10.00 Introduction to International Colour Day & World Poetry with Jo Volley, Slade Deputy Director (Projects) & Coordinator Material Research Project & Network

10.05 Keynote: Colours we cannot see: A talk inspired from a conversation with Dr Ruth Siddall

Daren Caruana is the Scientist in Residence at the Slade School of Fine Art for 2021 and  Professor of Physical Chemistry at UCL Chemistry. My research is mainly focused on interaction of electric charge and chemistry in various forms. In particular, I investigate the properties of flames and other plasmas due to their interesting electrical conductivity. I have broad interests, ranging from analytical chemistry and biochemistry to pigments and oil painting.  

10.30 Poetry Reading

George Szirtes is a poet and translator. Author of some 30 books, he has won various prizes for his work in both fields, including The T S Eliot Prize for Poetry and the International Booker Prize for translation, and in 2021 he won the James Tait Black Prize for biography with ‘The Photographer at Sixteen’. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

11.00 The Art of Attention: Recreating The Court of Gayumars, a historical Persian Miniature Painting

In this presentation Vaishali Prazmari will give an informal tour of the painting as she paints it, talking about whatever falls under her brush at that moment. Each time she gives this 'tour' it is different.

Vaishali incorporates Persian, Indian and Chinese elements into her work. This cultural richness has a historical tradition dating back to the Silk Road and is epitomized in Islamic, Safavid Persian and Mughal Indian miniature paintings. She integrates both the ancient and modern in her own works and brings traditional miniature painting to life for a wider audience through her various roles as artist, educator and curator.

11.30 Shimmering : an informal conversation between Jai Chuhan and Sharon Morris.

Jai Chuhan creates expressionistic paintings showing the human form in room-like spaces, exploring the female gaze, inspired by her position as an Indian-born British artist. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and her work has included being a Professor at Liverpool John Moores University. Her paintings have been in solo and group exhibitions internationally including in Sweden, Italy, China, and in the UK at venues including Tate Liverpool;  Barbican, London; Pitshanger Gallery, London; Liverpool Biennial and HOME for Asia Triennial Manchester. Her paintings and drawings are in collections including Cartwright Hall, Bradford; Arts Council Collection and Tate. 

Sharon Morris, artist & poet, Professor and Slade Deputy Director (Academic) and until recently head of the Slade PhD programme.

11.45 How the past can inform the present: through the use of the notebooks of 19th century chemist George Field, in particular Chromatography; or, a Treatise on Colours and Pigments, and of their Powers in Painting  (published by Winsor & Newton).

Stephanie Nebbia discusses how looking at the past can inspire new colours.

Stephanie Nebbia is an artist,  curator and TFAC Global Manager,  Colart. She studied fine art BA and MA at the UAL. Residencies in Turin, Berlin and Newcastle. Exhibitions include: Rope Walk open, Lincoln. Straight from the studio, CC gallery London. National Print openLondon, winner Badger Press award. TAG, Group show, Tobacco Art Gallery, London. ‘Exposition Provisoire’Schloss Katzenzungen, Sud Tyrol, Italy. Residence Delloye, Valenciennes, France. Maison de L’art et de la Communication, Sallaumines, France. Artsenal, Issy Les Moulineaux, France. ‘Titre Venir’ Acte De Naissance La Rotonde a Bethune, France. Cubitt St Gallery, London. La Maison de la Culture de Tournai, Belgium. L’institut Francais de Barcelone, Spain. ‘Diptik’ St Andre, Lille. Mauberge museum, Cultural centre Bruay le Buissiere, Museum of Niort, France. ‘Project Nebenstrecke’, Berlin, Germany.

12.05 Poetry Reading

Korallia Stergides (b.1993, Cyprus) is an interdisciplinary artist. She uses autobiographical narrative and ecological fact to create new myths and explores the embodiment of a place between reality and fiction. Her improvisations are collated into an archive; content is used to progress research and recycled as memory in eventual works. Korallia’s work explores the vital politics of care in an interdependent world and emphasizes nonhuman agencies. Her choreographic enquiries are framed through an interweaving of poetry, performance, installation, printmaking, photography film and sound; inviting the audience into her research and experiments - reimagining the intimacy of our interspecies relationships and home.

12.15 Palettes – the London adventures of Rimbaud and Verlaine

Andy Leak Emeritus Professor, UCL French Dept

12.30 Gardens of Desire

Latifah A. Stranack is a Slade graduate who paints the women that she encounters into bold goddesses, symbolising and celebrating the child, maiden, mother and wise old woman. She creates her heroines to explore her own memories, mythology, and issues in the modern world.

13.00-14.00 Lunch break

14.00  Recovering the art of hand-painting magic lantern glass slides

Dr Vanessa Otero  is a Researcher at the Department of Conservation and Restoration of the NOVA School of Science and Technology, Lisbon (Portugal). She holds a PhD in Conservation Science and her research is focused on the study of artists’ materials, including their historical production, colour stability and the analytical methods used to identify them in heritage objects. For the last 10 years, she has been investigating the Winsor & Newton 19th Century Archive Database to advance knowledge on the conservation of our cultural heritage.

14.30 Colour in Buildings for People Living with Dementia 

Helena Howard (she/her) is a practising architect at Hawkins\Brown in London and has conducted project-based research into the application of colour in the built environment, with a specific focus on the use of colour in the Healthcare sector, both to improve visual accessibility but also to infuse space with joy and delight. She has worked as part of the project team delivering the new UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and UK Dementia Research Headquarters.

15.00 Word as Art: Beauty in the Margins. 

A presentation by Sarah Pipkin about UCL Special Collection's exhibition exploring the permeable borders between art and writing.

Sarah Pipkin (she/her) is the Outreach and Exhibitions Coordinator for UCL Special Collections and curator of Special Collection’s exhibition ‘Word as Art: Beauty in the Margins.’ She has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and over ten years’ experience working in academic and special collections libraries. 

15.30 Paintings Fade like Flowers

Kimberly Selvaggi is currently Conservator in Residence at the Slade School of Fine Art. She was originally trained in the fine arts before attending the conservation program at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where she has been pursuing a career in the practice of heritage and arts conservation with a special interest in dyes, paints, and pigments and their use in material culture.

16.00 Blue. I mean green. Blue, green.

Egidija Čiricaitė is a PhD candidate at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL), working on an interdisciplinary research with UCL Linguistics. She is an artist and poet, with a special interest in artist publishing. Her research and practice explore metaphor and its effects at the intersection of language and the visual. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, amongst these the V&A in London, the Bibliotheque Kandinsky-Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Museum Meermanno in Amsterdam.  

16.30 Finding & Found Colour: The Materiality of Abstraction, Living in the Caribbean

Estelle Thompson, is a British abstract painter working with optics, colour and material presence, also commissioned to incorporate colour in the built environment of public buildings such as the Milton Keynes Theatre and most recently the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford in 2020. She has exhibited and curated internationally and in 2019 established The Brighton Storeroom, Barbados, a space to showcase and support artists from the Caribbean and diaspora. She is an Associate Professor and was Head of Graduate Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art from 2018-21. 

All times are approximate and GMT.

The advertised programme may be subject to change.

Questions will be taken through the chat if time permitting.

Recordings will be made for internal use only.

This event is generously supported by Colart.