Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
Not a member yet
446 research outputs found
Sort by
Echo Chambers I / Echo Chambers II
No full text‘Echo Chambers I and II’ are a pair of sculptures by Dale, resembling towers, scaled to the artist’s proportions.
Research process: The works reflect Dale's longstanding interest in the physical effects of ideology (in this case, visualising the notion of the ‘echo chamber’ [social or political polarisation] as a mode of segregation or imprisonment), as well as a continuing interest in sculpture as expanded drawing. They are a subset of an on-going collaboration with Prof. Adam Smyth exploring the visualisation of a grangerised edition of Ovid’s Art of Love (1813).
Research insights: The sculptures extended Dale's knowledge of material, volume and form through the exploration of lightweight, pliable materials and inspired further work around the activation of sculpture through performance.
Dissemination: The work was commissioned and exhibited as part of the group exhibition ‘Remote Work’ at The Grundy, Blackpool, 27 March – 19 June 2021
Exploring adult learning and its impact on wider communities through arts-based methods: an evaluation of narrative inquiry through filmmaking
No full textThis article reports on a project that employed narrative inquiry captured on film to explore the creative practices of five mature graduates. They had previously been mature students and continued to work within their various communities after they had left formal education. The participants were asked to describe their creative practice and its impact on other people through interviews and presentation. A researcher with help from a professional filmmaker carried out the project. From the initial footage, three polished, edited versions of the films were made. The participants could use the films to promote their own work if they so wished.
Narrative inquiry is a means of seeing the connections between significant incidents and longer-term impact beyond formal education. The film footage was able to capture the connectivity between formal education, the participants and the people who had been touched by their creative practices. It successfully gave a narrative coherence to the participants’ stories. Where appropriate, the visual aspects of creativity were captured, in this case, the participants all had a creative practice and the visual realm was an important part of their stories. The findings of the project were that the participants had some shared values about the importance of creative education. They all developed portfolio careers in order to carry on their creative work. All the participants were able to give examples of particular instances where their creative practice had had an impact on other people. In other words, adult learning does not just influence the individual but can have a wider and longer-term impact on others
Ideas Are Easy - Artist tutorial
No full text‘Ideas Are Easy’ is a video artefact by Dale which explores idea generating processes, with a focus on ideas for artworks.
Research process: To create this work Dale considered her own idea generating processes and how these might be articulated through a participatory video. In particular she considered ideas around translation (how one mode of thinking might be transformed into another) and convention (how breaking habits can lead to new ways of thinking). The video focusses on providing text rather than images in order not to lead the viewer’s actions. This creates a space of reflection where the viewer can consider their own idea generation processes through the lens of Dale’s.
Research insights: Dale considered idea generation from multiple points of view in order to cater to different visual, linguistic, spatial and/or numerical aptitudes. She kept the video as simple as possible, so that it could be paused and taken at the viewer’s desired pace. The first half of the exercises provide detailed instructions, the second half are purposely more abstract and open to interpretation.
Dissemination: This video was shared through The University of Manchester’s Centre for Jewish Studies on their youtube channel. It was created to complement the creation of Dale’s commission ‘Arranged in Time and Space’ as part of the ‘50 Jewish Objects’ project at The University of Manchester
Belonging: Fashion & A Sense of Place
No full textThe output is an exhibition, the culmination of a collaborative project between Tweddle and Knight, which explores how the West Riding of Yorkshire has influenced contemporary fashion.
Collaboration contribution: Tweddle and Knight collaborated as co-curators, working with an external museum and archive (Bankfield Museum), in partnership with the museum’s curator, Elinor Camille- Wood. Approximately thirty fashion practitioners, as well as a range of organisations contributed to the project by participating in interviews and loaning items.
Research Process: This is a curatorial investigation, which focuses on how a sense of place can influence fashion, and to what extent it can manifest in a practitioner’s aesthetic and ethos. Qualitative research methods consist of literary enquiry into the historical context of the region, an analysis of key pieces from the archive at Bankfield Museum and contemporary fashion collections, as well as anecdotal interviews with a range of fashion practitioners. As a result, themes such as ‘landscape’, ‘textile industry’ and ‘community’ have emerged, informing the curation of historical and contemporary garments, accessories, images, film, artefacts, articles and poetry, in response.
Research insights: Research findings have shown that the landscape attributes of the West Riding of Yorkshire have influenced contemporary fashion via the characteristics and constructed meanings associated with the place, the way in which the environment was occupied and utilised for textile production, and through emotional attachment. Collaborating with a museum curator aimed to enhance cultural heritage preservation and interpretation in a fashion context therefore this knowledge would be useful to curatorial, heritage, and fashion research communities.
Dissemination: Research findings were predominantly disseminated through a free entry exhibition in The Fashion Gallery at Bankfield Museum, which was open to the general public from 18/09/21- 05/03/22. The total visitor figures were 9503. National and local publications also circulated the project to a wider audience
Pragmatic White Allyship for Higher Education Popular Music Academics
No full textThe world watched the killing of George Floyd from a position of covid induced captivation. The succeeding global protests and Black Lives Matter movement justly prompted us all to consider our own complicity with the modes of systemic racism which have normalised anti-Black thought and action. The Wonkhe@Home: Black Lives Matter event (July 2020) sought to share pragmatic advice for ‘taking action to tackle racism across HE’, aware of the responsibility for the Higher Education sector to acknowledge its own role in consecrating racist forms of knowledge. This ‘statement’ translates session outcomes for Popular Music Educators (PME), provoking the ethical imperative to reflect upon individual situational praxis’ towards White Allyship action. Through consideration of PME’s typical fields of agency, suggestions are made towards development of anti-racist learning cultures within Popular Music Higher Education
Revealing the invisible: The virus is looking at you
No full textAt the core of the various messages that have been sent out about the corona virus is how to deal with an invisible threat. Revealing the invisible is however an ancient issue,
one that goes back thousands of years and reoccurs throughout human history. This paper is an exploration of the complex interrelationship between several long-standing
visual tropes that over historical time have emerged from various cultures in response to a need to communicate invisible forces.
Beginning with reflections on the poster for the 1911 International Hygiene Exhibition held in Dresden, linking in images of an Egyptian sun god, via extramission theory and
thoughts about the first drawings done through a hand held, lens focused microscope by Robert Hooke, a series of links and interconnections are made that explore how the
invisible has been represented and how the invisible virus can be read as a type of ‘darkstar’ or anti-sun.
Christian traditions of the use of unnatural colour to signify both invisible power and demonic possession and the way the corona virus has itself been depicted are compared
to historical visual tropes such as the aureola and the mandorla as used in the Greek Orthodox Church to depict sacred moments which transcend time and space. From
Buddhist and Christian uses of halos via images of sea-mines, a complex series of interconnections are revealed that are now being tapped into by Government sanctioned
information leaflets relating to the corona virus outbreak
MATURE GRADUATES AND VISUAL CULTURE LEARNING COMMUNITIES: WORKING THROUGH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
No full textMature graduates (defined as people who enrolled on their first undergraduate degree when aged 21
or over) who have studied an arts degree in the United Kingdom and subsequently have set up Visual Culture Learning Communities share their stories through narrative inquiry. Some mature creative graduates establish spaces where intergenerational learning about the arts can occur. These learning spaces make a valuable contribution to sustaining individual creative practices during crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. A more nuanced understanding of graduate outcomes is required where this contribution is recognised
A Piece of Turf
No full textA Piece of Turf is a collaborative exhibition of drawings and text by illustrator Mills and writer Karol.
Research Process: the research used an ecological and interdependent view of the world, and drawing from Haraway's (2016) notion of Staying with the Trouble to explore potential modes of accessing natural phenomena. Through intensive, empathetic study of a small patch of ground, the research aimed to notice the interactions and illuminate their significance through drawing, printmaking and prose.
Research Insights: the research highlighted potential strategies and methods for illustrators to communicate complex, messy, interconnected and seemingly chaotic ecologies in a non-reductive manner. The methods utilised, both practical and theoretical, help to embed traits of curiosity, wonder and specificity into the environment of illustration-education. The research was exhibited as a collection of chinagraph drawings, monoprints and fragmented prose, the exhibition highlights and celebrates the interdependence and knotted existence present within a, seemingly, insignificant patch of ground. By looking closer and zooming into the details it is possible to recognise the abundance of life, death and exchange of a piece of turf that holds the world.
Dissemination: The work was exhibited at Yorkshire Artspace at Exchange Space Studios in Sheffield from 20 May – 19 June 2021
Twists & Loops: Illustrating Ecologically
No full textThe output is an artefact by Mills, which aims to seek a more ecological, tentacular view of illustration practice, situating relationships and interactions between things at the centre.
Research Process: using an ecological and interdependent view of the world around us, the research process drew from Haraway's (2016) notion of Staying with the Trouble to explore potential modes of accessing natural phenomena. Through intensive, empathetic study of a small patch of ground, the research aimed to notice the interactions and illuminate their significance through drawing and printmaking. Illustration, as a communicative practice, emphasises the importance of getting a point across, to make things clear, to illuminate. Illustrators can be defined as communicators who see the world through a lens of intense detail (Moloney, 2015).
Research Insights: This research highlighted potential strategies and methods for illustrators to communicate complex, messy, interconnected and seemingly chaotic ecologies in a non-reductive manner. The methods utilised, both practical and theoretical, help to embed traits of curiosity, wonder and specificity into the environment of illustration-education.
Dissemination: the research was disseminated on the 11 February 2021 in the form of a research poster at the 11th Illustration Research Symposium at Kingston University
Nexus, veil: Robert Ryman and the equivocal spaces of abstraction
No full textThis article, published in the Journal of Contemporary Painting, focuses on the Surface Veil series of paintings by American abstract painter Robert Ryman (1930-2019) who defined his work as 'realist' and is generally discussed in materialist and literalist terms. This series of paintings mark a critical point in the relationship between his work and the gallery wall, as Ryman begins complicating and obscuring the definition of edge and the location of the picture’s surface. Their apparent simplicity belies a spatial complexity, and, Virgoe argues, Ryman’s matter-of-fact materialism produces an excess of painterly effect and illusion. Two texts, Hubert Damisch’s A Theory of /Cloud/, and Hanneke Grootenboer’s The Rhetoric of Perspective, are brought together to examine the complex and contradictory spaces in Ryman’s paintings