Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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446 research outputs found
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What happens when collage comes off the page? An experimental image making workshop
No full textThe output is a creative project exploring experimental image making. It interrogates the ‘indeterminate condition’ of loose collage objects before being stuck down or bound into a composition. Research process: The participatory event introduced participants to a range of drawing exercises and printmaking techniques, used for collage material in the later stages. Due to the community and placemaking focus of the event, participants were encouraged to consider how their own stories, memories and experiences of space could be included within their output, including physical responses such as taking rubbings from the building itself. Research insights: Within Bradbury’s research, the notion of rules and instructions as a way of interrupting of disrupting traditional ways of working have been explored. Bradbury argues that it is important to consider the ethical implications of giving participants prompts. He works collaboratively and creates activities in dialogue with the participants. This freedom also allowed participants to create highly personal and original outcomes which were presented at a mini exhibition at the end of the project. Dissemination: The research was disseminated via a workshop at Encontro International de Ilustração de S. João da Madeira Portugal, 14 – 21 October 2016
Consumed: stilled lives - Dyson Gallery.
No full textMy research examines the relation between people and objects, and the impact that adverts have as producers and disseminators of social values. My central argument is that commodity culture turns everything into adverts, from seventeenth century still-life paintings to selfies and thinspiration photographs.
The still life table expresses the dual meaning of the term ‘consume’ because the objects on display are edible and connote an individual’s social position through the ability to buy prestigious objects. I therefore approach the still life table as a portrait of a particular type of consumer. This allows me to consider the food in a still life as an expression of a relation between an individual and consumer society, as well as a figuration of the effect of commodity consumption on the consumer’s body. The exhibition encompasses a variety of Still Life’s suggestive of different consumers. Commercial advertising and social media networks are examined as methods of circulating and embedding the social value of products but also a site for potential disruption
Pomona encounters: ‘Pomona’s beauty spots’
No full textThe output, Pomona’s Beauty Spots, is a creative project comprising an interactive exhibit, which invited the audience to consider the presence of place and significant points of interest, and written text. The project was a collaboration between Hayward and Fabrizio Cocchiarella, with both contributing equally to the project. Research process: A passive experience of navigating the terrain has not been prescribed or facilitated, therefore we are free to create an un-regulated personal geography, establishing our own markers as points of reference, signposting memories through physical encounter, exploring freedom.” In order to consolidate visions, interpretations and works in progress from Pomona Encounters – the exhibitors were invited by Gaia Project Press to create a publication/book that reflected the thoughts, passions and connections explored was produced. Research insights: Discovering the city often uses commercial psycho-spatial systems of reference that mediate our relationships with people, landmarks and architectural objects. Our connection with nature is negotiated through the exploration of natural spatial phenomena, sometimes shaped by humans, but when exploring un-chartered territories, we encounter landscapes that are dependent on discovery. Through the interaction, walkers encountered a cornucopia of paradoxical tales around themes of biodiversity and urban planning, carbon-free air miles, invasive species for healthy living, and old toolkits to design new nature. with the status quo and propose new futures for Pomona and beyond.
Dissemination: The research was disseminated as part of Pomona Encounters, Pomona Island, Manchester on 21 July 2016. Findings were also shared through Pomona’s beauty spots, in Fruitful Futures, Imagining Pomona, published by Gaia Projects Press, 2016
Archiving women in film and television
No full textThis output is a documentary film. It results from a collaboration between Hooper, documentary/artist filmmaker, and historians/archivists on Archiving Women in Film & Television. The documentary includes video interviews with archivists, historians and filmmakers, and it represents archive material from Feminist Archive North (FAN). Research Process: Drawing upon a larger project, ‘Feminist Archives, Feminist Futures’ (Dossett and Denton, University of Leeds), Archiving Women in Film & Television focused on collections of women in film and television held at FAN, including the papers of Leeds Animation Workshop and Vera Media (independent feminist filmmaking collectives based in Leeds), and the Women’s Film, Television and Video Network. Hooper directed, filmed and edited the documentary. In addition to interviews, other project footage gathered includes conference material, workshops at Leeds City Museum and at Glasgow Women’s Library as part of the Radical Film Network Conference. Public screenings and Q&As held as part of the project at Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds, over the course of three years were documented. Research Insights: The film serves as a possible means to share academic research and inquiry into women’s filmmaking and television history with a broader audience. It is also a conscious recognition of the digital archive created as part of the process of the research project. This edited cut is a precursor to a pilot interactive documentary. Dissemination: The research was disseminated at the following: Presentation and workshop, Glasgow Women’s Library, Radical Film Network Unconference, April 2016. Paper & workshop, Women’s History Month, Leeds City Museum, March 2016. Presentation and workshop, i-Docs Symposium, UWE Bristol, March 2016. Feminist Filmmaking Screenings, Hyde Park Picture House, May 2015, May 2016 and May 2017
Transcendental housework
No full textMy mother was not a feminist, yet growing up in 1970s suburban north London I was witness to, and complicit in, my mother’s active refusal to conform to the expectations of a good housewife. Cleaning, tidying, dusting, washing up, were all low on the list of my mother’s priorities, instead she played tennis, she grew vegetables, she went out dancing; my sister and I were left to our own devices.
As a feminist artist and a mother, I have adopted my mother’s domestic dissent, integrating it as philosophy into the processes and outcomes of my art making practice. I do not have a studio but make art in my kitchen; I rarely clean or tidy up, but instead utilize my domestic space and the objects that inhabit it, as a temporalized site of domestic resistance.
This paper is a brief representation of how I have materialized my ongoing relationship with my mother. The sculptural objects that I discuss here can be read as an iconography of the domestic sphere; in particular, the ambivalent understanding I had as a child of my mother in her role as a mother. I re-enact the domestic unease of my childhood, projecting maternal dissent on to the haunted objects that formed my sense of self in the world. I subvert meaning and ideologies through affective interrogation of subservient domestic objects; coffee tables, footstools, and ornaments
Aberrant consumers: selfies and fat admiration websites
No full textIn contemporary consumer culture, the healthy body acts as a sign-value for success, a strong work ethic and self-control; it is viewed as a productive resource and medium for creating “bodily capital.” But there is a conflict at the heart of consumer culture, between the imperative to work hard and delay gratification, and the consumer dictum of instant pleasure. Health demonstrates the individuals’ ability to balance the opposing forces of production and consumption. Overtly fat and thin bodies signify an inability to balance the conflict. In this article, I compare different forms of self-presentation on social networking sites and online platforms to explore sign-values of the body in contemporary consumer culture. Websites such as Fantasy Feeder offer advice on how to gain social security benefits, and use fast food industry “bundling techniques” to maximize calorie intake with minimal cost suggesting that fat admiration participants are disruptive to social and economic ideals. I use Marxist and psychoanalytical theories to interpret photographs of “unhealthy” bodies to build a theoretical model for potentially disruptive figures in capitalist society
Transcendental housework
No full textThe output is an exhibition comprising a series of sculptures, objects and drawings. Research process: As a feminist artist, Chambers adopted her mother’s domestic dissent, integrating it as philosophy into the processes and outcomes of her art making practice. When making the work, she did not have a studio but made art in her kitchen; she rarely cleaned or tidied up, she utilized her domestic space and the objects that inhabit it, as a temporalized site of domestic resistance. In this body of work, she subverted the domestic objects that haunt our retrogressive imagination. Research insight: The exhibition reveals that the domestic objects and household ornaments of our childhoods take on an emotional value that shape our notions of self; that construct significant personal identities. The exhibition contains dysfunctional furniture and ambivalent ornamentation. Sculptural objects, both floor based and wall based seem to lurk or loiter in the gallery space, they have a whiff of discontented anthropomorphism. Dissemination: The exhibition was shown at Stockport Art Gallery, 16 January – 27 February 2016
Prescriptions: artists’ books on wellbeing and medicine
No full textOn Innards | Publication, by artists Richard Nash, Amanda Couch, Mindy Lee, and Andrew Hladky, was selected for the group exhibition Prescriptions, which ran in the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Canterbury, from 21 April to 25 September 2016 curated by Dr Stella Bolaki and Egidija Čiricaitė.
The title of the exhibition, Prescriptions, was taken from one of Martha A. Hall's artists’ books. Hall's book art, created from 1998 until her death in 2003, documents her experiences with breast cancer and interactions with the medical community. These themes find unique expression through the intimacy, immediacy and complexity of the artist's book medium that not only challenges the conventional book form but also offers a palpable experience of the patient's world.
The exhibition featured around 90 artists’ books by national and international artists responding to themes of cancer, disability, mental health, surgery, recovery, medicine and wellbeing. The curated show revealed the therapeutic and empowering potential of art whereby artists’ books become an alternative kind of prescription. The exhibition featured 15 books by Hall, on loan from the University of New England's Maine Women Writers Collection, which were being shown in the UK for the first time
The hunchback and the swan
No full textThe output is a creative project resulting in a short animation directed, produced, and adapted by Dotty Kultys. Kultys also contributed as VFX artist, composer, sound designer, animator and character and background designer for the animation. Research Process: The film was created using mixed techniques: paper cut-outs, collagraphy, pixilation and 2D digital animation. A core group in the production team was made up of UWE Animation students, and the entire process was mentored by Peter Lord, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Aardman Animations. Adapting folk tales for screen was the underlying exploration theme during the film’s production. Research Insights: In order to complement a folk story, its animated adaptation needs to acknowledge and abide by the particular laws that govern it. If there’s repetition, you need to somehow include it and make it work. If there’s narrative in the third person, you need to utilise its advantages, rather than focus on its drawbacks. If there are reoccurring patterns, you cannot ignore them, but need to turn them into a key ingredient in your film. Kultys understood that removing the features that were inherent in a folk tale would mean that she was no longer animating a folk tale. They needed to be kept, embraced and made to work visually.Dissemination: The investigation process resulted in an article written for The History Press: ‘The challenges of adapting a folk tale’, and in a talk presented at the 2017 FMX Conference in Germany as part of the ‘Animation: The Quest for Young Talent’ thread. ‘The Hunchback and the Swan’ was screened at 25+ festivals worldwide, including the BAFTA qualifying Brest European Short Film Festival in France and the Academy Award qualifying Anima Mundi Festival in Brazil
Commons & community economies: entry points to design for eco-social justice?
No full textMany designers today (including ourselves) are experimenting with how their practice can engage in meaningful ways with the complexity of pressing social and environmental issues. Being very much concerned with the politics and power relations that run through such issues, in this paper we will explore what points of orientation the framework of the ‘commons’ and that of ‘community economies’ – seen from an autonomist and feminist Marxist perspective – can offer when working on socially and politically engaged projects. We mobilise these two frameworks as possible entry points through which eco-¬‐socially just modes of reproducing livelihoods can be fostered. Moreover, we will consider how they can encourage designers to more directly activate their skills to support human activities that move our societies towards eco-¬social justice