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A story within a story within a story within a story: British art school experience retrieved through archive, anecdote and life writing
Get PDF‘Personal interpretations of past time’ are what the historian Carolyn Steedman calls ‘the stories that people tell themselves in order to explain how they got to the place they currently inhabit' (1986). She has proved in her history texts that they ‘are often in deep and ambiguous conflict with the official interpretative devices of a culture’. This text offers an account fashioned from my own lived experience using anecdotes retrieved from archival materials, including my own mental archive, physical evidence located in the Special Collections at Goldsmiths Library, the sculpture archives at the Henry Moore Institute and the printed pedagogical literature of the sculptor Reg Butler
Echoes of protest: conference presentation.
Get PDFThis paper looks at the research methodology and findings of the collaborative project ’Echoes of Protest’ by Sheffield Hallam University academic, Esther Johnson, Professor of Film and Media Arts, and Leeds Arts University academic Debbie Ballin, Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking.
'Echoes of Protest’ aims to understand the role protest can play in the politicisation of children and the long-term impact of its aftermath on their lives. The initial phase of this research draws on oral testimony and photography to highlight a seldom-explored perspective of the 1984-1985 UK Miners’ Strike. The stories collected are from adults remembering what it was like to grow up during the strike
Latent voices: how public art of the past can speak in the present
No full textThe article reflects upon two recent exhibitions of past public art ¬- City Sculpture Projects 1972 at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2017) and Out There: Our Post War Public Art (2016) at Bessie Surtee’s House, Newcastle (Historic England, 2016). Wondering why these venues or organisations wanted to re-visit these projects in the present-moment, the article speculates upon changing notions of the public and upon the increasingly individualised nature of contemporary neoliberal society. It posits that part of art’s role in the present moment is to resist the narcissism that consumer capitalism encourages and to invite us to re-envision or see the world form other points of view
Ulysses and I: Joyce as a catalyst for graphic practice
Get PDFThis article will focus on elements of my graphic design practice that consider how text can inspire, be used with and act as imagery. I discuss my master’s project, an investigation into a reader’s response to text and a traditional graphic application of that research. This second project was made in collaboration with Joseph Haigh, a fellow student at Manchester Metropolitan University whose research is concerned with typographic landscapes. I consider how my haptic perception of the book has influenced this later work and how it continues to inspire my recent image-based responses
All I want to do is make things: class, men and art and design higher education.
Get PDFWorking class men are under-represented in art and design higher education. This article explores the experiences of one such mature student who had fulfilled his dream to go to an art college later in life in order to study a degree in Interdisciplinary Art and Design. Using an approach based on narrative inquiry, the student’s learning journey over three years was captured through six verbal and transcribed accounts. Bernstein’s work on visible and invisible pedagogies as well as his comments on vocational education provided a lens through which to look at the student’s experiences. It argues that the strong framing and classification of his previous vocational education led the student to expect to be taught in a particular way. He found the fluid and integrated arts curriculum different to the kind of training a ‘master’ would transmit to an ‘apprentice’. He constructed himself as a doer rather than a thinker, which remained constant throughout his degree. The findings suggest that educators should discuss with students from all backgrounds the pedagogic approaches commonly used in art and design and how these may be different to previous ways of learning. Academic staff should also challenge the theory and practice dichotomy, so that students understand they are drawing on theory not only when they are writing but also when they are making. Finally, even though invisible pedagogies dominate art and design education, staff should reflect on the need for more visible, explicit modes of teaching when students are less confident in their abilities
Freedomination billboard and soapbox performance
Get PDFCommisioned by RedBoard for their Freedom themed billboard series that was a part of Hull 2017 City of Culture Creative Communities Programme. The billboard artwork was produced and the performance idea devised in collaboration with Watne during a research trip to Kansas City in July 2017, supported by a travel grant from Artist Newsletter (a-n).
For the billboard programme RedBoard asked: What does freedom mean to you? What does it look like to you? Does freedom really exist? Is freedom allowed to be expressed? Is freedom an understood word? Utopia? Watne and Woolley’s design addresses these questions by problematising the notion that freedom is a neutral or intrinsically good thing. They ask: whose freedom? Are we all equally free? Freedom and domination appear to be mutually exclusive concepts. The artwork aims to draw attention to this binary to expose and explore a grey area in between. The freedom to act without restraint can oppress others. The idea of freedom is evoked paradoxically by those in power to go against the best interest of others. Loss of freedom could be the price of inclusion and citizenship.
To accompany the billboard the artists produced a performance that underpins the ideas behind the design. With the help of friends, organisers, and city of culture volunteers they took over a street corner in Hull and turned it into a temporary speaker’s corner. Woolley read a script (manifesto!) written in collaboration with Watne. The participatory performance encouraged members of the audience to get on a soapbox and give a speech on any subject. As individuals expressed their freedom of speech it became increasingly difficult to hear what they were saying, demonstrating the concept ‘freedomination’. The soapboxes were also different heights, suggesting a hierarchy of ideas, and that the benefits of freedom aren’t enjoyed equally
Spectral evidence
Get PDFSpectral Evidence is a moving image work about colour perception and colour language. Combining research into the evolution of the eye, the physics of light, linguistics and semiotics, the work takes colour as a case study to investigate the cultural and biological limitations on our encounter with the world. Displayed across two screens, the first is arranged sequentially based on the order of the colour spectrum as identified by Isaac Newton in 1665. The second follows the sequence of acquisition of colour terminology suggested by Berlin and Kay in their publication 'Basic Colour Terms' from 1969. Produced with support from Arts Council England
Print stuff – independent print & publishing fair
Get PDFPrint Stuff is an independent print & publishing fair held, for the past three years at the De Grey Rooms, York. Crossing between illustration, textiles, graphic design, photography, poetry and comics, the curated event champions the interdisciplinary space that printmaking and self-publishing provides. The fair functions as an affordable space for artists and publishers to exhibit and sell their work, start conversations and promote an authorial approach to contemporary print. The event was started in 2017, with over 50 exhibitors showing work and free monoprint workshops on-site run by Leeds Print Workshop with approximately 900 visitors throughout the day. The 2018 event also included a series of exhibitions held across York in the lead-up to the fair itself (at Fossgate Social, Kiosk Project Space and Random Encounter) and welcomed around 1200 visitors on the day. The 2019 event was held over 2 days, with talks and workshops across the weekend from exhibitors and academics in the field of print and self-publishing, as well as featuring over 50 exhibitors and an exhibition of artists' work held at York College. The Print Stuff project has sought to provide a platform for contemporary, self-authored work in order to seek connections between disciplines and explore the potential of printed matter as a unifying factor of creative practice. Over the past three years, we have been able to situate photobooks alongside comic artists and more traditional printmakers in order to establish a dialogue about the value, role and future of the printed form. http://www.print-stuff.co.u
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
The nightdress I wore to give birth in: performative materialities and maternal intersubjectivities
Get PDFIt begins with a pale blue cotton nightdress from Mothercare; I don’t remember buying it, but suppose I must have done. Strange that I should have thought it necessary to buy a maternity nightdress to give birth in when nudity or a large t-shirt would have sufficed. I don’t wear nightdresses, yet I gave birth to my son wearing a pale blue cotton nightdress from Mothercare. Another story about materiality and childbirth. My mother tells me (although she is not a reliable witness) that when she gave birth to me in 1966, she was left to labour alone with only an occasional check up from a young male doctor wearing a hand knitted arran jumper. During the course of her labour, my mother, in much discomfort and distress, pulled at this young doctor’s jumper until it began to unravel.
What ties these two stories is the role of materiality as the stuff or substance of the performativity of childbirth. Together they tell of maternal relations evidenced and consolidated through materiality, of intersubjective experience and memory materialized; literally. Both the physical experience of birthing and the emotional memory of the performance of giving birth have an ambivalent and ambiguous relationship to death, horror, haunting and the uncanny.
This essay looks at four artworks that position the nightdress as a performative object resonant with maternal relations, intersubjective experience and the uncanny. Cornelia Parker’s ‘Blue Shift’, the nightdress worn by Mia Farrow in the horror film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’. Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Cell VII’ where nightclothes and undergarments hang like pale ghosts trapped within a claustrophobic enclosure of heavy wooden doors. Megan Wynne’s ‘The Night Gown I Wore When I Gave Birth to Her’, a photographic image of the artist with her five-year-old daughter curled under the stretch fabric of the nightdress they both wear. And my own ‘The Nightdress I Wore to Give Birth in’, the pale blue cotton nightdress that opens this essay, now performing as sculpture.
Analysing these artworks as performative objects vibrant with the agency of materiality, with specific focus on how the materniality of agency in this context imbues materiality with uncanny resonance. Drawing on recent writing around feminism and new materialities, Maurizia Boscagli positions clothing as the material signifier of femininity, the choosing of clothes as a potentially radical act of non-conformity. Judith Butler developed our understanding of gender construction as an ongoing series of performative acts; clothing, outward appearance and restricted modes of behavior being key indicators of femininity. Jessica Benjamin positions maternal intersubjectivities as the active engagement of identification and recognition, the individual growing in and through their relationship to other subjects. Alexandra Kokoli’s recent publication on the feminist uncanny explores through an analysis of feminist artwork, the uncanny as the ambivalent space through which feminism engages with psychoanalysis. Barbara Creed in ‘The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis’ challenges the notion of the female body as terrifying, as such disrupting the understanding of woman as victim within the genre of horror; in the context of this essay, the performativity of birthing becoming the site/sight of horror.
This essay analyses the performativity of materiality as the signifier of maternal intersubjectivities, engaging with texts that position new materialisms alongside the uncanny material and performative resonance of the nightdress as worn to give birth in