Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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From fibre to fabric: creating innovative learning perspectives on Yorkshire’s wool heritage through collaborative practice
No full text26:86 Collective Pripyat Exhibition
No full textIn April 2016 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. A group of artists called the 26:86 Collective, including photographers and graphic designers, spent a week in the Chernobyl Exclusion zone visiting the abandoned town of Pripyat as well as the power station itself. On returning to the UK, a body of work was created in response to our visit. This work was exhibited in Middlesbrough in The House of BLAH BLAH between 2nd December 2016 and 12th January 2017, and Hartlepool Art Gallery between 9th September 2017 and 11th November 2017. The Work produced by Nicholas Young as part of the 26:86 Collective used the methodology of his Reductionist Manifesto to tell the story of the Chernobyl disaster. To make the story more relevant to a 21st century UK audience, he used a map of Great Britain showing all the working nuclear power stations on the 26th April 1986. And the 50 mile exclusion zones that would have taken effect in the aftermath of a meltdown like the one at Chernobyl. In the Manifesto, Rectuctionism is defined as ‘story telling through absence’. What is absent in this story are the large part of the country that would become ‘absent’. On the 7th April 2017 the 26:86 Collective staged a guerrilla exhibition at the ‘Palace of Culture’ in the abandoned city of Pripyat in Ukraine. The exhibition includes images of mixed media, photography, photomontage and collage. The exhibition was taken back into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the place that inspired the artwork
Halls without walls: examining the development, dissemination and perpetuation of blues music and blues culture
No full textBlues music and blues culture undergo transformations of form and circulation when oral practices are first committed to text as sheet music . Further evolutions occur as performances are remediated as phonograph records and through various broadcast media during the 20th century. Each successive transformation generates discourses of authenticity, ownership and value which enable and constrain definitions of blues music and blues culture.
These discourses have remained largely unexamined as part of the latest cycle of remediation to digital formats and computer-mediated virtual environments since 1996. This paper presents the results of examination on key sites to better understand and illustrate the development, dissemination and perpetuation of the discourse blues music and blues culture such as it is enacted on the internet in the digital age
The nightdress I wore to give birth in: performative materialities and maternal intersubjectivities
No full textIt begins with a pale blue cotton nightdress from Mothercare; I don’t remember buying it, but suppose I must have done. Strange that I should have thought it necessary to buy a maternity nightdress to give birth in when nudity or a large t-shirt would have sufficed. I don’t wear nightdresses, yet I gave birth to my son wearing a pale blue cotton nightdress from Mothercare. Another story about materiality and childbirth. My mother tells me (although she is not a reliable witness) that when she gave birth to me in 1966, she was left to labour alone with only an occasional check up from a young male doctor wearing a hand knitted arran jumper. During the course of her labour, my mother, in much discomfort and distress, pulled at this young doctor’s jumper until it began to unravel.
What ties these two stories is the role of materiality as the stuff or substance of the performativity of childbirth. Together they tell of maternal relations evidenced and consolidated through materiality, of intersubjective experience and memory materialized; literally. Both the physical experience of birthing and the emotional memory of the performance of giving birth have an ambivalent and ambiguous relationship to death, horror, haunting and the uncanny.
This essay looks at four artworks that position the nightdress as a performative object resonant with maternal relations, intersubjective experience and the uncanny. Cornelia Parker’s ‘Blue Shift’, the nightdress worn by Mia Farrow in the horror film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’. Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Cell VII’ where nightclothes and undergarments hang like pale ghosts trapped within a claustrophobic enclosure of heavy wooden doors. Megan Wynne’s ‘The Night Gown I Wore When I Gave Birth to Her’, a photographic image of the artist with her five-year-old daughter curled under the stretch fabric of the nightdress they both wear. And my own ‘The Nightdress I Wore to Give Birth in’, the pale blue cotton nightdress that opens this essay, now performing as sculpture.
Analysing these artworks as performative objects vibrant with the agency of materiality, with specific focus on how the materniality of agency in this context imbues materiality with uncanny resonance. Drawing on recent writing around feminism and new materialities, Maurizia Boscagli positions clothing as the material signifier of femininity, the choosing of clothes as a potentially radical act of non-conformity. Judith Butler developed our understanding of gender construction as an ongoing series of performative acts; clothing, outward appearance and restricted modes of behavior being key indicators of femininity. Jessica Benjamin positions maternal intersubjectivities as the active engagement of identification and recognition, the individual growing in and through their relationship to other subjects. Alexandra Kokoli’s recent publication on the feminist uncanny explores through an analysis of feminist artwork, the uncanny as the ambivalent space through which feminism engages with psychoanalysis. Barbara Creed in ‘The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis’ challenges the notion of the female body as terrifying, as such disrupting the understanding of woman as victim within the genre of horror; in the context of this essay, the performativity of birthing becoming the site/sight of horror.
This essay analyses the performativity of materiality as the signifier of maternal intersubjectivities, engaging with texts that position new materialisms alongside the uncanny material and performative resonance of the nightdress as worn to give birth in
Garry Barker: tree listening: a ceramic installation
No full textTree listening is a ceramic installation that is designed to provide an entry point for conversations with museum visitors.
Based on the idea that art can become a focal point for conversations, this body of work (19 ceramic pieces, located at various points within a garden) was designed with the York city art gallery garden in mind. The ears were made from local clay sources, including the same terracotta clay source that was used for the bricks that line the edges of the museum’s garden.
The work furthers Barker’s concern to use conversations with people to both instigate new work and to provide starting points for new audiences to engage with art as a way to extend their appreciation of the world and how issues such as politics, global warming and emigration impact on everyday experiences.
This installation was installed twice, the second time in spring 2017 because of the popularity with which it was received the year before. A planned walk was added to the piece in 2017 and the artist led a walking tour that was scripted in response to conversations with the museum head gardener
Garry Barker: piscean promises - Workshop Press Gallery
No full textA solo exhibition of drawings and a ceramic installation. This solo exhibition focused on the development of allegorical narratives made in response to stories recently told to the artist of thousands of dead fish lining the English south coast seaside beaches due to pollution. This exhibition was used to test out audience reactions to a new body of work that was focused on responses to environmental damage caused by unthinking human activities and the idea that the Earth’s resources are things that are only there for humans to plunder. In particular a work was a response to reading around object orientated ontology and the possibilities a material turn could offer for an artist that wanted to reaffirm the value of making things
Little pink bush
No full textThe output is a short film about gender, colour and place. Taylor collaborated with fellow artist, Paul. In addition to the conception of the film, Taylor contributed to the process of retracing & remaking Burris-Meyer’s lost colour charts. The film charts the lost world of Elizabeth Burris-Meyer, the American colour theorist, who has been written out of the colour history of Art & Art and design. Research Process: The aims of the research set out to investigate possible narrative intersections between film, fine art and painting histories and processes. The project explores how extant historical colour samples, charts and concepts developed in the 1940s by American colour theorist Elizabeth Burris-Meyer might be contextually re-evaluated. The method included collating Burris’ rare surviving colour books and returning them to where Burris lived and worked. Taylor and Paul took Burris with them on a journey back to the light of Connecticut, USA to explore the complexity of her colour fields. The film gathers the remnants of Burris-Meyer’s surviving work and reveals how wondrous this colour work is.
Research Insights: The film generates new insights and contexts around historical gendered art and design references, and hierarchies of theoretical contexts of colour, celebrating the importance of female colourists against the canon of male dominance in painting. The research frames aesthetic hierarchies between concepts of art and concepts of domestic design within the evolution of gendered notions of colour. Dissemination: The film has been disseminated in the UK and USA: Making…making research, Studio Theatre, Leeds Arts University. 26 October – 6 November 2017. BAG Open 33, Café Gallery, London. 18 November - 11 December 2017. Outpost, Shortwave, London. 21 May – 15 June 2018. Little Pink Bush Drive Through Movie, Gaylordsville, Connecticut, USA. 15 May – 19 May 2019
It would be a pleasure: augmented reality and engagement in a heritage context
No full textThe interchangeability, confusion and conflict of what constitutes audience engagement has a long history, with much disagreement concerning boundaries and definitions. Dewey states that it is a mistake to see the artist as active and the audience as purely passive, and argues that “the active engagement of the audience is required to fully realise any work” (Dewey 1934). This predates the notions of “interactive” or “participatory” as understood today, but highlights the longstanding appreciation of the role the audience plays in the consumption of artworks. A sentiment echoed by Duchamp (1957) stating that “the spectator adds his contribution to the creative act”.
The research project presented at EVA 2017 seeks to offer a model for engagement, that of pleasure, which explores methods to motivate active participation
A device suitable for protecting and / or allowing cleaning of a bike and / or vehicle component and method of use thereof
No full textThe Brake Shield is an innovative new product for cleaning and maintaining the moving parts of a bicycle drive train and is the only one of its kind. It has a simple yet effective design of a polypropylene barrier that sits between the spokes and the cassette to protect your disc brakes and wheel rims whilst cleaning and/or lubricating of the gearing and drive train is undertaken. The nature of the product allows this difficult and unpleasant task to be performed in a quick, tidy and efficient manner. Many people just ignore this part of their bike; they put up with a muddied cassette and chain, either cleaning them periodically, maybe monthly, or just replacing them when they become unworkable which is wasteful and unsustainable. With the Brake Shield 'little and often' cleaning is made simpler and easier. The Brake Shield's innovative tray catches all the cleaning fluid, dirt and oil, allowing this dirty task to be undertaken anywhere without making a mess. A more formal abstract taken from the Patent Application Publication: A device is provided for protecting, allowing cleaning, servicing and / or lubrication of one or more components of a bike or vehicle in use. The device is formed from at least one blank of material including a first portion arranged to act as a shield element so as to at least partially shield at least one component of the vehicle or bike in use, and at least a second portion. The second portion includes at least one wall joined to the first portion by at least one fold line. The at least one wall and fold line are arranged such that when the second portion is assembled and / or erected in use it defines a tray or container portion joined to the first portion