Slade Artists In Residence at Heal's (Day One)

Today, myself and 9 other students from UCL Slade School of Fine Art were selected to take up residence in the front windows of the famous Heal's Store on Tottenham Court Road. We will be present until 6pm on Sunday 6th February, with some of us making art in store, while others display and invite the public to have a go at making some art and learning something new.


Over the week I will be making small oil paintings and sketches of the store's product displays, these will gradually fill a large wall space so by the end of the week there will be plenty to look at. I will be working from photographs that I have taken of the displays and decided to use the products as my subject matter because in my studio practice I'm interested in the ideas of ownership of objects and emotional attachment. I am also interested in shop window displays and the contrast of a display in a second hand shop to a store such as Heal's selling brand new products.


Arriving in store this morning, I was overwhelmed by the 'fishbowl' experience of working in a window. I felt very exposed to begin with and very aware of the public passing by, however I got used to it pretty quickly and got down to work. The following images are of the beginnings of my display and work I made today.

You can keep updated with all our progress at the Heal's Blog (see attached link) and it would be great if you came down to the store and saw it all for yourselves!