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Shape Shifters
No full textThis Creative Project by Eyre is a series of photographic collages exhibited as prints and three digital animated videos presented on screens.
Research Process: the dissemination was an exhibition that questioned historical depictions of women in photography, all the artists used strategies that disrupt, frustrate and challenge the camera’s gaze; a gaze historically associated with an objectifying male perspective. Eyre’s response derived from a previous project (Twitch, shift, jerk, slip, repeat 2020) and used collage and animated GIFs. The work started with photographs culled from fashion magazines, and the collage (digital and analogue) methods entwined and enfolded the images to create irregular and changeable representations of the female body. Visual fissures breached and intruded on both the depicted images and on the photographic surface, making both strange.
Research Insights: Eyre’s wider research explores the way that women participate in the ongoing labour of maintaining and controlling our bodily surfaces, which can be a fruitless task because the corporeal body is changeable, porous, leaky and ages. The methods used to produce the new work - ‘Shape Shifters’ draw attention to this and the ways that the practices of photography are implicit in this process. We use the photograph to try and fix our appearance, to still our slipping surfaces. Yet, the photograph can also contradict our assumptions about stability, as its own material surface can be slippery and unstable. Shape Shifters makes these slippages tangible through the combination of different digital and analogue materials, textures and effects, and drawing comparisons between the physical upkeep of our physical surfaces and the disruptive buffering, freezing and glitching of our digital selves.
Dissemination: The work was exhibited at Home Gallery and the Waterside Lauriston Gallery in Manchester 16 September – 7 November 2021
Curtainz
Full text linkThe output is a Creative Project authored by Steans. ‘Curtainz’ is an original text commissioned for Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic (ed. Sutcliffe 2021). This project also includes a related film 'Puppy the Goblin' as well as a window display created by Steans (photographic documentation by Andy Keate).
Research Process:‘Curtainz’ is included in the third chapter of Magic, Ritual Media, which ‘looks to magic’s complex relationship to technology [... and] questions the intrusion of the magical into artists’ engagement with the digital’ (Sutcliffe 2021). Responding to this, Steans’ text performs a kind of ‘legend-tripping’ (Kinsella 2011), via a short fictional piece of writing.
‘Curtainz’ employs motifs including fictional cultural output (in this instance the eponymous children’s tv show) and the location of genre horror qualities in the processes, technologies and cultures of cultural production. In Steans’ work, practices and processes of cultural production and reception are ‘made strange’, rendered here as a ritual-like process, suggesting the text itself might function like a spell.
Research Insights: ‘Curtainz’ picks at and entangles the threads connecting ostensibly ‘factual’ and ‘fictional’ modes of culture-making and knowledge-sharing. ‘Curtainz’ also riffs on the tropes of the ‘making of’ documentary, which Steans understands as a ‘micro-genre’, and has explored in the work Necrotic Biography Room (2019) and the conference paper ‘The Making of the making of the make-up scene' (2017).
Dissemination: ‘Curtainz’ was commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press for Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic (ed. Sutcliffe 2021). Steans also created a window display for the launch of Magic in the Whitechapel Gallery Bookshop, and screened his work Puppy the Goblin: ENGLISH SUBS (2020) (which was also screened at Tate Britain, 19 November 2022, as part of "Show and Share: Visions of the Occult") an online symposium launch event for Magic
Votive Cards
Full text linkThe output is a set of 52 cards and accompanying box designed by Barker to operate both individually as small votives and as cards that can be played and laid out in a Tarot type presentation.
Research Process: The cards were designed in consultation with various community groups, including ‘Life Hacks for a Limited Future’ and other members of the Leeds Older People’s Forum. Their format and colour were designed to be of use to a variety of ethic groups and people of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Research Insights: The feedback from users was that the use of strong colours was of particular interest to multiracial groups and that men in particular liked the fact that you could also play card games with them. An online version was also designed to respond to Covid driven lockdown, but this was not a success as people missed the human contact associated with storytelling that was vital to the way a Tarot type reading would evolve.
Dissemination: This artefact was a central exhibit for the ‘Miracle’ exhibition, September 22nd - October 23rd 2021 at the Immanence Gallery in Paris. The exhibition was hosted in conjunction with a conference centred on the continuing influence of the votive in contemporary society and the card designs were used for the poster of the colloquium "Faits et gestes votifs" (Campus Condorcet - Paris), in the framework of which the exhibition was held. The exhibition was presented in the radio program "Mauvais genres" on
France Culture, one of the main national French radio programmes
Open Sesame: Dorothea Tanning’s Critical Writing
Full text linkThis book chapter repositions Dorothea Tanning's critical writing (her self-reflexive artist’s statements and letters to the editor) in the context of her broader œuvre as well as within the discursive framework of revisionary feminist perspectives on surrealism. I focus on two key texts by Tanning from the later twentieth century, ‘Some Parallels in Words and Pictures’ (1989) and ‘Statement’ (1991), as well as her experimental exhibition catalogue Ouvre-Toi (Open Sesame, 1971). These examples are revealing in terms of their author’s position on the text/image relationships, which recur throughout her practice. By realigning Tanning’s writings with her imagery, and by retrospectively drawing parallels with feminist theory and intellectual history, I argue for a re-reading of Tanning’s critical writings as a manifestation of the feminist cause in surrealism studies and beyond.
This chapter was first delivered as a paper at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Amsterdam (August 2017) by invitation of the editor
Belonging: Fashion & A Sense of Place
Full text linkThe 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
#prank4offices
Full text linkA quick search of the hashtag ‘prank4offices’ on Instagram reveals evidence of two co-workers engaged in an office prank war with each other. Evident are a range of pranks including; multiple photographs of Justin Bieber's face neatly arranged to cover a desk, tin foil covering a workspace, belongings balanced precariously in a pile, the entire contents of someone’s desk cling film-wrapped to an office chair and a desk surrounded by hundreds of water-filled cups. The two employees are known as Iamronjay42 and Iaminstapauli0 on the photo sharing website ‘Instagram’. Iamronjay42 and Iaminstapauli0 are in fact fictional characters acting out a fictional office prank war. In reality, they are a vehicle for me to think about the process of making office pranks from the perspective of an artist. For me as an artist, making ‘work’ (in the art sense) is often done in the workplace or in everyday situations, utilising everyday ‘stuff’ to construct temporary arrangements. Don’t tell work, but this is often done on company time too. Making work in this way can sometimes feel like being an illicit ‘artist-in-residence’ in the office, and blurs the boundary between artist and worker. This article features a range of the photographs that make up the project #prank4offices. In a contextual statement about the work, it also proposes that there is a ‘sculptural desire’ in the workplace, and that the visibility of vernacular photography is affecting how users of everyday photographs stage scenes for the camera
NEST
Full text linkThe output is an artefact comprising an artist’s book. It was developed from a performance, initially presented at SNAParts Gallery as part of INDEX, a fringe festival linked to Yorkshire Sculpture International, alongside Barker’s sculpture and drawings, im(Material) Disarray. Research process: Barker explored the use of allegorical visual narratives to communicate and make meaningful local community experiences. The research consisted of a series of imaginative drawings made in response to observational drawings of swans trying to build a nest out of discarded plastic waste. A verbal narrative was then constructed around the illustrations and initially tested out with a live audience as a spoken performance and then make into an artist’s book. Research insights:
The development and publication of ‘Nest’ allowed Barker to test audience reaction to an allegorical narrative in various formats, from a sculptural installation to a spoken word performance to a fable in the form of an illustrated artist’s book. The integration of text with drawn, spoken word and sculptural presentations of an idea has allowed the allegorical potential of the work to reach a much wider audience than working in any one area. In particular more children have been brought into dialogue with the work, parents are able to engage them with readings after initially experiencing the work as an installation. The opening out of conversations beyond the human has revealed a direction for practice that has unexplored possibilities. The artist is now researching how early animist practices can be integrated into his allegorical narratives. Dissemination: The artefact was published by Workshop Press and disseminated via blog at https://fineartdrawinglca.blogspot.com/2019/09/immaterial-disarray-exhibition.html
Folding chair for the feminist resistance: Activating feral materiality
Full text linkIn the short film Folding Chair for the Feminist Resistance (2018), a series of images of a folding chair found on the street, seemingly occupies a range of seating configurations from the formal to the feral. The images are overlaid with an ironic narration that aligns the folding chair to an embodied experience of feminist activism past, present and future. If feral can be defined as that which was once domesticated but has now returned to the wild, then going feral is a process of liminality, a boundary practice that disrupts our understanding of the stability of domestication as a one-way process. Feral materiality is the abandoned, cast out and undomesticated object, the liminal and unsettling stuff that haunts the marginal spaces of consumer culture. The transgressive and unstable material culture of domesticity in Folding Chair for the Feminist Resistance is presented back to us as a protest against domestication
Aberrant Consumers: Representing disordered dating on the still life table
Full text linkStill-life photographs can reflect a contradictory relationship to contemporary consumer culture. The thin body acts as a sign of a strong work ethic and self-control; it is viewed as a productive resource and
medium for creating bodily capital The objects on a still life table allude to the unavoidable bodily requirements of eating and drinking. It is a subject matter contaminated by flesh. Still life images can be viewed as a type of portrait: the objects depicted on the table symbolize the social position and material wealth of an unseen owner, who is also the intended recipient of the meal. Taking my cue from Dutch still-life paintings from the seventeenth century that reflected a conflicting relation with material wealth, I produce still-life photographs that reflect a contradictory relationship to contemporary consumerism. In this article I will present a selection of artworks that draw on my research into eating disorders and body ideals in capitalist societies.
The «WGI Global Report 2020 - A Gastronomic Planet» is a succession of approaches and perspectives of what has happened and is happening in the gastronomic world, recording many facts, investigations and opinions that will serve to explain what the situation of gastronomy was in our time, commissioned from the authors and collected in the period from 2018 to 2020, until the COVID19 came to generate suffering, chaos and economic debacle. From this presentation of the publication we want to honor the victims and thank all the people who have fought in solidarity with the pandemic, hoping that the situation will recover as soon as possible and in the next ´Global Report` we can reflect a positive evolution
Exploring the black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) student experience using a Community of Inquiry approach
Full text linkA ‘Community of Inquiry’ approach was used to explore the black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) student experience in a university situated in the north of England. Research facilitators were recruited from the postgraduate student population to explore with participants their experiences of learning in the institution. It was found that some of the white academic staff were not confident in talking about issues to do with race and racism. It was also discovered that students from BAME backgrounds may be experiencing isolation in their accommodation and on their courses, while at the same time feeling they needed to ‘overperform’ in order to succeed. The cumulative effect of this could lead to students’ dissatisfaction and the non-continuation of their courses. The Community of Inquiry was effective in identifying possible strategies for improving the student experience