Leeds Arts University Repository
Not a member yet
463 research outputs found
Sort by
Swap editions: BREX-Kit group exhibition and multiples edition
Full text linkProject launch and group exhibition, Creekside Projects, Deptford, London. Curated by Robin Tarbet, 21st - 24th March 2019. SWAP Editions invites artists to each create a small artwork as an edition. The multiples are then published into sets and each artist receives back a complete set containing all the works in that edition. SWAP Edition No.4 > BREX-kit is archived as part of UCL’s Special Collection. SWAP Edition No. 4 : BREX-kit launches in the weeks before the UK is officially scheduled to cease to be a member of the EU at 11pm on the 29th March. To mark this outcome SWAP Editions is 'taking back control' and invited artists via an open call to submit proposals for artworks to be included in a set of editions that combine to make up BREX-kit > 'a survival guide come puncture repair kit' themed collection of artworks published as we enter the Brexit era. Edition No.4 : BREX-kit > brings together the work of Giorgia Castiglioni / Laura Copsey / Matthew Dowell / Camila Lobos / Nadège Mériau / James Moore / Scott Robertson / Tania Robertson / Jason Rouse / Aleksandra Stanek & EJ O'Reilly / Dawn Woolley / Ellie Wyatt / Pandora Vaughan. The pack for this edition is designed by Barnaby Mills and Ginny Davies. In March of 2019 SWAP Edition No. 4 : BREX-kit participated in the Small Press Project event 'Visions of Protest' 8th - 9th March with an exhibition and presentation at the Slade Research Centre, Slade School of Fine Art - University College London, before the official Launch and Exhibition for Edition No. 4 : BREX-kit at Creekside Projects in Deptford 21st - 24th March 2019
a(muse) eightwonder
Full text linkFollowing an international call for submissions, A Paraphrase on a Grecian Urn by bookwork artist Richard Nash was selected for the group exhibition a(muse) Eightwonder 2019. The exhibiting works were selected and curated by guest curator Nina Jesih in collaboration with the 44AD Project Director, Katie O'Brien. The exhibition was held at the 44ad Artspace gallery, Bath, from 08 - 18 August 2019. The group exhibition included painting, print, photography, video, sound, and 3D artworks from 29 regional, national and international artists. Along with an opening private view, the exhibition also included a gallery talk on the theme of the ‘muse’ by Jessica Otterwell, and a gallery tour and discussion by the artists and curator. As part of a serial body of work, Nash created A Paraphrase on a Grecian Urn IV (2019) specifically for the 44ad gallery space
The artists’ house: the recontextualised art practices of British postgraduate students in conversation with Italian amateur artists
Full text linkThe article is developed from a paper presented at the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) Access, Learning Careers and Identity Network Conference 2017: Exploring Learning Contexts: Implications for access, learning careers and identities. It explores how the recontextualisation of creative practice and communal living as part of a pedagogic device reveals the ideology behind what constitutes a professional artist and a successful art student. This is achieved through the application of Bernstein’s theories of horizontal and vertical discourse in conjunction with his theory of the pedagogic device to a case study based on a residency at ‘The Artists’ House,’ based in Canale Di Tenno in Italy. It was found that the participating students were able to perform those successful creative practitioner identities which were regulated by official art and design pedagogic discourse. However, the Artists’ House residency also reproduced disadvantage. Those students who did not take part were in danger of being positioned as unsuccessful creative practitioners because they could be seen by tutors, their peers and themselves as not being gregarious, risk-taking or globally-orientated
Leonora Carrington: “wild card”
Full text linkThe “Artists in Exile” surrealist group portrait of 1942 arguably marks a moment of recognition and inclusion for Leonora Carrington as well as, paradoxically, her moment of “exoticization” and temporary exclusion from Anglo-American criticism at large. The existing literature on Carrington is already unfairly weighted towards her early career in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when indeed she would go on to produce radical and challenging paintings, sculptures, novels, tapestries, plays, set designs and costumes well into her nineties. So why another reading of Carrington’s wartime output? For one, it is useful to present a clearer timeline of her movements and locations, and secondly, it is necessary to review her intermedial contributions to the surrealist magazines of this period. This paper will propose that Carrington was, in fact, at the heart of the avant-garde during this period, a point which has provided fertile ground for future-feminist revisionary commentaries such as Marina Warner, as well as more recent historiographies and creative reinterpretations by Lucy Skaer. A reconsideration of Carrington’s output from this wartime interlude in New York City, including her short story “White Rabbits” (1941) and her Untitled etching for VVV Portfolio (1942), provides insights into her instinctual avant-garde senses of liminality and transgression as well as evidencing the profound respect and acknowledgement her peers held towards her. McAra shared an earlier version of this research at the Biblioteca Nacional de México on the occasion of Carrington’s centenary (6 April 2017) organised through the Leonora Carrington Estate
Swapping the pleasures - social practice artwork and alternative performances: gender and alternative pleasure dynamics within the social dancing of kizomba
Full text linkThe output is a creative project based on social practice that challenges the twin taboos of men-following-women and women-leading-men in Afro-Latin social dance. Research process: The work, a series of dance classes, facilitated alternative performances of gender and alternative pleasure-dynamics within an existing community of practice. The teaching of Afro-Latin partner dance forms including Salsa, Bachata, Cha Cha Cha and Kizomba routinely encourages, and in many cases requires, participants to perform their gender within a rigid paradigm of heteronormative power relations. Although many dancers are challenging the gender conventions of male-leading and female-following within social dance, 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. As both a socially-engaged artist and Afro-Latin social dancer, Collins wanted to see whether dancers were open to dance-role reversal within a heterosexualised context and how they would respond to the experience. To this end Collins used methods drawn from socially-engaged art practice to run and evaluate a series of role-swap dance classes for existing dancers of Kizomba in Leeds. Research insights: The most significant results were the relative ease with which participants adapted to the new roles and the feelings of pleasure that many, particularly the men, reported from the experience. Several of the participants went on to occasionally dance socially in role-swapped couples during, and after, the period of the classes. There were also some interesting linguistic effects in terms of the evolution and use of gendered and non-gendered language during the process. Dissemination: The project was disseminated at the Fourteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society, 19-21 June 2019 and Pop Moves “Dancing the Politics of Pleasure” Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London, October 2014
AEKI (Almost every known Ikea)
Full text linkThe output, AEKI (Almost Every Known IKEA), is a creative project comprising multifaceted approaches to photographic image making to comment on the themes of globalisation and cultural homogenisation of the home environment. The project consists of a number of elements that combine to comment on the practice of photography. Research process: Aspects of the project have been made through physically travelling to selected stores (eg, China, Japan, Thailand). Whilst other images have been produced as ‘couch photographer’ (not leaving the home environment and travelling the virtual world). The idea of the perfect computer-generated images within the Ikea catalogue are in stark contrast to the photographs made by ebay users selling their outdated Ikea products, images that give glimpses into their private homes. Research insights: The home interior retailer Ikea promotes a vision for the domestic space on a global scale through idealised catalogues and showrooms. Ikea highlights how global consumerism can result in the loss of individuality within the home environment. Stores are similar in design and their interior layout in all countries. The global repetition of stores is mirrored by the customer experience. The idea of choice and taste is promoted to the consumer but often with limited selections of products to choose from. Whilst the shopper may feel they are making choices to personalise their home, their action and decision-making process is being replicated in stores all around the world. Peoples’ individual and regional tastes become diluted in domestic homes the world over as they are filled with the same products that are standardised in all stores. Thus, the notion of identity and the home becomes less personalised and standardised across different countries. Dissemination: The project was disseminated via a conference paper at Visualising the Home, University of Cumbria, 13-14 July 2017
The Legend of La Mariposa – The Demon Gauntlet
Full text linkThe artefact is a young adult graphic novel created by Lawrence.
Research process: This project was primarily practice-based, involving initial research into the social, historical, folkloric and metaphysical aspects of Lucha Libre before utilising findings to inform a fantasy action-adventure setting pitched at a young adult audience.
The story explores themes of duty, trust and the keeping of oaths and also serves as an attempt to extrapolate the tropes and traditions of Lucha Libre into a foundation for fantasy worldbuilding.
Lawrence handled all roles in the production of this output, including all the design and generation of visual and narrative elements.
Research insights: The output furthered an ongoing inquiry into the semiotics and narrative techniques unique to sequential art with a goal of developing an accessible but distinct visual vocabulary.
Dissemination: This output has been disseminated via Kickstarter, at Thoughtbubble Comic Art Festival in 2020 and 2021, and at Glasgow Comic Con in 2022. It is also available for purchase through online stores
Creature design: ex femina
Full text linkThe output is a creative project exploring eco-feminist perspectives on creature design. Chalmers has produced a sizeable body of creature designs for a variety of commercial opportunities and personal inquiries, and wanted to position this alongside select examples by international artists whose work has been crucial to her development. Research process: Building on an existing body of work on the theme of speculative biology and concerns around biodiversity, Chalmers wanted to position her research-practice in context to internationally renowned feminist concept artists: Terryl Whitlatch, Brynn Metheney, Kate Pfeilschiefter and Iris Compiet. Research insights: The project is contributing to definitions of Creature Design as a distinct discipline. Drawing on science, art and design, ex femina inquiries into women’s experience, understanding and positioning of this practice. Dissemination: The research was disseminated via peer-reviewed exhibition, ‘Creature Design: ex femina’, at Leeds Arts University Gallery, 29 August – 10 October 2019. Chalmers previously evolved her idea through ‘Women World Builders’, a one-day research forum, also at Leeds Arts University, 21 September 2018
Breaking ground
Full text linkA Yorkshire Sculptor’s Group exhibition installed within the grounds of the Patching Arts Centre, Nottingham. Barker's contribution to this exhibition focused on allegorical ideas constructed as a ceramic ‘memento mori’ installation made in relation to responses to stories told to the artist by recent migrants to Chapeltown in Leeds. The exhibition was an opportunity to open out a very different opportunity for public engagement with Barker's practice and to provide a form of ‘closure’ to an ongoing series of interrelated narratives concerning responses to migrants. A series of drawings were done of plant forms, looking at possible memorial or ‘Memento Mori’ possibilities for migrants losing their lives at sea as they crossed the Mediterranean. These drawings then became the starting point for the development of a series of ceramic ‘flowers’ designed to sit within a field of a typically English wild flowers. Beginning with conversations had with recent Leeds migrants whilst drawing on the streets of Leeds, the initial response to these conversations included the making of images that included the tower block that the Leeds local authority were using to house recent migrants. Several exhibition opportunities have since been taken to exhibit different aspects of the allegorical narratives that emerged. One story told though ‘resonated’ with me and it was the story of a man in a small boat hallucinating a white rabbit as he fell into a reverie because of lack of water and food. This ‘white rabbit’ began to follow the boat and became a talisman of survival. From this story others began to open out. For example the animation that was selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf drawing prize this year was one aspect of this story and this memorial piece was an attempt to put some sort of closure to the work that had emerged. Communion with a ceramic ‘ghost’ of this rabbit being just one form of parallel hallucinogenic activity that was used to encourage images to emerge from the subconscious during the realisation of this project. The rabbit was in this case ‘submerged’ back into the subconscious and the field of wild flowers became an ocean substitute. The use of QR codes placed next to the work was an attempt to build in another type of audience engagement, the link made to people’s mobile phones allowing them to access myself speaking about the underlying narratives that shaped the work and to remind everyone of the loss of life that continues to occur
Cutting corners
Full text linkThe output is a creative project, Cutting Corners, comprising a collection of photography. Research process: This project takes as it’s starting point photographs from the British Safety Council (BSC) archive and the continual stream of vernacular photographs on Instagram to critique the performative, humorous and absurd nature of these scenarios. Mobile phone technology has enabled depictions of unsafe practices to be widely documented, distributed and accessed. The proliferation of these photographic warnings has increased dramatically. The photographs in ‘Cutting Corners’ show fictional health and safety problems, produced specifically for the project. Once photographed, the scenarios were swiftly dismantled and only the photographs remain as evidence. Research insights: People will do anything to cut corners. Or so it seems when browsing Instagram, where many photographs depict health and safety ‘fails’ that seem to celebrate others’ misfortune. A builder balances a ladder on a couple of buckets for that extra reach; a painter straps a house lamp to his head to illuminate the ceiling. There is a desire to see the mistakes of others because it makes us laugh and feel superior. Their methods may be lazy, but they are creative and surprisingly inventive. Photographs of hazards began life in earnest in the pamphlets of the BSC, and are now perpetuated and exaggerated through Instagram. The production of the work for and in response to the festival is an innovative approach, and sets it apart from the majority of the projects shown at the festival. The photographs are humorous, but they also highlight specific changes in the representation of hazards through vernacular imagery. Warnings of potential hazards were once controlled by the British Safety Council. Now, everyday users of photography take on this role and through exaggerated and absurd imagery the message is being effectively proliferated. Dissemination: The project was disseminated at the FORMAT International Photography Festival, Derby, 14 April – 11 May 2019