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Craft: An American History
No full textAt the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology-while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's “maker movement.” From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt.
Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted
The New Pre-Raphaelites
Get PDFA display of photographs by Sunil Gupta that explore the legacy of the Pre-Raphaelites and their influence on contemporary art, to accompany the major exhibition of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's portraits at the Holburne Museum.
In 2008, London-based artist and photographer Sunil Gupta (b.1953, New Delhi) was commissioned by Autograph gallery in London, to produce a body of work connected to LGBTQI+ rights in India. The resulting series of ten photographs referenced the struggle against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Instituted during British rule in the 1860s, it criminalised gay sex between consenting adults and remained in place until it was finally repealed by the Supreme Court of India in September 2018.
Known as the Anti-Sodomy Law, Section 377 facilitated the arbitrary arrest and exploitation of LGBTQI+ Indians. In turn, this led to a closeted culture where alternate sexuality was pushed underground and made researching and treating serious medical problems such as STDs and HIV/AIDS extremely difficult.
Gupta's photographs allude to works by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an artistic movement founded in 1848, only a few years before Section 377 was introduced. He says: "I was struck first by the vividness of the [paintings'] colours and then by the ambivalent sexuality of their subject matter."
Inspired by the Tate's collection, Gupta invited friends and fellow activists to model for him and re-enact the original works; at the time their involvement constituted an act of resistance, courage, and commitment, much like their UK counterparts who campaigned against Section 28 (in effect between 1988 and 2003 in England and Wales).
Through Gupta's lens, well-known paintings such as Henry Wallis' Chatterton (1856), Edouard Manet's Olympia (1863), Sir John Everett Millais' Mariana (1851) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Paolo and Francesca da Rimini (1867), take on a new meaning as he reinterprets them. The New Pre-Raphaelites is representative of Gupta's work, which spans three decades and documents his own life and involvement with issues of gender, sexuality, displacement and his own diagnosis in 1995 of being HIV positive. This display of tightly composed images effectively force the viewer to confront a juxtaposition with an alternative social reality. Also, as the Pre-Raphaelites observed in the 1800s, Gupta's photographs transpose the private into the public. In Gupta's photographs, these 'truths' become gay couples, single men and women, and groups posing romantically, glimpsed in moments of passion and emotion. Combining symbolism and realism - just like the paintings that inspired them - the images concentrate on the real people who occupy the space of each print and, in some instances, show what would be deemed criminal intent according to Section 377, but most will recognise as an act of love.
Richly coloured, textured and patterned backdrops highlight the sitters’ colourful costumes, and their occasional nudity, Gupta demonstrates his eye for detail. It is important to note that the women portrayed in The New Pre-Raphaelites were at the time living on the margins of society. Although technically free from accusations of committing the crime of sodomy, before 2018 they risked being hunted down and, in some cases, burnt alive by their families who would rather see them dead than face social ostracism
Plangency (for Cello and Electronics)
Get PDFPlangency was originally commissioned by Wiltshire Creative to celebrate 850 years of Salisbury Cathedral for the Makers' Tale, co-curated by Mirka Golden-Hann and Loucia Manopoulou. The piece is inspired by the acoustics of the cathedral; the role of the cello is to ‘sound’ or resonate a reverberance, with additional electronics emphasising the idiosyncratic nature of the cathedral space.
The structure of Salisbury Cathedral is astonishing in many ways, be that through scale, age, craftsmanship or historic and religious significance. However, the way in which sounds echo, decay and resonate within the space is equally as meaningful. As part of Makers’ Tale, composers Dr Harry Whalley and Akira Brown are joining forces in an intriguing new composition that takes the acoustics ‘out’ of the Cathedral into other spaces.
Whalley explains: ‘We start by creating a loud noise like the bursting of a balloon. This sound has every frequency and so we can measure with microphones how the sounds decay over time. This ‘impulse-response’ can then be used to recreate the reverberance of the Cathedral. We also measured the particular resonances and found some really interesting results which will be worked into a new composition.’
Makers’ Tale is an exciting project. It brings together things seemingly disparate and different and presents their fundamental connections through the long gaze of time.The amazing history of Salisbury Cathedral includes makers from so many disciplines, textiles, metal, wood, glass and of course stone.Together, they have created a living monument that stands still and quiet. Yet, it is never really silent
Of glass and mirrors: life in reverse
Get PDFMy essay 'Of Glass and Mirrors: Life in Reverse' accompanies, contextualises and responds to a series of photographs published in the photo book 'Through the (Looking) Glass' by photographer and artist Carole Evans. The photo book features a series of portraits of Evans' south London neighbours taken through their front room windows during the first lockdown of the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020
The plastic of clothing and the construction of visual communication and interaction: a semiotic examination of the eighteenth- century French dress
Get PDFThe article presents an account of the visual relations created by gar- ments through their plastic formants, examining the role played by form, material, and composition in creating body hierarchies that produce prescribed behaviors between different subjects. The work dissects the concept of thematic role from Greimasian theory, investigating the manners in which an eighteenth-century wedding dress presents the chaining of programs governing materials, garments, and the body in the production of narrative interactions between subjects. The work utilizes a combination of Greimas’ method with the Visual Semiotics continued by Floch and Oliveira, as well as Hammad’s Semiotics of Space which permit the exam of optical relations created in the body through its clothing – relations that can be read as manifesting values that are both historically and socially determined, or in the act of apprehension of an object. The eighteenth century provides a type of “original” case, whose results are pertinent to a broader study of the relations between body and dress: the work concludes with the un- derstanding that Fashion changes through the transit of values and roles invested in the body and dress – a set of changes closely linked to the construction of social roles
Hello Earth (Zhengzhou, China)
Get PDFAn algorithmic composition using code to generate an exploratory visual 'output' representing unity across all the nations of the earth
Circular Ocean (multi-component output)
No full textSince 2014 The Centre for Sustainable Design's developing focus on circular business models has led to CfSD’s involvement in two projects funded by the EU Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) programme, Circular Ocean (2015-18) and Blue Circular Economy (2018-22), which builds on Circular Ocean’s aims and insights. In Circular Ocean Charter worked with UCA doctoral student Rhiannon Hunt and CfSD’s Scott Keiller. They collaborated with partners in Scotland, Denmark, Ireland and Norway to address the Entrepreneurship strand of the NPA programme, researching how start-ups and SMEs can reuse waste fishing nets and ropes in new product development. CfSD, although not in the NPA area, was brought into the project to contribute specialist expertise in eco-innovation and SMEs. Charter and CfSD published 6 research reports and feasibility studies and produced a new Circular-Ocean-specific version of CfSD’s Eco-innovation Guide for Start-ups, Entrepreneurs & SMEs
1- Circular Ocean WP3.1: Potential applications of 3D Printing (3DP) in the recycling of Fishing Nets & Ropes (FNR’s)
2- SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS OF PORTRELATED FEASIBILITY STUDIES RELATED TO THE COLLECTION AND RECYCLING OF WASTE FISHING NETS AND ROPES IN GREENLAND, IRELAND, NORWAY AND SCOTLAND
3- Circular Ocean: Eco-innovation Guide for Start-ups, Entrepreneurs & Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)
4- Products from Waste Fishing Nets Accessories, Clothing, Footwear, Home Ware, Recreation
5- Knowledge Base Report Booklet on knowledge base related to eco-innovation and circular economy of used fishing nets, ropes and components (FNRCs).
6- Community Workshops Potential places and spaces to create and develop products from used fishing nets, ropes and components (FNRCs
Innovative Textiles Curation: Enabling Arts Organisations to Deliver Institutional Strategies (Impact)
Get PDFProf. Lesley Millar has led five curatorial projects (thematically-related and all using a common methodology) with 10 public arts organisations, creating 6 exhibitions at 8 UK and European venues. These organisations are the beneficiaries of the impact. In each of the projects, Millar’s research has led to change in:
the development of new creative practice and approaches
the development of new collaborations and connections with greater global reach
the ability to reach bigger and wider audiences.
In turn, impact in these areas has allowed each of the participating museums, galleries and arts organisations to fulfil their institutional strategy, aims or mission more fully
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