Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
Not a member yet
446 research outputs found
Sort by
Embodied dreaming in the archive
No full textThis article accounts an artist’s project that questions, through practice, whether objects from the past, in archival conditions, can enable us to read the present. It employs a life writing method to evidence how my own idea of the psychic dimension of practice within the production of sculpture exists, but is as yet unaccounted for, in the historical overviews of making and teaching sculpture in Britain. The article interrogates a sculpture project using the psychoanalytical ideas of Christopher Bollas, and I use a sculpture project of my own as a case study to make this claim. Through writing, I retrieve the actions, methods and processes involved in making sculpture as I know it. I write through a personal project Others (Bradford Museums and Galleries, 2009), developed through an artist-in-residence commission, to analyse and interpret my sculptural practice as it was performed in, with and through an archive situation. I show how writing, which is not the moment of the production of art in this practice, is an appropriate form to record the complexity the project, that is not always accessible in the artefact at the moment of public exhibition. I acknowledge how a photographic record does satisfy as a method of observation, description, process and action, but propose that this particular reflective writing approach enables deeper and more detailed identification and articulation of the theory within the sculptural artefact
Beyond the book: an exhibition of artists who use books as their medium
No full textFollowing a call for submissions A Paraphrase on a Grecian Urn I & II by bookwork artist Richard Nash was selected for the group exhibition Beyond the Book. The exhibiting works were selected and co-curated by the Guild's curator Saffron Wynne and leading bookwork artist Su Blackwell. The exhibition toured from the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Newton Abbot, 5 April – 8 June 2014, to the Long & Ryle Gallery, London, 12 June – 17 July 2014. The group exhibition of nine artists included; Su Blackwell, Ellen Bell, Jonathan Mathew Boyd, Yvette Hawkins, Samantha Y Huang, Alexander Korzer-Robinson, Jeremy May, and Davy & Kristin McGuire. The exhibition was also tied with a symposium of the same name organised by the Guild and the University of Exeter.
The exhibition initiated A Paraphrase on a Grecian Urn as an ongoing serial body of work for Nash. The first iterations, A Paraphrase on a Grecian Urn I and II (2013), were exhibited at the Devon Guild of Craftsman. A Paraphrase on a Grecian Urn III (2014) was created specifically for the Long & Ryle gallery space, and subsequently acquired by Thomas Heneage (Thomas Heneage Art Books)
Paula Chambers: A review of ‘With Intent: Fanciful Objects’ [review]
No full textPaula Chambers’ tenth solo show has been installed in the gallery on the first floor of the Batley Library and Resource Centre; a survivor from Batley’s successful economic and civic past at the beginning of the last century. The artist describes it as a ‘traditional’ hang that contains a series of wall-based works and appropriated objects shown on plinths. The walls are painted with a dreamy greenish white on which a series of mirrors reflect and shimmer. The visual effect unifies the whole exhibition and signifies an overall interest in the vintage
The role of the agreement: Art students, dyslexia, reading and writing
No full textThis article looks at experiences of writing in higher art education. It demonstrates
how the experiences of art students with dyslexia affect their perceptions of themselves
as writers. It proposes the role of the agreement in providing a negotiated
space for students with dyslexia to explore difficulties and to take on responsibilities
regarding their academic literacy. The need for an agreement becomes clearer
when we examine the significant role writing can play in expressing ideas, concepts
and theories about students’ own visual practice, This article proposes the idea of
agreements that might facilitate the process of integration between writing and creative
visual practice. These agreements take place at the institutional, diagnostic and
educational level. The article highlights the importance of these agreements in establishing
a culture of mature and democratic discourse around education; one that
acknowledges both rights and responsibilities
All coherence gone? historical currents in contemporary still life group exhibition
No full textThis exhibition curated by Frances Woodley, promotes an idea of several interwoven conversations across time and space, present and past. These conversations take place between artists and objects, objects and objects, and between a curator and artists of two nations, the Netherlands and the UK. The conversations are about still life, a modest genre with a magnificent history, and how its historical origins in seventeenth century Dutch painting enfold and flow through contemporary practices of painting and photography today.
Artists: Emma Bennett, Clare Chapman, Kenne Grégoire, David Gould, Piet Groenendijk, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Jacco Hinke, Heather James, Alan Salisbury, Margriet Smulders, Krista van der Niet, Dawn Woolley
A parlay
No full textThe content of this artists’ book comes from a series of conversations held with individuals at Leeds Art Gallery. The conversations were based upon and departing from the sculpture ‘Atom Body Was Light’ by Liliane Lijn, from Leeds Sculpture Collection. The book is a three-pronged experiment. Firstly, aiming to discover the range of responses that may be elicited by a single artwork and how people’s interpretation is shaped by other aspects of their life. Secondly, playing with combination and manipulation of responses. Most of the words in the book are quoted direct from interviewees, but the artist’s voice comes to the fore in selection, editing and sequencing of content. Thirdly the book explores ways of presenting text visually, with a nod do concrete poetry. The relationship between the visual and verbal is an on-going interest in Crouch’s work, and graphically presenting words spoken about a visual artwork provided a fruitful challenge.
The work was produced with funding from Leeds Inspired and supported by Leeds Art Gallery
WALDO-like remote manipulator
No full textThe output is a device comprising circuitry and software developed to control 3D workspace with the intention of simplifying interaction and learning through embodied agency. Research process: In response to the complexity of existing 3D animation software, Clark developed an innovative simplified approach using microcontrollers. Clark built a circuit around a microcontroller allowing input and output, and programmed the microcontroller to read the inputs through various sensors in order to prove his concept. As Maya is unable to read data from the serial bus, a short script was required within the software to obtain this information. Once the information had been read, it needed to be translated into values that would correspond with relevant attributes of assigned objects. Further script was developed to capture and record the motion input through the adjustments in microcontroller sensors. Research insights: The project found that it is possible to develop external controllers to control attributes of objects in the 3D workspace in Maya. It demonstrated that it is possible to make complex production software more accessible to a wider audience. The use of microcontrollers as inputs for motion capture has the potential to reduce costs for small projects using this approach. Dissemination: The project was disseminated at the Educating Animators Academic conference 2018 and via a blog, http://virtualpuppeteer.blogspot.com/2014/11/
After life
No full textThe short graphic story ‘After Life’ narrates an intimate experience of grief and is practical research contributing to the knowledge of communicating realistic emotional accounts through illustrated fictionalised stories. The comic looks to innovate approaches within the medium by partnering a ‘confessional’ (M.L Rosenthal, 1959) poetic style of writing with stylised sequential imagery to explore generating original methods for sharing and visualising complex psychological states. It contributes to a body of contemporary comic work exploring and evolving sequential illustrative practice through unpicking and challenging its stylistic visual language. After Life is the first comic by the author to explore the appropriateness of specific aesthetics within a comic to set the mood. Through an ongoing series, the author’s intention is to explore visual styles to create contemplative ‘moodscapes’ most appropriate for roaming a psychological terrain. Rigorous process has been used to validate the significance of the piece through its selection via juried panel for international exhibition and comic award. After Life was ranked joint runner-up in the Jonathan Cape/Comica/Observer graphic short story prize in 2014. The Guardian online (where the comic is hosted) describes the work as “superbly drawn […] also witty, poignant and insightful.” The comic has been published and shared widely online. Beth Dawson has also performed this work as a ‘poetic comic reading’ at research dissemination events, most notably at “Drawing In The Girls,” as part of Leeds Beckett University’s research the cluster group ‘F= Presents: Festival of The Body” in March 2016 which took place during International Womens Day week and placed this piece within a broader context of exploring feminism and the female voice within contemporary art practice
Process and printmaking
No full textThe output is a curated project, Leeds Print Festival: Process and Printmaking, curated by Smith, 2014. Research process: The output is an archive of selected prints that showcases a range of processes and techniques from studios, collectives, and individuals regionally, nationally, and internationally. Process and Printmaking features traditional and contemporary printing processes such as collagraph, screenprint, letterpress, risograph, and woodcut. Research insights: There are creatives, on a global scale, that are reclaiming the press and embracing traditional methods of print. This is happening commercially, where the print work is produced on extended runs when the decision has been made to return to a print-based output opposed to working just digital for a client. Individuals are setting up workshops in their homes and garages with found or reconditioned presses or adapting presses that would have been once been originally used just for proofing such as the Adana. Design studios are also setting up printing spaces inside their agencies. They are challenging what print can do by introducing new technologies to traditional methods. Dissemination: The research was disseminated in Creative Review’s monthly publication, Monograph, in May 2014
Labour exchange
No full textThis exhibition brings together works by painter Sarah Taylor and photography practitioner Magali Nougarède. ‘Labour Exchange’ was initially developed with Helen Sear who noticed similarities in Nougarède and Taylor’s practices. Research process: In their practice research, both artists use the domestic object as source material, especially soft furnishings re-appropriated from previous generations: fabrics, clothing, wallpaper, cloths, tea towels. These items are at the centre of the artists’ visual consciousness, both as objects of aesthetic fascination and as objects of historical and political significance. Taylor’s grandmother coveted objects to make her home look respectable, whilst Nougarède’s protestant family was entrenched in the production of linen, cottons and tea towels in the 19th and 20th century Normandy textile industry. Both artists see the domestic object as an opportunity to interrogate power relations, past and present, in terms of gender, class (especially in Taylor’s case) and political ideology, to address political inequities and reclaim histories. Research insights: Traditionally photography has been seen as inferior to painting, however it is the contemporary photographic discourse, defined by thinkers and writers such as Jo Spence, Annette Kuhn and John Tagg, that helps articulate some of the ideas for this exhibition. Both artists thrive on playing outside the boundaries of their own medium, contesting the parameters of both painting and photography. Conforming is not an option. Some of Taylor’s paintings made by direct application of paint laden fabric or cloth unto the canvass, at times adopt qualities of photographic exactness, whilst Nougarede’s high contrast enlarged tea towel grids printed on cotton rag paper may recall pencil marks on drawing paper. Dissemination: The exhibition was disseminated at BayArt Gallery, Bute Street, Cardiff Bay. Helen Sear led a pre-preview “In conversation” with artists Magali Nougarède and Sarah Taylor titled: A gendered perspective?