Leeds Arts University Repository
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Gerald McCann: the rediscovery of a fashion designer
Get PDFThe research for this article was initiated by the discovery of the archive of international fashion designer, Gerald McCann, hidden in a garage in Fleetwood, Lancashire, UK. The contents of the archive revealed a treasure trove of press cuttings, photographs, fashion drawings and interviews as well as designs and costings from a once well-known designer, whose significance to the global fashion industry is sparsely documented and largely forgotten. This article reveals the history of the designer, who graduated from the tutelage of Professor Madge Garland at the Royal College of Art in London in the 1950s and forged a career at the heart of ‘Swinging London’ in the 1960s. He was lured to the USA in the 1970s, returning to the UK in the 1990s as a designer for House of Fraser and Harrods. The research constructs the first significant assessment of McCann’s position in global fashion and the value and relevance of his legacy, as well as exploring the rationale for documenting the history of forgotten fashion designer
Kerrang! magazine and the representation of heavy metal masculinities (1981–95)
Get PDFMetal magazines have been shown to play a significant role in communicating and shaping heavy metal culture. And, since the masculinist nature of heavy metal is perhaps its most discussed and agreed upon feature, scholars have argued that heavy metal magazines also reproduce masculine hegemony. Focusing on cover images from Kerrang! magazine, this study utilizes a mixed methods approach to examine how heavy metal masculinities are represented over an extended number of issues (from 1981 to 1995). Utilizing existing scholarship on heavy metal magazines and drawing on celebrity identification theory, I argue that many of the prevailing studies that discuss heavy metal masculinities are essentially flawed in their reliance upon particular traits. Instead I show the ways that media images can come to both reproduce and resist masculine gender norms in the context of heavy metal culture. By considering how representations are formed over an extended period and in relation to particular heavy metal icons, I show that certain arguments and assumptions about masculinity and male privilege in heavy metal culture are oversimplified
Garment label design and companion information to communicate fashion sustainability issues to young consumers
Get PDFWith the rise of fashion consumption and a clear lack of promotional input by retailers on the issues of sustainable fashion, this research shows that there is little awareness particularly among young adults on the issues of fashion sustainability. Therefore, a clear need to inform consumers on how to utilize, care for and dispose of fashion items is necessary to make the important changes to the planet’s fashion waste issues. To this end, this research explores ways of how fashion brands can communicate a more sustainable way of consuming fashion to young consumers in the UK. Focus groups were conducted with the objective of identifying the main issues relating to fashion consumption including the lack of awareness and disposal of garments. These were followed by a collaborative workshop involving young consumers, where a fashion brand was created to educate consumers through information and garment label design solutions using innovative communication strategies. To ascertain the validity of these design solutions, usability testing was then conducted, which identified further design improvements. Although conducted with a small set of participants, this collaborative and user-centered research is well positioned to propose innovative solutions to communicate research-based design solutions on how to communicate, educate and change the perception of sustainable fashion among young consumers in the U
On show
Get PDFThere is a long history of debates and conflicting opinions in relation to the display of the female body. For example, many world religions require female worshippers to show modesty by covering their hair and body. In the late twentieth century academics in fields such as gender and media studies responded to the campaigns of second wave feminism, developing and debating ideas about the power relationships at play in looking, being seen and the representation of the female body. Contemporary discussions on this topic also consider female visibility through nudity to be a form of empowerment, and way of taking back control over the female body and its representations. However, this idea continues to be fiercely debated. In 1975, Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, a feminist interpretation of the representation of actresses and actors in Hollywood cinema, was published and continues to be taught widely in art schools. It raises issues of gendered looking and coined the phrase the ‘male gaze’. This influential text seems to be experiencing a resurgence of interest amongst a younger generation of female artists, partly because the ideas resonate with recent changes in technology. Thanks to smart phones with cameras and social networking sites we can self-author our images in selfies, leading to questions about what is being posed, performed, or presented, and for whom? This curator’s choice selection brings together artworks that consider different aspects of looking and self-display. The artworks play with the power relations between the looker and the looked at, disrupting the idea of the passive female object and active male subject. The participating artists are: Naomi Blakeborough, Dr Alison J. Carr, Megan McLatchie, Odjanna Dracock, Sarah Eyre and Dr Dawn Woolley. Curated by Joanna Craddock and Dr Dawn Woolley
A device suitable for protecting and / or allowing cleaning of a bike and / or vehicle component and method of use thereof.
Get PDFThe Brake Shield is an innovative new product for cleaning and maintaining the moving parts of a bicycle drive train and is the only one of its kind.
It has a simple yet effective design of a polypropylene barrier that sits between the spokes and the cassette to protect your disc brakes and wheel rims whilst cleaning and/or lubricating of the gearing and drive train is undertaken. The nature of the product allows this difficult and unpleasant task to be performed in a quick, tidy and efficient manner.
Many people just ignore this part of their bike; they put up with a muddied cassette and chain, either cleaning them periodically, maybe monthly, or just replacing them when they become unworkable which is wasteful and unsustainable. With the Brake Shield 'little and often' cleaning is made simpler and easier. The Brake Shield's innovative tray catches all the cleaning fluid, dirt and oil, allowing this dirty task to be undertaken anywhere without making a mess.
A more formal abstract taken from the Patent Application Publication:
A device is provided for protecting, allowing cleaning, servicing and / or lubrication of one or more components of a bike or vehicle in use. The device is formed from at least one blank of material including a first portion arranged to act as a shield element so as to at least partially shield at least one component of the vehicle or bike in use, and at least a second portion. The second portion includes at least one wall joined to the first portion by at least one fold line. The at least one wall and fold line are arranged such that when the second portion is assembled and / or erected in use it defines a tray or container portion joined to the first portion
On hold
Get PDFThe output is an exhibition in collaboration with book designer Fletcher and photographers Higginbottom and Greenwood. The output is an interactive exhibition where viewers are invited to select and sequence photos from the project to make an individual version of the city in book form. Research process: Working alongside Higginbottom and Greenwood to develop ways to translate their process of photographing Leeds city centre into an interactive publishing experience. Through taking part in this collaborative process the audience was asked to form a dialogue between images, allowing them to create their own version of the city, one without ownership and a place that could only exist through interpretation. This emulates our own research methodologies as we made sense of the project and made these connections. Research insights: The research aimed to consider the publishing process and book design. By handing the control over to the audience to edit, sequence and bind their own version of the book. This starts to open questions about the physical act of publishing and draws upon previous research into the physical book form. Dissemination: Exhibition and book launch at Village, Leeds from 15 - 18 November 2018
Home (dis)comforts
Get PDFThe output is a solo exhibition called Home dis(Comforts), comprising a series of sculptures made from domestic objects. Research process: In the exhibition, overlooked and undervalued domestic objects have been transformed as sculpture, activated through careful manipulation of the materiality of femininity to disrupt purpose and intention. Research insights: In Home (dis)Comforts found domestic objects perform uncanny narratives of feminist discontent. Items of furniture alongside other feminized domestic objects perform a kind of unhomeliness that can be seen to trouble Freud’s reading of the uncanny as the return of the repressed, a contemporary feminism haunted by the unresolved past. Together these sculptural objects form an installation that addresses current concerns around the precarious concept of home, and of the persistent yet problematic alignment of femininity to domesticity. Home (dis)Comforts 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 shown at Dye House Gallery, Bradford, 16 April – 4 May 2018
Home strike
Get PDFThe output is a creative project, comprising a series of sculptures, drawings and objects. It interrogates those biopolitical and cultural norms that see women, and their bodies, systematically domesticated, exploited and imprisoned by ideologies founded on patriarchy. Research process: The work involves weaponizing everyday household objects, transforming them into instruments of self-defence, or violent revolt — a stark reminder that the home is often no safe space. Common cooking utensils have their handles wrapped in women’s tights and secured by colourful hairbands in Kitchen Shanks (2017), turning material supports of femininity into makeshift armaments. Exhibited on a security grille, the shanks allude to DIY weapons confiscated from prison wards, and often put on display to educate wardens. A rickety barricade of motley found or stolen furniture has been used to construct Domestic Front (2016). Both protective and defensive, the front is infested with small cut- outs of women with guns that are both real and imaginary, grotesque and idealised, from images Chambers sourced from the internet. Research insights: The work implies that the female revolt may have already been suppressed — or else, it could illustrate that its insurgents are gaining ground and sharing skills. The installation “haunts our retrogressive imagination” through the use of “dysfunctional furniture and ambivalent ornamentation.” Oscillating between horrific and humorous images, Home Strike revisits the domestic biopolitics of 1970s feminism. Through its inflection, the exhibition considers the impact 1970s feminism has had on intersectional discussions of class, gender, and race. Dissemination: The project was disseminated at l’étrangère, London, 8 March – 21 April 2018
In uncertain words
Get PDFHow can a multimodal art practice provide both a plea for precision and a plea for worth of uncertainty in a political climate that wants for both? Using a series of her moving image and text-based artworks as examples Crouch discusses the mutable and context-dependent nature of linguistic meaning. Words neither represent reality nor vocalise thought in any simple, transparent way. Yet still they provide an insight into human cognition, sitting suggestively at the intersection of an individual speaker’s cognitive endowment and a socially agreed system of rules. Crouch’s artworks use wordplay and interaction of text and image to highlight fundamental categories –space, time and causality – that apparently structure human cognition whilst evidencing that our language use does not map onto these entirely. By foregrounding the multimodal and contingent nature of meaning the artworks posit a complex and embodied view of knowledge that values language but does not prioritise the verbal above all else
The reluctant learner: encouraging engagement with CGI animation tools
Get PDFWorking in higher education is amazing, sharing accumulated knowledge and skills that will help to shape young minds and attitudes, and ensuring that students are prepared to enter their chosen industry or profession upon graduation is a gratifying career. There is always a downside though, I don’t mean the endless administrative tasks which mount up over the course of a semester, in this context I refer to the reluctant learner. The course on which I teach is a broad programme that encourages students to explore their options before committing focus towards the animation medium in which they would prefer to specialise, my area of expertise is 3D modelling and animation. The complexity of most 3D animation software solutions can raise barriers for potential learners and initial enthusiasm for learning often turns to frustration as layers of menus, unfamiliar tools and new terminology is laid before them. It is our responsibility to offer all learners the opportunity to experience a variety of available animation mediums and to facilitate student development so that they can fulfil and hopefully enjoy the tasks that we set them. I would like to talk about my practice, through which I aim to ensure that all of my students appreciate how the tools of 3D modelling and animation can be useful to, and applied across, the gamut of animation mediums, and the methods that can be employed to engage learners with complex software so that they not only understand but enjoy the experience