Heal's 2010 Slade Press Release

From Monday January 31st until Sunday February 6th 2011 the UCL Slade School of Fine Art will return to Heal’s as part of Artists in Residence 2011.

For one week only students from the prestigious Art School will take up residence in the windows of the flagship Heal’s store on Tottenham Court Road to create original and limited edition artwork and installations.

This inspirational design project of interactive windows was first launched in February 2010. Proving to be a fantastic success, this year Heal’s hopes to create the same excitement, encouraging customers to take part and be involved in the process of seeing an original piece of art being created.

Some of the highlights of the previous project included;

- Gavin Weber; 1830s wood block printing press. Gavin and other Slade students created wood cuts live over the seven days which were then printed and available to purchase.

- Alex Springer; a pinhole camera was built prior to the project, which took 200 customer portraits over the seven days. The photographs were given to each customer to keep with Alex using the negatives to create a collage.

- Nina Rodin; multi layered abstract forest of trees, painted on the glass of the store windows in a continual marathon seven day session.

- Jayne Wilton; installation ‘Catching Breath’ where 200 customer breaths were caught as copper plate etchings.

- Haruka Ono; large scale keepsake reproductions of customer sales receipts screen printed in bold primary colours.

- Jeremy Hutchison; recreation of Ambrose Heal’s 1915 office which extended the original Ambrose Heal Design and Industries Association Logo and slogan ‘Nothing Need Be Ugly’ into a series of icons and rules that playfully mocked British table manners and modernist design.

The project Artists in Residence is about linking with the art and design community which is of fundamental importance to the business. The project has potential to lead to many exciting future collaborations such as the forthcoming collection ‘Heal’s Rules’. After the success of his installation Jeremy Hutchison has since proceeded to develop his original slogan campaign, working with Heal’s to produce an exclusive ‘Heal’s Rules’ product range to be sold in-store and online from February 2011.

Heal’s was founded in 1810 and in 2010 celebrates its Bicentenary. Heal’s has seven stores located throughout the UK and an online store www.heals.co.uk selling a wide range of modern, designer and contemporary furniture, homewares, lighting, accessories and gifts for the home.

For further information about the UCL Slade School of Fine Art please contact Dave Weston in the UCL Press Office on +44 (0) 20 7679 7678 or d.weston@ucl.ac.uk

Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. UCL is the fourth-ranked university in the 2009 THES-QS World University Rankings. UCL alumni include Marie Stopes, Jonathan Dimbleby, Lord Woolf, Alexander Graham Bell, and members of the band Coldplay. UCL currently has over 12,000 undergraduate and 8,000 postgraduate students. Its annual income is over £600 million.