Leeds Arts University Repository
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BEINGS
Get PDF‘BEINGS’ is a creative project comprising an exhibition and a published photobook.
Research process: In 'BEINGS', objects and environments are what they appear to be; a cheese pot, a ladder, a piece of laminate flooring, a road. However, they are also constituent parts of a larger whole, like the matter from which they are themselves made. Where these object-particles collide, they create something new that is without a particular purpose, but which takes on a new sculptural form. In this context of remixing the everyday, some subjects instead sit as-found. Sitting in the glow of their reconfigured counterparts, they are somehow altered by association. They have a sculptural potential radiating beyond their use-function.
Research insights: The project adds to the conversation about how photographic images speak about the sculptural nature of their subject, and in fact contribute to a transformation of 'things' into something that can be interpreted as sculptural objects. Objects come into being with an intended purpose; a reason to exist. This ‘stuff’ then sloshes around the everyday, like detritus: sometimes being useful (as intended); sometimes just being stuff. The area outside these two states is like a transformation, when an object or an environment can be seen as a separate entity from its particular function. Dissemination: The research was exhibited at Village bookstore, Leeds, 22 August – 4 September 2019, as part of Index Festival, a series of fringe events alongside Yorkshire Sculpture International. It was also disseminated via a photobook published by Salt n Pepper Press
Utilising mood boards in media research
Get PDFThis workshop explores how mood boards can be utilised within media audience research. This methodology has been developed in relation to a wider research project focussing on men, masculinity and reflexivity. The mood board process is one that is used most frequently in design practices and education but is shown here to have use in a media research context. The use of mood boards in capturing audience reactions and reflections on media images (specifically men’s magazines) is argued to be a useful method insofar as it allows participants to select and curate imagery in a simple and intuitive way and provides an elicitation device for participants to communicate through. The method is understood as being part creative visual method, part elicitation and part focus group. However, unlike creative visual methods the visual materials created here are used as elicitation devices rather than the data source. This workshop explores the development of the mood board methodology before inviting participants to engage in the same method in relation to the theme “what is masculinity?” using imagery found in a selection of men’s lifestyle magazines (Men’s Health, Esquire, Attitude and GQ). During the process one participant in each group assumes the role of the researcher and is responsible for steering the discussions and maintaining focus
Dictionary of percussive coordination
Get PDFThe output is a composition, ‘Dictionary of Percussive Coordination’, comprising rhythmic notation. Research process: The point of departure for this research was a philosophical investigation upon the nature of, essentially, what percussion playing is and how percussionists conceptualise their activity. This enquiry led to a conception of percussion-playing as the activation of a potentially finite set of interactions across two limbs which interact with time and space. The research seeks to catalogue all the possible interactions, or kinetic ‘letters’, two limbs can encounter within specified parameters: • Occur within one Crotchet (1/4 note) beat. • Use either triplet quaver (1/8th note) or semiquaver (1/16th note) subdivisions. • Use two dynamic positions: pronounced, unpronounced. The systematic integration of these motion coordinations provide artist percussionists with all the possible units of coordination within these specified parameters. Research insight: Drumming is ‘Dance’; an artistic interaction within time and space curating a set of motions which interact with a range of surfaces for the purpose of sound production and emotional communication. Codifying these motions within a single text contributes to our discipline through an alternative conception of what the percussive ‘rudiments’ essentially are and how they can be expressed. Freedom of motion and artistic expression develops as kinetic language is identified, internalised and activated. We ‘speak’ what is possible to speak. Our aim is to speak with freedom, clarity and eloquence. This aim of this text is to develop motion coordination vocabulary and eloquence of activation. Dissemination: This composition is used as a teaching resource and disseminated amongst Leeds Arts University students
Biomórfica
Get PDFThe output is an exhibition comprising a series of drawings accompanied by a site-responsive installation, where Cumberland constructed new work responding to the architecture of the space. Research process: Central to Cumberland’s research practice is an investigation into complex relationships between repetition, reproduction and difference and its manifestations as expanded drawing practice. 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 methods as part of the making, using paper, vinyl, pigment, acrylic and projection. The research processes and techniques allowed the architectural support to become an element of the drawing. Research insights: It was found that the audience response to the exchange of ideas and exploration of visual communication from different cultural perspectives was important. Connections to the significance of paper cutting (paper picado) in Mexican culture were discovered through linking contemporary Western art to historic Mexican craft and traditions. Dissemination:
The research was disseminated through an exhibition in September 2019 at Liliput Gallery, Puebla, Mexico, a contemporary art gallery representing international contemporary artists. The exhibition was selected by a jury from RADAR Mexico and was sponsored by Laserweb. The work was also disseminated via newspaper articles, digital publishing, social media publicity and a radio broadcast. An accompanying text was published by Mexican Art Historian, Arturo Alvar
Chew the fat: In style, out of fashion
Get PDFThe output is a design reflecting on the phrase “In Style, Out of Fashion” in response to a call-out for submissions from ‘Chew the Fat’, a charitable series of panel discussions exploring big topics in bite size chunks. It comprises two zero-waste fashion artefacts (bomber jacket and trousers) and an accompanying presentation. Research process: Sustainability is and will be an ever more important driver in everything we do as human beings. Sustainable practices and responsible fashion design are of increasing concern to the fashion industry and are being demanded more by the industry and wider public as a whole. This project aims to highlight the methodology that ‘Fashion’ has established to address this issue through the use of zero-waste garment design and construction, which itself derives from the close study, documentation and physical replication of historic zero-waste garments. The presentation and considered display of two contemporary zero-waste garments with their associated colour coded pattern key is intended to inform the viewer of zero-waste design/construction principles whilst educating the wider public as a whole.
Research insights: This public presentation of the designs has helped demystify the often cloudy creative process that fashion designers utilise in order to eliminate material wastage in clothing, through the use of clear visual language and logical display methods. In addition to this, attendees were also able to inspect and touch the fashion artefacts on display, providing another critical form of sensory communication and reflecting Bannister-Bailey’s practice-based research. Dissemination: The project was disseminated at ‘Chew the Fat: In Style, Out of Fashion’, Sheaf St, Leeds, 24 October 2019
Best British bonces
Get PDFThis output is an artefact, an artist’s book containing a practice-led history of British cartoonists. Research Process: This research investigates the political elasticity of ‘Britishness’, exploring the semiotics of humour, and how select cartoonists represented the ‘Britishness’ of their childhood. It is researching perceptions of humour and the potential revival of British humour comics. The results of this investigation were represented through a comic format using drawing. Research Insights: The project found that there are modes of humour that are no longer acceptable due to a shift in societal values. The project tries to address what is humour now and the potential for the revival of such aesthetics.
Dissemination: The project was disseminated via publication, The Zine, via exhibition and a series of workshops aimed at young people
Myth
No full textBased on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this series explores the transformation of the human form; the body is a mutable canvas, subject to the whims of the Gods. Myth is expositional- here Ovid suggests the vulnerability of the human condition in the face of time, illness and eventually death.
Galatea, sculpted from marble by Pygmalion- such is the power of his obsession with her that the sculptor animates the cold stone with his touch and she is brought to life. Tyresias- both Male and Female, the blind prophet had the gift of prophecy, sight being the classical paradigm for knowledge. Narcissus- The beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection and eventually pined away, unable to break free from this infatuation. He was eventually transformed in his longing into the Narcissus flower
Ericka Beckman & Marianna Simnett at FACT Review
No full textA review of the exhibition Ericka Beckman & Marianna Simnett at FACT, Liverpool, 26th March–16th June 2019. Focusing on how these two moving image artists represent and explore societal expectations placed upon women. Considering their use of voice, song and fairly tale motifs. Works discussed: Cinderella (1986) and Hiatus (199-2015) by Ericka Beckman. The Udder (2014), Blood (2015) and Faint with Light (2016) by Marianna Simnett
Re-collections: Susan Hiller, Elizabeth Price, Georgina Starr
No full textA review of the exhibition Re-collections at Site Gallery, Sheffield, 16 Feb-19 May, 2019. Featuring the work of three moving image artists: Susan Hiller, Elizabeth Price and Georgina Starr. Taking a lead from the exhibition’s focus on how narratives are told and re-told, the review traverses the exhibition three times. Starting each time from a different work of art the article demonstrates some of the different narrative and conceptual routes that can be taken through the same artistic material. Artworks discussed: The Joyful Mysteries of Junior (1994-2012), Georgina Starr; Lost and Found (2016) Susan Hiller and A RESTORATION (2016), Elizabeth Price
Can poetry develop critical thinking skills? Narrative enquiry in an art college poetry writing group.
Get PDFThe purpose of my session is create a discussion around the role of critical thinking in university pedagogy. This is a small scale ethnography (Burke 2001) making use of action research (McNiff 2014). The paper has an underlying question anchored by two theorists, Ken Brown (1998) and Matthew Lipman (2003). Can critical thinking be taught or can we only create opportunities for its development? This will be investigated through qualitatively and thematically analysing data. There are eighteen self-selecting volunteer participants. Data is collected from participants using narrative enquiry (Gregory 2009) methodologies and interventions. These include video interviews in small groups and using the poetry written in fiction based analysis. The ontological particularity of the art school is the framing for this paper, viewed through a post-structuralist lens. The epistemological stance is hermeneutic/ interpretative. Themes of metal health well-being and increased confidence in written and spoken English, and a community of inquiry are discussed in the findings. Recommendations are made as to how critical thinking could be developed in curriculum design in the future, and in the wider field of pedagogic policy making. To me critical thinking is an exploration and a debate of deep issues such as the environment, identity, gender. It is asking Socratic questions, it is investigating philosophies and deciding which of them applies to our lives. critical thinking makes the world an exciting place, there is always more to know, to discover. Critical thinking leads us to like-minded critical friends