Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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Nuclear map of Great Britain 26/4/86
No full textNuclear Map of Great Britain 26/4/86 is an artefact that represents all the Nuclear Power Stations that were operating in Great Britain on 26th April 1986. They are represented by the 50-mile exclusions zones that would be imposed in the event of a nuclear meltdown. Research Process: Young visited Chernobyl in April 2016 as part of the 26:86 Collective. He wanted to see the site of the disaster first hand and investigate if the reported death toll was true. During the visit, he spoke to people who lived and worked there, resulting in the aim to create a new piece that could make their story more relevant to an audience in Great Britain. The locations of Britain’s nuclear reactors operating in 1986 were identified and a map designed to show their locations. The map was constructed in Illustrator and extensive experimentation was undertaken to create the most appropriate colour, tone and weight of line. Research insights: Young used his Reductionist Manifesto to tell this story. What is absent from this ‘map’ are the large swaths of Great Britain that would be uninhabitable for over 250,000 years in the event of a meltdown. The significant areas are absent from the ‘map’. When undertaking the initial research, Young was shocked to discover how few of his colleagues knew of the disaster. As a result, he created something that brought the story closer to the audience, so that they could put themselves in the place of the residents of Pripyat. He also discovered that he was misinformed about the death-toll. It was not 31 at all. It was ‘32’. Dissemination: 26:86 Collective Exhibition, House of Blah Blah, 2nd December 2016 - 12th January 2017, Exchange House, Middlesbrough. 26:86 Collective Exhibition, Hartlepool Art Gallery, 9th September - 11th November 2017, Church Square, Hartlepool. 26:86 Collective Exhibition, ‘Palace of Culture’ in the abandoned city of Pripyat in Ukraine, 7th April 2017
The World Percussion Group (WPG)
No full textThe World Percussion Group (WPG) is an ensemble devised and developed by Jason Huxtable & Timothy Palmer (Maraca2 Percussion Duo) to address the professional development needs of young professional percussionists around the world. Research process: The WPG’s first tour took place in 2016 and the ensemble has, over the course of four previous incarnations, provided opportunities for 45 young performers from 18 different countries, engaging percussion students, staff and audiences at 27 leading Higher Education Institutions. In addition to the direct contact with percussive communities, the WPG social media video output has achieved over one million views through partnership with industry sponsors and media broadcasters. Within this research an Impact Case Study is conducted with the intention of assessing the impact the WPG has made and the extent to which the original ‘Rationale’ for the project has been achieved. A Thematic Analysis of previous member’s Survey response provides the qualitative data, developing identity of themes which are then positioned within a ‘Thematic Map’ image. Research insights: Thematic Analysis of survey data reveals that the WPG is a significant and prestigious project which provides tour members an opportunity to develop professionally and personally through a challenging, reallife tour experience. Outcomes of the project relate to both the individual members and the percussion community more broadly with the benefits of ‘Cultural Sharing’ straddling these two domains. The success of previous projects has fed back into the ‘Prestige’ of the group, creating a positive feedback loop for future participants. This research shows that the WPG project is not only beneficial to individual members but to the Percussion Community more widely. Dissemination: Media outputs produced by the WPG have been viewed over 1,000,000 times
Consumer poster project
No full textIn my art work photography is both subject and medium: I produce photographs in response to photographs in popular visual culture, particularly advertising. Interventions into the commercial visual landscape include work on posters and billboards shown in Cardiff (2014/5) and London (2016). Consumer examines the influence of consumer culture on the visual landscape. I buy advertising spaces and fill them with posters that use the tropes commonly found in adverts, however, my posters encourage viewers to think about the contradictions of capitalist consumption rather than compel them to buy something. They appear among adverts on social networking sites and behave abnormally
An insight into the challenges that mature learners encounter across the student lifecycle in Art & Design Higher Education
No full textMartell Baines, Progression Manager: Poster presentation at the Open University Widening Participation Conference HE: Transforming lives through life-wide learning? April 2016, alongside a paper presentation by Head of Research Dr. Sam Broadhead. An insight into the challenges that mature learners encounter across the student lifecycle in Art & Design Higher Education. In the paper ‘Art of surviving and thriving’ (Broadhead, 2012) one of the research methods was to capture the student voice by one to one interviews. Broadhead says it was; ‘to discover how well Access to Higher Education students were prepared for Higher Education level study in art & design at a specialist college.’ Broadhead’s case studies came from diverse backgrounds and often had ‘unconventional educational histories’. Also one of the findings was ‘the importance of having other mature students on the course. The support they received from each other, a feeling of belonging to a small community of mature students had helped them through this transitional time’ This poster provides a glimpse at the experience of 5 mature students, who are studying or have recently studied creative degrees at Leeds College of Art to understand the challenges they have had to overcome in order to stay on course . Also presented is the framework of developmental activities that students can elect to participate in along the student lifecycle to aid the stages of Access, Student Success and Progression. (OFFA, How to produce an access agreement, 2016). This research poster was produced in response to the recommendations within the paper ‘The Art of Surviving and Thriving: How well are Access Students Prepared for their Degrees in Art and Design?’ (Broadhead, 2012
Indisciplinarity as social form: challenging the distribution of the sensible in the visual arts
No full textThe concept of ‘the distribution of the sensible’, sometimes translated as ‘partition’ or ‘division’, arguably underpins all of Jacques Rancière’s work, though is only directly articulated in one of his later works ‘The Politics of Aesthetics’ (2004). This concept has quickly gained currency in the discourses surrounding cutting edge contemporary art biennales, and Rancière himself has become the ‘philosophe du jour’ for the progressive or radical artist. However, one rarely hears his name uttered in conversations concerning Graphic Design practice, either inside or outside of the academy.
For Rancière, ‘the distribution of the sensible’ refers to implicit conventions, laws, social structures, modes of consciousness, the function to separate individuals or social stratas from each other, preventing participation in the creation of a common world. This system enables, legitimises, and authorizes some, whilst at the same time stultifying, disabling, and censoring other. For Rancière, this distribution operates at a meta-level, across both the political and aesthetic realms. Thought in this way, Rancière’s philosophy politicises aesthetics and even aestheticises politics, though not in the sense that Benjamin meant.
Through a reading of Rancière’s philosophy, this paper will interrogate a specific aspect of the ‘the distribution of the sensible’ in operation within the arts, particularly their institutionalized forms in the universities and the creative industries. I wish to argue that it is the specific effects of this distribution, rather than the physical properties of the work, or qualities of the human creative labour, which separates Graphic Design from Art; which designate Graphic Design as not art; that creates certain institutional accolades.
As a speculative proposition, this paper proceeds from the Rancièrian presumption that a creative ‘community of equals’,beyond disciplinary antagonisms, heirarchization, and seprations, is at least a possibility, and tries to imagine what the creative industries would look like if we proceed from this assumption. I reintroduce Rancière’s use of the term ‘indisciplinarity’ here to suggest that collaboration between Graphic Design and Fine Art is both possible and the necessary characteristic of a truly egalitarian democratic society
Objects and arrangements
No full textThe output is a creative project, comprising a collection of photography, digital montage and animation, and is part of a broader and ongoing body of photographic work responding to bereavement and inheritance, to explore the power and meaning of the familial object. Research process: This project takes as its starting point a family archive of a collection of art objects and art materials inherited from the artist's mother, in particular a plaster bust made of her mum in the 1950s, alongside vernacular family snapshots taken at the same time. The work draws on ideas about the ‘affective object’ (Casella and Woodward 2014: 104), ideas of ‘co-presence’ (Barthes 1980), and the ways in which materiality (or immateriality) enables the image to be performed (Edwards & Elart: 2004: 10). Research insights: The work responds creatively to the partial visual culture of a life lived, to suggest that family photographs, objects and artefacts continue to be resonant in some way and that through a creative process of repurposing and re-contextualisation, existing meaning can be drawn out and re-animated by enabling new creative and visual associations to arise. In this specific case the work highlights the different ways in which different the mediums of sculpture, photography and the moving image memorialise, reflecting on the changing technologies of representation. Dissemination: The work has been exhibited in a number of ways including a display at Leeds Arts University, 2016, in solo show Objects and Arrangements at St Martins Church LS7 2018, in an article in the Leeds Church Institute Magazine 2018, in group exhibition Make Good Leeds Arts University 2019, and in group exhibition Peer at Vrij Paleis Amsterdam Sept 2019
3D printing fashion with recycled polyester: A sustainable journey
No full textTextile waste is a global problem and one in which we all must tackle together to minimize. In the UK alone 350,000 tonnes of textile waste go to landfill each year. In order to foster pro environmental behaviours in the household and for it to become part of our culture, recycling awareness must be converted into practice. Bringing together sustainability and innovative technology, the focus of this enquiry, aims to examine, design and manufacturing possibilities using recycled Polyester filament to 3D print fashion garments. This explorative journey will determine whether it is feasible to use this material to create wearable or sculptural fashion pieces, through design, development, sampling and testing whilst using an entirely sustainable material. Recycled PET has been used for many years by outdoors clothing companies such as Patagonia who have been the pioneers of using old polyester clothing and recycling it back into new yarn to make more clothing. Working with Teijin a Japanese high-performance material developer since 2005 they have been able to advance their environmental responsibilities further into more of their products. In this study, the use of rPET will be explored. Since 2010 3D printing has emerged as a new method of manufacture for clothing. This is mainly evident in experimental sculptural forms for women as seen by Iris van Herpen. Likening the development and commercialization of 3D printing in fashion to that of the desktop computer. In the beginning, few could afford or know how to use a PC, in time many improvements made it more affordable, smaller and more commercial. We are at the beginning of this journey with 3D printing in fashion but like the PC, before too long it will be commonplace to all
Thank you Estelle
No full textThank you Estelle is a creative project comprising a collection of photography,
digital montage and gif. It is part of a broader and ongoing body of photographic
work responding to bereavement and inheritance, to explore the power and meaning of the familial object. Research process: Craddock’s research is based on a family archive of a small collection of domestic objects inherited from the artist’s aunt, alongside vernacular family snapshots and press photos of her from the 1950s. In a playful process, it photographically explores these now decontextualized objects and photographs. The work draws on ideas about the ‘affective object’ (Casella and Woodward 2014: 104), ideas of ‘copresence’ (Barthes 1980), and the ways in which materiality (or immateriality) enables the image to be performed (Edwards & Elart: 2004: 10). Research insights: The photographs refer to the lived experience of the person constructed through the
visual culture associated with their life. Family photographs, objects and artefacts
act memorialise, they are still resonant in some way and that through a creative
process of repurposing and re- contextualisation, existing meaning can be drawn out and re-animated through new creative and visual associations. The work highlights changing notions of femininity, shown through dress, gesture and pose, and the artefacts of gendered material culture; a retirement cake encountered in a family photograph is remade and reimagined as a moving image to spin eternally in
networked space, highlighting notions of gendered domestic ritual, repetition and
time. Dissemination: The work has been disseminated online in peer-reviewed journal, Feast, and Soanyway magazine, and via exhibition at Leeds Arts University (2016, 2017 and 2018) and St Martins Church, Leeds (2018)
Witch milk: Samantha Sweeting’s lactation narratives
No full textThis illustrated paper explores embodied storytelling in the work of interdisciplinary artist Samantha Sweeting (b.1982). Sweeting’s work is characterised by reference to biblical Madonna and child imagery, nursery rhymes and fairytales e.g. Perrault’s ‘Donkeyskin’ which Sweeting visually rewrites from a feminist standpoint. In 2007-2011, Sweeting produced a controversial body of work in which she allowed various animals to suckle directly from her breasts. With reference to the legacies of French feminist theory (especially Kristeva and Cixous), I argue that Sweeting corporealises the fairytale in a way that opens it up to contemporary debates around the maternal body as a political site
The Radical Decade
No full textThe output is a curated exhibition called ‘The Radical Decade’, reviewed by Kevin Almond from University of Leeds. It explores the 1960s archive of fashion designer, Gerald McCann’s (1931-2019) work. It aimed to rediscover and celebrate the work of the designer. Research process: Riches discovered McCann’s large archive, stored in folders and multiple boxes in a garage. The enquiry involved the collection of this primary data. This included original designs, for example ‘Uniform’ (1960s). In addition to the archive material, a call was put out for people to donate original garments for exhibition in ‘The Radical Decade’. Riches decided that the documentation of McCann’s fashion illustrations was a key part of the exhibition. Research insights: The items of clothing displayed in the exhibition demonstrated McCann’s approach to design, pattern cutting and manufacture in the 1960s. It seemed that the fashion ideal of the 1960s was to make women look like little girls. The cut of the clothing had evolved through the tiny silhouettes of each style, for example Peter Pan collars, the A line and ‘Baby Doll’ silhouettes. The exhibition demonstrated how a designer can manoeuvre their own work to reflect the zeitgeist, in this case the cultural explosion of the 1960s. Dissemination: The exhibition was disseminated at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University, 7 October – 16 December 2016. The research was also explored at a one-day symposium, organised by Sharon Bainbridge. Riches was also asked to contribute to McCann’s obituary in The Times in 2019