Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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446 research outputs found
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In the shadow of the hand - narrative drawings
No full textThis exhibition brought together four large narrative drawings, alongside small studies. The exhibition was important as it was the first time that Barker had exhibited large complex narratives in a public space and it was also the first time that critics and other art writers had had a chance to review his work. As well as bringing Barker's work to a wider audience, he was also able to see the work being used within an educational context, several groups of students using the images as inspiration for their own drawings about what life was like in the city. A catalogue based on the form of a newspaper was also produced for the exhibition, the reverse side of which opened out as a large A1 print based on one of the works in the exhibition. This was very popular and all the catalogue/prints were quickly taken away by the visiting public. All the drawings were based on conversations had whilst walking, talking and drawing on the streets of Chapeltown. The success that the exhibition had in engendering further conversations about contemporary city living reinforced in Barker's mind that this was a positive direction to take his work into
Shades of grey
No full textThis symposium and exhibition set out to explore how art and artists respond to issues of ageing: in particular to expectations, perceptions and fears, loss and memory and generational boundaries. Speakers included Mick Ward and Caroline Starkey from Leeds City Council as well as three artists: Barker, Jo Lee and Geoff Broadway. As well as providing a text for the symposium, Barker exhibited two sets of work, one responding to his father’s death and the other to the death of his mother. This exhibition was important in that it was the first time Barker was able to exhibit work that responded to deep personal experiences, in conjunction with the giving of a lecture that was written to specifically relate my art practice to wider human interests, in this case how we as a society deal with death. In particular it opened a door for Barker's own research into how art and life can be usefully linked together and it firmed up his belief in undertaking projects as both a way of making allegorical images and as a way of shaping responses to life events - thus confirming Barker's decision to engage more in community events and to allow his art practice to reflect on these experiences
Visual pleasure: photography, illusion and the desire to be deceived
No full textAll of the artwork I have created over the last ten years has contained two unifying features; the use of photographic cut-out's and the use of my body. Both elements invoke philosophical questions about perception and interpretation. The body of work printed in this book forms an enquiry into the act of looking, and the experiences we have as individuals when we are looked at. This essay explores the artificiality of the way we see and the things we are shown. Consideration is given to the importance of the body, not only as an object of sight and a cultural signifier, but also as the vessel through which we negotiate the world and gather our perceptions of it.
Visual Pleasure [exhibition catalogue] brings together artwork and research completed over the past 4 years by artist Dawn Woolley including documentation from a series of performance installations, Cut to the Measure of Desire, which were specially commissioned in 2009 by Stiwdio Safle and funded by the Arts Council of Wales.
Woolley’s artwork examines her experience of being an object of sight and also considers the experience the viewer has when looking at her as a female, and as a photographic object. Voyeurism and exhibitionism intertwine in purposefully provocative scenes.
Visual Pleasure includes a critical essay by Woolley that takes modes of looking and spectatorship as its subject. The text considers the psychology of perception and illusion in art referring to seminal texts by Laura Mulvey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Micheal Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Also included is an introductory text by the writer and psychoanalyst Darian Leader.
The publication was made possible through a production grant by the Arts Council of Wales and is published through Ffotogaller
A History of Design and Pedagogy in Burslem School of Art
No full textThis paper is timely, as the subject is honour of the (1907) centenary of the purpose-built Queen Street site of Burslem School of Art (BSA). The paper relates to the design history strand of the conference, by sharing some insights found in the writing of Behind the Glass, and article honouring the unique achievements of the school. Commonalities with the latter and Behind the Music, a publication honouring the (1903) centenary of the purpose-built site at Vernon Street, at Leeds College of Art and Design, is apparent. Both studies focus in part on the contribution of focus in part on the contribution of the provincial school to the national system, in terms of pedagogic design. This paper follows the growth and development of a practice-based pedagogy known as executed design, developed by a former student of BSA
Object
No full textThe output is an ‘artists’ book’ publication, conceptualised, designed and edited by Sheila Gaffney and Linda Schwab; comprising of written and visual material with contributions from the artist, photographer, critic, art historian and museum curator. Object was an element of the art intervention exhibition project Wunderkammer: the female gaze objectified at Leeds Art Gallery, 10th March – 16th April, 1994, which questioned the presence of female nudes made by male artists in our galleries. In the book form the beautiful ideal of woman signified by Antonio Canova’s Hope Venus (19th Century) is placed in close proximity the work of the two female artists, Gaffney and Schwab, who are working at the end of the 20th Century. Object retains the essential characteristics of a book, but is structured to encourage the reader’s choice in the seriality and sequence of the imagery it contains. Handling Object encourages an interplay of images of the female nude, both as it is authorised and staged within the politics of Museum exhibition and display cultures, and as it is represented by those who know it from lived experience. Object offers a curatorial strategy for the confrontation of the marble nude ideal with sculpture and painting practices that are informed by feminism and employed by Gaffney and Schwab.
Research insights: The practice-based conceptualisation and project management of Object, alongside its related gallery intervention Wunderkammer: the female gaze objectified, made an original contribution to ways in which the sculpture collections of Leeds Museums and Galleries could be viewed, displayed and understood. The intervention into the collection was the result of a curated interaction between original artworks by women artists Gaffney and Schwab with selected items from the collections. Whilst the exhibited display and the book design provided immediate encounters, embodying questions of gender and authorship in relation to representations of women, the intervention and dissemination provoked a wider interrogation of museum ideology. The intervention made an original contribution to ways that artistic methods can introduce civic and private collections to new audiences and present individual artworks as theoretical objects. Practice and theory were combined in this project in a way that gave material form to scholarly considerations of the following topics:
• female nudes in galleries and museums as made by male artists
• the presentation of works of art in galleries
• the objectivity of museum collections
• the male gaze in museum collections
• how contemporary art relates to the history of art
• feminism and figurative sculpture
Dissemination:
The output was disseminated via exhibition, press and broadcast coverage
Wunderkammer: the female gaze objectified
No full textSculptor Sheila Gaffney and painter Linda Schwab made an intervention into Leeds Art Gallery’s permanent collection, creating a dialogue around that which is saved and displayed in museum culture, and making transparent the male gaze implicit within museum collections and cultures. Gaffney created a ‘Studiolo’ siting her own sculpture, informed by feminism, in the glass fronted ‘Models Room’, a formerly concealed archive alongside 25 valuable small works and maquettes from the Leeds collection. Schwab created a ‘Cavea’, enclosing an iconic marble nude with a group of dressed chairs inviting the viewing public to sit in them, look through a peephole and become voyeurs. Research process: Practice Research with museum collection-based research led this enquiry which manifested as sculpture, painting and intervention. Research insights: The practice led conceptualisation, project management and curation of the gallery based intervention Wunderkammer: the female gaze objectified, alongside its related publication Object, made an original contribution to ways in which the sculpture collections of Leeds Museums and Galleries could be viewed, displayed and understood. The intervention into the collection was the result of a curated interaction between original artworks by artists Sheila Gaffney and Linda Schwab with selected items from the collections. Whilst the exhibited display (and the design of the book Object) provided immediate encounters that embodied questions of gender and authorship in relation to representations of women, the gallery situated intervention and dissemination provoked a wider interrogation of museum ideology. The intervention made an original contribution to ways that artistic methods can introduce civic and private collections to new audiences and individual artworks can be presented as theoretical objects.Practice and theory were combined in this project in a way that gave material form to scholarly considerations of the following topics:
• female nudes in galleries and museums as made by male artists
• the presentation of works of art in galleries
• the objectivity of museum collections
• the male gaze in museum collections
• how contemporary art relates to the history of art
• feminism and figurative sculpture.
Dissemination: The output was disseminated via exhibition, press and broadcast coverage