Leeds Arts University Repository
Not a member yet
463 research outputs found
Sort by
To make purple, you need blue: Prince as embodiment of the postmodern blues aesthetic
No full textAs part of his ground-breaking work as a stylistic provocateur during the 1980s and 1990s, blues music and blues culture provided a fundamental element of Prince’s composition, production and live performance practice. This chapter constructs a continuum of blues music performance including Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix, positioning Prince as a performer in full command of the aesthetic qualities that characterise African-American music-making with specific reference to the stylistic gestures particular to the blues. This chapter does not attempt to delimit and collapse Prince’s activity into a single style or genre of practice, or to disregard his wider contribution to popular music. Neither is this an attempt to claim Prince purely as a bluesman – although the figure of the bluesman is one of great complexity in cultural studies. This is not a reductive polemic. The intention is to deconstruct several key performances and rehabilitate the artist’s practice as part of the ongoing continuum of the blues aesthetic. With this in mind, the chapter discusses definitions of the blues aesthetic, blues music and blues performers. The chapter looks at several musical examples in pursuit of musical and stylistic analysis before the presentation of conclusions. Specifically, the chapter discusses a live performance of ‘If I Had A Harem’ (1988), additionally, recordings of ‘Zannalee’ (1993) and ‘The Truth’ (1996), offers a comparative analysis between Prince’s ‘5 Women’ (1999a) and B.B. King’s ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ (1969); Prince’s ‘The Ride’ (1993), and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hear My Train A-Comin’’ (1967a); and finally Prince’s ‘Purple House’ (1999b) is compared to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Red House’ (1967b). There are additional references to other Prince songs which contain strongly indicative blues material such as ‘The Question of U’ (1990)
Rhino
No full textThis output is a look development piece accompanied by tutorial videos demonstrating how the final concept was created. Its primary purpose is to suggest a workflow between industry-standard programs; Zbrush and Photoshop. It also demonstrates what is achievable without the need for thorough, in-depth knowledge of either programme, making the process accessible to Concept Art students in the beginnings of their academic career. Research process: A versatile technique that has emerged out of the need for rapid concept art turn around is the use of 3D. Concept art is still a relatively new field within the creative industries. With the original concept art professionals coming from a wide range of backgrounds, it is only within the past few years that we see undergraduate courses emerging that specialise specifically in Concept Art
Research insights: Still within its infancy is the inclusion of 3D taught within Concept Art. It is becoming more prevalent that professional studios want concept artists who are capable of working in 3D software and so the need for it to be injected into the curriculum is imperative. Industry-standard programs such as Zbrush provide a flexible way of working and can be used at varying degrees to speed up or enhance a concept artist’s workflow. Dissemination: The output was disseminated online via Artstation and Vimeo
Drawing age
Full text linkThe output is a journal article comprising of a reflection on the author’s current art practice.
Research process: Barker has continued to explore the use of allegorical visual narratives to communicate and make meaningful experiences. The research consisted of a series of imaginative drawings made in response to his own aging body and the memories he has of his childhood. A second narrative developed from conversations with a neighbour was also constructed as a test to check whether or not a private narrative could be externalised.
Research insights: The development of this work allowed Barker to test audience reaction to an allegorical narrative about aging in various formats, from an exhibition of large scale drawings, to a presentation to the group, ‘Life hacks for a limited future’, to a more theoretically sophisticated audience who read about drawing. The use of text to reflect upon drawnings, alongside spoken word presentations has allowed the allegorical potential of the work to reach a much wider audience than working in any one area. In particular more older people have been brought into dialogue with the work, because as a result of giving a presentation to the older people’s group, Barker was asked to develop a blog post for the Leeds Older People’s forum. The development of conversations about how it feels to inhabit an aging human body has revealed a direction for practice that has unexplored possibilities. The artist is now researching how votive practices can be integrated into his allegorical narratives and he has been given a commission to produce work exploring how to visualise the body for a variety of health and socially engaged community practices.
Dissemination: The exhibition of the original drawings and associated ceramics was held in Chapeltown from 13 April - 1 December 2020. The blog post about the issues was hosted by ‘Life hacks for a limited future’ as part of the Leeds Older People’s Forum and Barker has spoken about this work at research seminars
Twitch, shift, jerk, slip, repeat
No full textThis output is a series of digital GIFs Eyre made in response to a commission from Open Eye Gallery and University of Salford Art Collection. The programme of commissions is called ‘How We Remember’ and its aim was to identify gaps in the public consciousness around who is affected by the global health crisis, and create opportunities to document the lived experience of those who have found themselves especially vulnerable. Eyre chose to look at the way that women were impacted by the virus. Research has shown that statistically women are more likely to have suffered economically over the last year and many women have effectively been ‘re-traditionalised’ – confined to the domestic space of the home.
We are all navigating unfamiliar terrains, constantly re-drawing our boundaries as our physical presence and visibility in the world continually slips and changes. Many of us have found ourselves existing in an in-between place, somewhere between virtual and physical worlds, communicating through barriers, windows and screens and having to negotiate the unexpected materialities of this new space including the disruptive buffering, freezing and glitching of our virtual lives. There is a feeling of being on the cusp; of being suspended between different spaces and states, and the feeling of fragmentation as we sit at home looking out of the window whilst our digital doppelgängers play in virtual space. Eyre wanted to convey the feeling when you view the GIFs that their surfaces could slip at any moment. The repetition of the GIF, at first comforting, can quickly become uncomfortable. The analogies with our current situation don’t end there – GIFs are open, endlessly adaptable – and of course, they can go viral.
The research was shared via Open Eye Gallery’s website.
It was also shared via the University of Salford’s Art Collection website. The project was selected for Peer to Peer UK/HK digital festival
Shoplifting in Woolworths: And other acts of material disobedience
Full text linkThe solo exhibition Shoplifting in Woolworths: And Other Acts of Material Disobedience, comprises a series of free-standing and wall based sculptures, film and installation works made from domestic objects. Research process: The sculptures and installation works in this exhibition perform narratives of domestic disobedience; in each, overlooked and undervalued domestic objects have been activated through careful manipulation of the material culture of femininity to disrupt purpose and intention. These sculptural works are intrinsically domestic, the objects and materials from which they are constructed are the things of home, the stuff of femininity. Research insights: The artworks exhibited unsettle our expectations of the homeliness of home; following Alexandra Kokoli’s (2016) proposition that art informed by feminism is intrinsically uncanny, and that uncanny domesticities are those where the familiar is infected with the unfamiliar, the women and girls implied by the sculpture and installation exhibited enact domestic resistance. Using materials and objects close to hand, the domestic detritus of everyday life; these sculptural objects that reference ornaments or domestic furnishings are misleading, for their feminine materiality has been put to use in a manner that suggest rebellion, albeit with humour and an eye for colour coordination. Shoplifting in Woolworths: And Other Acts of Material Disobedience poses an alternate understanding of home as a place where women can create a site of resistance as well as comfort. Dissemination: The exhibition was open to the public at The Civic Barnsley from 25th January until 7th March. The exhibition was supported by an artist’s talk, a performance evening, a youth poetry group workshop, and a talk to Fine Art students from Barnsley College. The exhibition was reviewed by Dr. Dawn Woolley for Third Text and by Jay Drinkall for Corridor 8
Tracing entropy
Full text linkThe output is an exhibition bringing together the work of Kelly Cumberland, Hondartza Fraga, and Eirini Boukla. Cumberland constructed new work responding to the space, comprising of a video accompanied by a site-responsive installation.
Research process: Practice research investigating systems, material executions, and expanded definitions of drawing. Through employing 'tracing' and sequential methods of reproduction, the work plays host to its own systems of entropy and breakdown reflecting spatial and cognitive thinking. The research explores biomorphic elements referencing naturally occurring patterns or shapes reminiscent of living organisms with a focus on microbiology. Material research was undertaken on-site as Cumberland employed new fabrication methods.
Research insights: It was found that in the work ‘Stitched’ 2019, the mix of analogue and digital technology allowed the work to be reconsidered across nine screens. The digital version, of the original projected piece, enabled expansion of the serial aspect to create a new body of work by recording the gradual material destruction, capturing the history and narrative of the decomposition of the original concept. In addition to this, repetition and systematic methods of drawing were employed throughout a 45 metre drawing on aluminium cinefoil, ‘Vestigium Pulvis [ffoyle]’ 2020. Responding to the format of existing vitrines, the material research and presentation remains fluid and open ended. This resulted in the drawing being seen as an object or a material to make marks in space. This sequential work is manipulated from two-dimensional to three-dimensional forms, retaining the ability to revert back to a two-dimensional presentation.
Dissemination: The research was disseminated through an exhibition in January & February 2020, Tracing Entropy at The Foyer Gallery, University of Leeds. The work was also disseminated at an Art-Design-Technology taster afternoon event with Artist Talks and a closing event in February 2020 in the Foyer Gallery Exhibition
Conferencing otherwise: a feminist new materialist writing experiment
Full text linkThis paper attempts to reconfigure hegemonic framings of ‘the academic conference’ and thereby offer a means to (re-)encounter the spatial, temporal and affective forces that conferences generate, differently. We are a geographically dispersed but multiply entangled group of academic researchers united by theoretical fault lines within our work that seek to ask what if (Haraway, 2016) and what else (Manning, 2016). This ‘what if’ and ‘what else’ thinking has manifested in experimental and subversive doings otherwise at a series of academic conferences. The storying practices presented in this paper were made possible by the vital materialism (Bennett, 2010) of a shared google.doc. It was within this virtual environment that we attempted to weave diffractive accounts of what conferencing otherwise produces. This writing experiment offers a series of speculative provocations and counter- provocations to ask what else does conferencing make possible. This article is an invitation to the reader to plunge in and wallow (Taylor, 2016) within the speculative accounts which ensue and to contemplate the possibilities of breaking free from sedimented ways of neoliberal conferencing
Mature students matter in art and design education
Full text linkThe creative practices of five people who had previously studied on an Access to HE course (art and design) in the United Kingdom were explored through narrative inquiry. All had participated in higher education after their Access to HE courses. After completing their studies, the participants set up various Visual Culture Learning Communities (VCLCs) in order to support people who did not have access to the arts through formal education. The participants’ stories were analysed in relation to various types of altruism (entrepreneurial, philanthropic, and selfless). It was found that the Access to HE learning experience stayed with some of the participants and encouraged them to open up learning spaces for others. Some of the ‘Access values’ relating to social justice, democratic education, student-centeredness and community engagement were modelled and developed by the participants. Their narratives suggested they were acting because of either entrepreneurial, philanthropic or selfless altruism. This challenged some of the neoliberal discourses around the individualistic motives of mature students that link access to higher education only to increased economic rewards and status
The dissecting gaze: Fashioned bodies on social networking sites
No full textIn ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Laura Mulvey says the gender
inequality that favours men and disadvantages women also structures how
we look. Women are passive objects of the look and men are active agents
of it. Fetishistic scopophilia exaggerates and emphasizes the physical beauty
of a woman so she is pleasurable to look at, but at the same time it reduces
her to a non-threatening fragment, a part-object without subjectivity.
In reference to Marxism and psychoanalysis, this chapter will argue
that contemporary culture, characterized by the predominance of social
networking sites and selfies, produces a particular type of fetishistic look:
a magnifying, dissecting gaze. This mode of looking is an internalized gaze
that compels the individual to work on the body so it more closely resembles
social body ideals. It is not the pleasurable scopophilia described by Mulvey
but a judgmental, disciplining gaze
Swapping the pleasures: case study of a social practice artwork encouraging alternative performances of gender within the social dancing of Kizomba
No full textThe teaching of Afro-Latin partner dance forms including Salsa, Bachata, Cha Cha Cha and Kizomba, routinely encourages participants to perform their gender within a rigid paradigm of heteronormative power-relations. Although many dancers are challenging the conventions of male-leading and female-following, through initiatives such as queer-tango and same-sex ballroom dance, there is virtually no evidence of social-dance role-reversal within mixed-sex couples ie. women leading men. This article is a case study of a role-swap Kizomba course run in the city of Leeds in the UK, which aimed to challenge the twin taboos of men-following-women and women-leading-men in Afro-Latin social partner dance. It aimed to discover whether, if provided with the opportunity, social dancers were open to dance-role reversal within a heterosexualised context. The course was conceived as a socially-practice artwork. This study draws data from: questionnaires completed by dancers who attended the classes; ethnographic observation of the process and its outcomes; interviews with members of the larger Kizomba dancing community. The results of the role-swap course confounded the expectations from the literature review, with both female and male participants demonstrating an openness to learning non-traditional roles. This case study advocates the potential for creative interventions within existing communities of practice as a means to challenge conventions of social relations within those contexts