Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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Expanding communities of sustainable practice: 15 October 2016: symposium proceedings
No full textDuring this one-day symposium, we focused on the importance of collaboration and networks in creating art and design practices that contribute to eco-social sustainability. We were especially interested in complicating as well as expanding the notions of sustainability within art and design education and how they contribute to engaging the public in sustainable and progressively transformative eco-social practices. We are convinced that sustainability is also about meshing up and intersecting practice and theory, thus the day encompassed theoretical and practical engagements with sustainability – always with a focus on making this day productive in terms of building alliances, projects and shared commitments between the people attending
Dollhouse architecture: Leonora Carrington and children’s literature
No full textIn almost every account of Leonora Carrington’s complex creative imagination, her obsession with the fairy tales and children’s literature of her English childhood is mentioned. Her wealthy family background is also often commented upon as something she would ultimately rebel against. However, rarely are such sources and roots analysed in relation to her wider oeuvre as critical informants. Carrington’s reading practice in the nursery extended into her adult writing and picture-making. This article explores how she used the fairy tale for avant-garde purposes, and considers the persistent themes of the night nursery, dollhouse and rocking horse in her iconography
Garry Barker: piscean promises - Leeds Arts University
No full textAn exhibition of ceramics selected from the 2017 Workshop Press exhibition Piscean Promises. Piscean Promises is an allegorical installation consisting of 200 individually made ceramic fish, usually exhibited alongside a series of allegorical drawings that are designed to highlight the plight of marine life due to the damage that human beings have wrought upon the oceans. This curator’s choice exhibit, was focused on a selection taken from the original ceramic installation
A nonagenarian virago: quoting Carrington in contemporary practice
No full textThis chapter explores long-term research on Leonora Carrington and contemporary art. A magpie for such “debris” herself, Carrington reaches us imbued with meaning, and it is striking how younger generations of artists have responded to her legacies. The chapter presents the findings of a related research exhibition curated by McAra at Leeds Arts University, Leonora Carrington/Lucy Skaer (15 July-2 September 2016). Here experimental media and performance objects were juxtaposed with Carrington’s primary material of paintings and etchings. In the hands of this subsequent artistic generation, “Carrington” was summoned through the metaphor of a curated, collective séance. For example, her novel The Hearing Trumpet (1976) became the starting point for a dialogic performance by Lynn Lu and Samantha Sweeting (2011) in which secret stories are gathered and whispered. Their version of the “antique” hearing trumpet was displayed as a conceptual heirloom. In 2006 Lucy Skaer embarked on a trip to Mexico City where she encountered the elderly Carrington. Their coexistence caused Skaer to make a body of work in and through “Carrington,” including a 16mm film homage Leonora: The Joker (2006). After Carrington passed away, Skaer returned to Mexico and took a series of photographs of Carrington’s front door, Harlequin is as Harlequin Does (2012). The exhibition was reviewed by Corridor 8, Art Monthly, and State of the Arts. McAra’s research on the quotation of “Carrington” as a medium occurred at a timely moment around the centenary of Carrington’s birth. McAra was invited to Mexico City to present on this research, and subsequently as keynote speaker at Edge Hill University. The essay collection McAra co-edited with Jonathan Eburne has been reviewed by Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, The Burlington Magazine and Woman’s Art Journal. It is used on courses including senior honours “Wanton Women Dada/Surrealism” at Royal Holloway University
Latent voices: how public art of the past can speak in the present
No full textThe article reflects upon two recent exhibitions of past public art ¬- City Sculpture Projects 1972 at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2017) and Out There: Our Post War Public Art (2016) at Bessie Surtee’s House, Newcastle (Historic England, 2016). Wondering why these venues or organisations wanted to re-visit these projects in the present-moment, the article speculates upon changing notions of the public and upon the increasingly individualised nature of contemporary neoliberal society. It posits that part of art’s role in the present moment is to resist the narcissism that consumer capitalism encourages and to invite us to re-envision or see the world form other points of view
Running into each other: run! run! run! a festival and a collaboration
No full textartists and geographers frequently work together. the article explores one such ongoing collaboration. centering on a festival, RUN! RUN! RUN! International Festival of Running #r3fest organized by an artist and a geographer, it explores the productive antagonisms that working through and along disciplinary borders produces.
#r3fest was held at the Slade Research Centre. It was supported by UCL through a JFIGs grant. Further support was provided from the AHRC and Falmouth University
Notes on design education and (prefigurative) work politics
No full textIn this text we are reporting back on the practice-based research Precarity Pilot. The starting point for this research is the fact that in today’s Europe, design graduates are entering into a landscape of precarious work. This research-in-progress thus inquires into how formal and informal design education can be a space where to empower young designers to transformatively engage with the precarious work politics of their profession. As a mid-way result, here we present a series of didactic proposals and strategic questions for how issues of socio-economic precariousness can be transformatively addressed. This result is based on a series of half-day workshops we have been running between 2014-2016 with design students, recent graduates and design educators in the UK, Germany, Poland and Italy. We address these proposals to educators, managers and students alike as we are convinced that everyone involved in education has agency over how the learning process unfolds
Consumed: stilled lives - Ruskin 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 artworks 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 her art work photography is both subject and medium: she produces photographs in response to adverts. Some of the artworks in the exhibition are produced using commercial methods. For example, ‘Hysterical Selfies’, is a series of pop-up promotional banners. Site specific works are also produced for commercial advertising spaces on billboards and social networking sites. Consumed: Stilled Lives comprises 6 series of mounted and framed still-life photographs and a sound piece. The exhibition at the Ruskin Gallery included a new series of work Relics made for the exhibition. The exhibition was accompanied by a symposium, Animate Objects: Encounters Between People and Things, that brought together academics from diverse disciplines to discuss commodity culture and our varied relations to objects. The symposium was organised and co-conveyed by Dr Ellen Sampson and Dr Dawn Woolley. (13th October 2017)
Freedomination billboard and soapbox performance
No full textCommisioned by RedBoard for their Freedom themed billboard series that was a part of Hull 2017 City of Culture Creative Communities Programme. The billboard artwork was produced and the performance idea devised in collaboration with Watne during a research trip to Kansas City in July 2017, supported by a travel grant from Artist Newsletter (a-n).
For the billboard programme RedBoard asked: What does freedom mean to you? What does it look like to you? Does freedom really exist? Is freedom allowed to be expressed? Is freedom an understood word? Utopia? Watne and Woolley’s design addresses these questions by problematising the notion that freedom is a neutral or intrinsically good thing. They ask: whose freedom? Are we all equally free? Freedom and domination appear to be mutually exclusive concepts. The artwork aims to draw attention to this binary to expose and explore a grey area in between. The freedom to act without restraint can oppress others. The idea of freedom is evoked paradoxically by those in power to go against the best interest of others. Loss of freedom could be the price of inclusion and citizenship.
To accompany the billboard the artists produced a performance that underpins the ideas behind the design. With the help of friends, organisers, and city of culture volunteers they took over a street corner in Hull and turned it into a temporary speaker’s corner. Woolley read a script (manifesto!) written in collaboration with Watne. The participatory performance encouraged members of the audience to get on a soapbox and give a speech on any subject. As individuals expressed their freedom of speech it became increasingly difficult to hear what they were saying, demonstrating the concept ‘freedomination’. The soapboxes were also different heights, suggesting a hierarchy of ideas, and that the benefits of freedom aren’t enjoyed equally
Voices from the strike
No full textThis book chapter draws upon original audio–visual research undertaken by Esther Johnson and Deborah Ballin as part of a project titled Echoes of Protest. This research investigates the legacy of being involved in significant protest movements from a child’s perspective and aims to understand the role protest can play in the lives of children, and to explore its aftermath.
The project included the collection of oral history testimonies and photography from those involved in the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike. The chapter highlights a perspective of the strike that has seldom been explored. Stories collected are from adults remembering what it was like to grow up as a child during the strike. Contributors articulate their experience with a maturity they may have been unable to express as a child. The text follows our methodology and findings, and discusses our editing process.
The audio–visual research was presented in an exhibition titled A share of a pensioner’s Christmas ‘Bonus’ presented at The People’s History Museum, Manchester, from December 2015–January 2016; and the National Coalmining Museum, Wakefield, November 2016–January 2017. Both exhibitions included a curated selection of artefacts from the Hilary Wainwright collection held at People’s History Museum