Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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And hold
No full textThe output is a creative project comprising an artist’s book and film called And Hold. It is the result of a collaboration between Dominique Fletcher, who designed and made the book and the choreographer, Bridget Fiske who designed the movement which was performed in the corresponding film. Research process: Adopting a phenomenological approach to research, Fletcher engaged with series of observational focus groups where we able to identify the connection between movement and the reading process to design and choreograph a book and film to bring attention the physical experience of reading. Research insights: Through the collaborative process Fletcher and Fiske able to identify the many connections between both the design and choreography process. They identified the physical books ability to communicate beyond content itself which opens up further conversations around the physical books potential to communicate, potentially as platforms for communication continue to develop. Dissemination: The output was exhibited at Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Arts, 21 September – 1 October 2018 and Book – Space, The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, 16 December 2019 – 29 February 2020
Stories we could tell: words to American popular music
No full textHow has the history of rock ‘n’ roll been told? Has it become formulaic? Or remained, like the music itself, open to outside influences? Who have been the genre’s primary historians? What common frameworks or sets of assumptions have music history narratives shared? And, most importantly, what is the cost of failing to question such assumptions? "Stories We Could Tell:Putting Words to American Popular Music" identifies eight typical strategies used when critics and historians write about American popular music, and subjects each to forensic analysis. This posthumous book is a unique work of cultural historiography that analyses, catalogues, and contextualizes music writing in order to afford the reader new perspectives on the field of cultural production, and offer new ways of thinking about, and writing about, popular music
Textile traditions and fashion education in Mexico
No full textMexico has a rich textile tradition that still has an impact on today’s art and design world. However, it can be challenging for young fashion design students to incorporate these traditions to their contemporary work without the risk of creating folkloric garments.
For indigenous communities in the south of the country textiles are an important source of income and at the same time a way to keep connected with their pre-Hispanic past.
In order to learn more about the weaving techniques of Zapotec textiles and reflect on design innovation, a workshop was organised in Universidad de Monterrey. An artisan from the Oaxaca region taught a small number of students and academics how to use frame looms creating traditional patterns.
After the workshop students had the opportunity to create their own designs based on the techniques they had learned. All of them felt very positive about the experience and stated that they would be interested to pursue further the application of textile traditions in their work
Friendship, discourse and belonging in the studio: the experiences of ‘non-traditional’ students in Design Higher Education
No full textThe national policies, operating within the United Kingdom, of widening participation for students exists within a competitive and uncertain higher education culture. The impact of this on those described as ‘second chance’ or ‘untraditional’ students who at the same time want to become designers needs to be examined. The paper analyses two narratives of continuity and discontinuity constructed by and between myself, and two post-Access to HE design students. They are people who have gained places on textile degrees with an Access to HE diploma, rather than the more conventional A ‘levels; they tend to be mature students with diverse social backgrounds (Hudson, 2009:25; Penketh and Goddard, 2008:316; Burke, 2002:81). The students were both studying textile design but at different Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Textile designers are concerned with designing for surfaces and embellishments which could include wallpapers, fabrics for fashion or interiors, flooring, and packaging. These narratives were selected from a longitudinal study (2011-14) that sought to investigate the experiences of post-Access to HE students in art and design higher education. The participants were studying on a range of creative degree programmes in various institutional contexts. Narrative inquiry was used to show the ways in which students reflected on and took stock of their learning careers, (Clandinin and Connelly, 2004; Butler-Kisber, 2010).
The analysis of the narratives draws upon some of the notions concerned with phronesis (prudence or practical wisdom). Aristotle claimed that only a person of experience can practice practical wisdom, and a young person is unlikely to have extensive life experience, (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, Chapter 8). This discussion recounts some of the critical incidents within the stories where I have noticed evidence of phronesis or at some points the absence of wise judgement. It is suggested that within the context of higher education mature adults sometimes make poor decisions leading them to act in ways that continue their sufferings. This is because they do not always exercise their potential to act with prudence, (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, Chapter 5). It is argued that friendship and acting well in the interests of others is an important aspect of phronesis, (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, Chapter 11); where all students are supported to make good decisions about their education.
The design studio space (both in its physical and virtual form) is revealed to be a place where horizontal discourse takes place which enables acts of friendship between students (Broadhead, 2015). Through friendship and a sense of belonging students are able to continue with their studies even though they meet unexpected and difficult challenges. At the same time, the studio can also be an alienating space that confuses and frustrates some students, making them consider discontinuing their course
Room 103
No full textA peer reviewed exhibition whereby artists were selected in response to their ability to illustrate or interrogate aspects of society that George Orwell would have recognised as being relevant to Orwellian themes. The exhibition was reported on in the George Orwell studies magazine and the works selected for exhibition were mentioned in the review by Glen Ibbotson. This exhibition allowed Barker to present aspects of practice that were more focused on the development of imagery that was designed to have a more ‘mythic’ presence. Images derived initially from conversations with people about society, were taken through a process of simplification through drawing and were then pushed back into the subconscious by losing and then rediscovering the image. The selected images were extracted from an iterative process that produced several drawings all related to the theme of surveillance. Working in charcoal on hand made paper also allowed the images to develop a more materially focused message, the deep blacks and rough surface texture suggestive of an almost animal or animist presence, these imaginative drawings being derived from drawings that were in their first manifestation objective drawings of rocks
Making the familiar unfamiliar
No full textThe output is a creative project. Blagg used key terminology from texts on the uncanny and attempted to apply them in a practical manner in the manufacture of familiar objects, investigating whether uncanny objects can be made using a recognisable systematic process. Research process: Blagg ran a series of workshops and exhibitions exploring audience interaction with and responses to the artefacts. Blagg tested ideas about how different audiences interacted with the work, developing activities, questioning and discussion techniques. He was interested in how audiences passing through the exhibition responded to the artefacts in comparison to focus group participants. Research insights: Blagg’s work focuses on everyday objects and how they have the potential to become uncanny. How familiar, seemingly innocuous, mundane and trivial pieces of design are able to alienate, frustrate or simply evoke uncertainty within their audiences. The participants did not require an in-depth knowledge of the uncanny to partake in this session. Blagg was able to gain user insight through interaction, play and discussion. This research added to his proposed understanding of certain concepts within the uncanny such as intellectual uncertainty and the doppelgänger, the evaluation and discussion of these notions suggested a more complex view of links between uncertainty and interactions with objects. Blagg was interested in applying a more pragmatic approach using hand held objects to explore the vagaries of ideas surrounding the uncanny, could intellectual uncertainty be felt or described by participants through a more measured approach. Dissemination: The output was disseminated through a series of workshops and exhibitions including: • Making the familiar unfamiliar, Leeds City Art Gallery. 12 May 2018. • Playtime, Leeds City Art Gallery. 5 December 2017
Untitled I and II, from A Brief Arrangement
No full textThis output is an artefact comprising two photograms. The photograms are taken from an ongoing body of work titled Casting Light, which explores the relationship between photography and sculpture through the projection and manipulation of light through the production of photograms, luminograms and installation pieces. Research process: Using a camera-less photographic technique, for A Brief Arrangement pieces of card were balanced temporarily on top of photographic paper and exposed briefly to light; the resulting prints play with the conventional visual language of photography, the translation of three dimensions into two, and the expectation that the photograph yield transparently to its subject. Research insights: Taking this experimental and process-driven approach disrupts the conventional distance between the photograph and its subject. Embracing chance, gesture and the unforeseen allows for the possibility of destabilising the authoritative eye of the photographer, disrupting their relationship to an identifiable ‘subject’. Dissemination: This output was disseminated as part of the Make Good exhibition at Leeds Arts University in September 2018
Gerald McCann: the rediscovery of a fashion designer
No full textThe research for this article was initiated by the discovery of the archive of international fashion designer, Gerald McCann, hidden in a garage in Fleetwood, Lancashire, UK. The contents of the archive revealed a treasure trove of press cuttings, photographs, fashion drawings and interviews as well as designs and costings from a once well-known designer, whose significance to the global fashion industry is sparsely documented and largely forgotten. This article reveals the history of the designer, who graduated from the tutelage of Professor Madge Garland at the Royal College of Art in London in the 1950s and forged a career at the heart of ‘Swinging London’ in the 1960s. He was lured to the USA in the 1970s, returning to the UK in the 1990s as a designer for House of Fraser and Harrods. The research constructs the first significant assessment of McCann’s position in global fashion and the value and relevance of his legacy, as well as exploring the rationale for documenting the history of forgotten fashion designer
Consumed: stilled lives - Blyth Gallery
No full textConsumed: Stilled Lives plays with the traditional concept of still-life painting, which grew in popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries. Often featuring silver plates, ornate glassware and expensive foodstuffs such as shellfish and exotic fruit, still life paintings became a fashionable way for the Dutch and Flemish to illustrate their wealth. When interpreted using emblematic symbolism the paintings represent a conflicting relation with material wealth. In response to this reading Woolley produces still-life objects that suggest contradictory relationships to contemporary consumer culture. Drawing on both definitions of the term ‘consume’ (to ingest and to purchase) she uses food still-life photography to represent different characters and positions in relation to capitalist society. What we eat and how we eat are symbols of our wider consumer habits. We are what we consume. In addition to photographs and installation this exhibition presents a series of still life objects installed in vitrines. The Celebrate installations suggest the conviviality of a feast but the materials used to make the food disrupt this reading. The objects were produced in response to research into the visualisation of food in eating disorders. Food is imagined to be drained of colour and aroma to help suppress desire. The food is inedible, eradicating its value as food. In the white installation (objects produced in 2012 with supported by a training grant from the Arts Council of Wales), the food is made of the same porcelain as the containers, raising the food to the status of a crafted and delicate object. The grey party food is made of concrete, a common, inexpensive material. The black banquet is made from plastic, material that will not break-down, it is indigestible. The different materials evoke the shifting status of food in the lives of eating disorder sufferers, in turn object of disgust and obsession. Two new installations ‘Barmecide Feast’ devised for the exhibition at Blyth Gallery, are named after Barmecide, a prince in Arabian Nights. Barmecide invites a beggar to a feast, but serves only imaginary food. The beggar plays along, acting as though he were intoxicated by the imaginary wine and hitting the host during a drunken brawl. Eventually the beggar is rewarded with real food. The Barmecide feast has become a name for situations, in which promises are made but not delivered and acts of generosity that are no more than illusions. In the installations the illusion of plenitude and extravagance is undermined by the material of the food. The overabundance of newspaper headlines are intended to leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth, and invoke ideas of food insecurity
Still life, vanitas and commodity culture
No full textSymposium paper prepared for Expanding Communities of Sustainable Practice at Leeds Arts University in Nov 2018. During the symposium delegates visited the exhibition Still Life: Things Devouring time. The paper forms an introduction to the themes and ideas in the exhibition, in relation to sustainability and engagement. Still Life: Things Devouring Time is a group exhibition that focuses on the visual representation of vanitas, symbolic objects that warn against excess and the shortness of time. The exhibition brings together a seventeenth-century painting by Willem Kalf and contemporary artists, working in diverse media, who respond to consumer culture and the social, environmental and sustainability issues it produces today. Objects made from non-biodegradable materials and the human inclination to collect possessions contradict the concept of tempus edax rerum, time as devourer of all things