Stella Bruzzi as dean of the arts and humanities, to celebrate the Slade past, present and future. Stella hired two UCL academic-filmmakers, award-winners, Kate Stonehill and Justin Hardy, to co-direct a filmic piece that ranges from 19871 to the present day, from the arrival of women students, the growth of transnationalism in the mid 20th century, and the current crises of brilliance that include graduating during the pandemic.

The film is told as a visual poem, in six distinct verses, to underline that this is a single version of the story, not the definitive alternative. A central theme is that while there are a number of world famous alumni/ae, such as Paula Rego and Antony Gormley, going back in time to Stanley Spencer and Gwen John, the Slade is proud of its entire community that has each contributed to the collective, as teachers, curators, practitioners, inside and outside the world of art.

Film running time 1 hour.

Details:
Bloomsbury Theatre
6 - 7pm
Wednesday 8 June 2022
Tickets are free, book via the Bloomsbury Theatre

Palette #2
Palette #2, Jo Volley, 2019

©the artist

Colour & Poetry: A Symposium IV, 20 – 22 March 2022, is a cross and interdisciplinary three-day online event held by the Slade in celebration of International Colour Day, World Poetry Day and World Pigment Day. The symposium hosts a range of speakers representing the arts and humanities, science and industry, drawing upon knowledge from within and outside of the UCL community, it includes presentations, readings, performance and practical workshops.

Booking via Eventbrite, further information on the Colour & Poetry page.

Slade 150 Past Present Future montage
Slade 150 Past Present Future montage, 2022

Join the KQ for this Virtual Private View in collaboration with the UCL Slade School of Art, from 3-4pm on Wednesday 9 March, to hear staff and students discuss the exhibitions Slade 150 Past, Present, Future, Testing Ground and Print Pals.  Book via Eventbrite.

UCL East Artists-in-Residence 2022, Annie Lee and Olivia Lopez
UCL East Artists-in-Residence 2022, Annie Lee and Olivia Lopez

Congratulations to current Slade students Annie Lee and Olivia Lopez who have been appointed as artists-in-residence at UCL East.

This is the third in a series of residencies offered to students at the Slade. They will spend a 12-month period observing, commenting and reflecting creatively on this significant development for UCL in east London, including the run up to the opening of the new campus this autumn.

For more information see the UCL East webpage.

Practice led PhD student Da In Park’s work Beauty Cult is showing as part of the COEX Winter Gallery at the COEX Winter Fest 2021 from 23 December 2021 - 4 January 2022. The Festival takes place across several sites: at Seoul @COEX_official Lobby, and 13 Digital Billboards including the K-POP Square, Hyundai Dept. Store, and Samsung tube station.

Malgorzata Dawidek: A Net of Emotions - Wakefield
Malgorzata Dawidek: A Net of Emotions - Wakefield, Malgorzata Dawidek, 2021

Malgorzata Dawidek: A Net of Emotions is showing at 15 Northgate, Wakefield WF1 1HD from 24 November 2021 - 27 January 2022. See the Artwalk Wakefield website for details.

Commissioned by Artwalk Wakefield, A Net of Emotions is a new light installation that investigates the conflict between human feelings and the attempt to verbally express their meaning. Read the Q&A with Malgorzata.