Colour & Poetry Symposium

In March 2019, a cross-functional and interdisciplinary event was held at the UCL Slade School of Fine Art to celebrate International Colour Day and World Poetry Day. It included all things colourful and poetic and often both, from talks, poetry readings, to making and mixing pigments.

Exhibition

At the heart of the symposium 2019, there was an exhibition, The Nomenclature of Colours (named after Werner’s 1814 Nomenclature of Colour – a taxonomic guide to the colours of the natural world)
Slade staff, students, alumni and guests who were invited to produce a single work each with the title of the show being the theme for the work.
The symposium was conceived and organised by Jo Volley, Slade Deputy Director (Projects) with the exhibition The Nomenclature of Colours curated by Stephanie Nebbia, artist and Global TFAC manager, Colart.

Colour and surrounding research

While the symposium was happening, there were seminars relate to colour and its surrounding studies. Speakers were: Prof Michael Berkowitz, Malina Busch, Jane Bustin, Prof David Dobson, Taylor Enoch, Dr Roland Francois-Lack, Liz Lawes, Prof Andy Leak, Antoni Malinowski, Dr Onya McCausland, Dr Dimitris Mylonas, Dr Ruth Siddall, Dr Henrietta Simson, Estelle Thompson, Dr Edward Winters.

Selection of prints and Early Manuscripts

There was an opportunity to observe a selection of prints from Josef Alber’s first limited edition of Interaction of Color and Jean Spencer’s Colour Archive.
As well, Dr Tabitha Tuckett, UCL Rare-Books Librarian created a display of early manuscripts presented in the Special Collections Reading Room.

Poetry reading

As part of last year seminar, poetry reading was one of the activities organised. Poetry readings were by Mataio Austin Dean, Rhun Maredudd Jones, Prof Sharon Morris, Fabian Peak, George Szirtes and Caroline de Lannoy’s Colour Tale was performed by the Slade Colour Tale Choristers.

Prof David Dobson, UCL Earth Sciences, talked on the invention of his new blue and demonstrated the making of synthetic Vivanite and Jo Volley led a workshop on Iron Gall Ink. Artist Ian Rowlands led a group of 20 participants in a colour mixing exercise using a range of Winsor & Newton oil paints. Mark Cann, Colart Technical Excellence Manager, gave a talk on Winsor & Newton’s Cadmium Free Watercolours including some of the Liquitex range.

Final panel discussion

The two days event finished with a panel discussion between art, science, philosophy and industry to launch the new UCL Materials Innovation Network as an opportunity to look at material innovation through an interdisciplinary lens to showcase how the arts in collaboration with other specialisms leads to innovation.