From a very young age, each of us learns about winged creatures such as angels, dragons and fairies. But how many of us stop to ask exactly how these creatures are able to fly in the first place?

This was precisely the question that Professor Roger Wotton (UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment) sought to answer in his witty, playful lecture, Zoology and Mythology: Looking at Angels, Fairies and Dragons, on 16 November.

Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon, about 1470 © The National Gallery

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Conservative politicians struggling not to mention Europe at this month’s party conference might take some solace from the fact that the country’s ambivalent relationship with the continent dates back at least half a millennium.

England’s “two-way pull” towards isolationism on the one hand and exploration on the other can be traced to the mid-15th century, according to Professor Helen Hackett, who gave a whistlestop introduction to the period through the media of contemporary art and books during a lunch-hour pop-up talk at UCL Art Museum on 11 October.

The talk, which showcased highlights from the exhibition ‘Word and Image: Early Modern Treasures at UCL’, was entitled ‘England Looking Outwards’, and some stunning artefacts had been brought into the light of day from UCL Art Collections and UCL Library Special Collections to exemplify the itchy feet of our Early Modern forebears (The term ‘Early Modern’ refers to the period 1450–1800, and forms the focus of the new UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, of which Professor Hackett is Co-Director).

Click on the player below to watch a short audio slideshow about highlights from the ‘Word and Image’ exhibition:

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“I have been at Slade for two years now, and my personal experience of the show was many-layered. On the one hand, I was viewing the work of friends and fellow students with whom I had regularly exchanged opinions and criticism in seminars over several years,” reports UCL Slade school student and artist Tom Rees on the UCL Slade BA Fine Art Summer Show.

Slade exhibit by Kitty Clark

Some of the work I had seen before, having experienced it first during the weekly ‘crits’ that form the backbone of students’ shared development at the Slade. Seeing this work fixed or projected within what is normally studio space, the sensation was of a door having shut between us: I was now more a viewer than a participant. I felt this while watching Tom Clark’s ‘White Paper’, a video piece which evoked something between a child’s first impressions of the world, and a graduating artist conscious of the expectations upon him. (more…)