Re-Launch

UCL Art Museum is delighted to announce Re-Launch, the inaugural exhibition that marks the reopening of our space after a programme of improvements.

Re-Launch presents a selection of objects, prints and video made in response to our collections and the theme of re-launch. Its contributors hail from the Slade School of Fine Art and have participated as students in our celebrated annual Slade/UCL Art Museum collaborations over the course of the past six years. While some artists investigate the sculptures, prints and drawings within our collections, others experiment with the physical spaces of the Museum.

Amongst the works in the show visitors will find literal references to the notion of re-launch such as Katja Larsson’s cast digger bucket representing the idea of construction and development. Ian Giles’ Leap of Faith is a revisited video work that expands upon Yoshikuni’s Bat and Full Moon, an early 20th-century Japanese print in the collection.

Alongside the works by participating artists, over 8000 works of art remain co-present. With a world class-collection of prints and drawings by past masters ensconced on-site in cabinets and boxes, and plaster models by the renowned neoclassicist John Flaxman on open display, visitors are reminded of the art collections’ Victorian origins. At UCL Art Museum that which is visible is in constant dialogue with the hidden, bringing to the fore the tensions between access to art and the regulation of its visibility.

‘Re-Launch reflects UCL Art Museum’s long-standing interrogation of the relation between the historic and the contemporary’, says Dr Nina Pearlman, UCL Art Museum Manager. ‘The exhibition collapses notions of art-historical past and present, something that continues to inform our partnerships and collaborations as we move forward’.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme that includes events led by participating artists and a symposium in May in partnership with Zabludowicz Collection, during which leading academics, curators, collectors and artists will examine issues around collecting emerging art practice.

A limited edition printed catalogue will be available alongside the exhibition.