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Dollhouse architecture: Leonora Carrington and children’s literature
Get PDFIn almost every account of Leonora Carrington’s complex creative imagination, her obsession with the fairy tales and children’s literature of her English childhood is mentioned. Her wealthy family background is also often commented upon as something she would ultimately rebel against. However, rarely are such sources and roots analysed in relation to her wider oeuvre as critical informants. Carrington’s reading practice in the nursery extended into her adult writing and picture-making. This article explores how she used the fairy tale for avant-garde purposes, and considers the persistent themes of the night nursery, dollhouse and rocking horse in her iconography
The sickness of being disallowed: premonition and insight in the ‘‘artist’s sketchbook”
Get PDFThis article makes an original contribution to the histories of sculpture in Britain, a phenomenon that I argue has no register of identity formation within it. I use my own particular practice, positioned in terms of class and gender, as a case study. It articulates how I know, through experience of sculptural practice, that it is not uncommon for artists to bring seemingly incompatible ideas together in the acts of thinking and making, and therefore how they may not perform a straightforward logic in what they call their process. I reflect upon the way that I use content contained in old, personal sketchbook pages to make sculpture now. I bring together the work of American feminist Patti Lather, with the psychoanalytical ideas of Christopher Bollas to argue for the legitimisation of the contents of these pages in my work now. To do this I use the concept of Artistic Research developed by Hannula, Suoranta and Vadén (2005). Their notion of being positioned ‘inside-in’ practice, as the one who is doing the research, and their principle of ‘methodological abundance’, enables my cradling of what might seem incongruous or conflicting tools of interpretation for an artist. Lather’s work acknowledges power and discourses through which she analyses the bodies of knowledge which define and limit what we can say. In the essay I interface Lather’s transgressive categories for validity in qualitative research, developed from her use of Foucauldian theory, with Bollas’s particular model of human subjectivity, represented his writings. I propose that an artist can be both an intellectual and material bricoleur and Life Writing is the method I use to play out a way in which Foucauldian ideas can coalesce with psychoanalytical ideas, described as happening inside what anthropologist Tim Ingold calls the ‘thinking through practice’ of a maker (2013)
Little pink bush
Get PDFThe output is a short film about gender, colour and place. Taylor collaborated with fellow artist, Paul. In addition to the conception of the film, Taylor contributed to the process of retracing & remaking Burris-Meyer’s lost colour charts. The film charts the lost world of Elizabeth Burris-Meyer, the American colour theorist, who has been written out of the colour history of Art & Art and design. Research Process: The aims of the research set out to investigate possible narrative intersections between film, fine art and painting histories and processes. The project explores how extant historical colour samples, charts and concepts developed in the 1940s by American colour theorist Elizabeth Burris-Meyer might be contextually re-evaluated. The method included collating Burris’ rare surviving colour books and returning them to where Burris lived and worked. Taylor and Paul took Burris with them on a journey back to the light of Connecticut, USA to explore the complexity of her colour fields. The film gathers the remnants of Burris-Meyer’s surviving work and reveals how wondrous this colour work is.
Research Insights: The film generates new insights and contexts around historical gendered art and design references, and hierarchies of theoretical contexts of colour, celebrating the importance of female colourists against the canon of male dominance in painting. The research frames aesthetic hierarchies between concepts of art and concepts of domestic design within the evolution of gendered notions of colour. Dissemination: The film has been disseminated in the UK and USA: Making…making research, Studio Theatre, Leeds Arts University. 26 October – 6 November 2017. BAG Open 33, Café Gallery, London. 18 November - 11 December 2017. Outpost, Shortwave, London. 21 May – 15 June 2018. Little Pink Bush Drive Through Movie, Gaylordsville, Connecticut, USA. 15 May – 19 May 2019
From fibre to fabric: creating innovative learning perspectives on Yorkshire’s wool heritage through collaborative practice
Get PDFWhat happens when collage comes off the page? An experimental image making workshop
Get PDFThe output is a creative project exploring experimental image making. It interrogates the ‘indeterminate condition’ of loose collage objects before being stuck down or bound into a composition. Research process: The participatory event introduced participants to a range of drawing exercises and printmaking techniques, used for collage material in the later stages. Due to the community and placemaking focus of the event, participants were encouraged to consider how their own stories, memories and experiences of space could be included within their output, including physical responses such as taking rubbings from the building itself. Research insights: Within Bradbury’s research, the notion of rules and instructions as a way of interrupting of disrupting traditional ways of working have been explored. Bradbury argues that it is important to consider the ethical implications of giving participants prompts. He works collaboratively and creates activities in dialogue with the participants. This freedom also allowed participants to create highly personal and original outcomes which were presented at a mini exhibition at the end of the project. Dissemination: The research was disseminated via a workshop at Encontro International de Ilustração de S. João da Madeira Portugal, 14 – 21 October 2016
Commons & community economies: entry points to design for eco-social justice?
Get PDFMany designers today (including ourselves) are experimenting with how their practice can engage in meaningful ways with the complexity of pressing social and environmental issues. Being very much concerned with the politics and power relations that run through such issues, in this paper we will explore what points of orientation the framework of the ‘commons’ and that of ‘community economies’ – seen from an autonomist and feminist Marxist perspective – can offer when working on socially and politically engaged projects. We mobilise these two frameworks as possible entry points through which eco-¬‐socially just modes of reproducing livelihoods can be fostered. Moreover, we will consider how they can encourage designers to more directly activate their skills to support human activities that move our societies towards eco-¬social justice
Aberrant consumers: selfies and fat admiration websites
Get PDFIn contemporary consumer culture, the healthy body acts as a sign-value for success, a strong work ethic and self-control; it is viewed as a productive resource and medium for creating “bodily capital.” But there is a conflict at the heart of consumer culture, between the imperative to work hard and delay gratification, and the consumer dictum of instant pleasure. Health demonstrates the individuals’ ability to balance the opposing forces of production and consumption. Overtly fat and thin bodies signify an inability to balance the conflict. In this article, I compare different forms of self-presentation on social networking sites and online platforms to explore sign-values of the body in contemporary consumer culture. Websites such as Fantasy Feeder offer advice on how to gain social security benefits, and use fast food industry “bundling techniques” to maximize calorie intake with minimal cost suggesting that fat admiration participants are disruptive to social and economic ideals. I use Marxist and psychoanalytical theories to interpret photographs of “unhealthy” bodies to build a theoretical model for potentially disruptive figures in capitalist society
Manual v.2.1
Get PDFThe output is an artist’s book, or ‘printed exhibition’, that reflects Cumberland’s on-going engagement with artists and gallerists in Palma de Mallorca. Research process: Central to Cumberland’s research practice is an investigation into the nature of a serial body of work, the complex relationships between repetition, reproduction and difference and its manifestations as expanded drawing practice. The process of making and documenting exhibitions leads to the development of strategies of dissemination, extending the reach of a body of work, and making new connections. Research insights: The on-going project with artists and gallerists in Palma de Mallorca involving a series of exhibitions and publications enables Cumberland to continue to explore what a drawing could be when it is reproduced, reformatted and remade. Experimentation and investigation with the documentation and representation of Cumberland’s expanded drawing practices, explores a series of works through the print and the publishing field. Thus, the boundary between art piece and catalogue begins to collapse. The printed exhibition in its design, layout and image selection, co-exist to provide relevant exhibition information whilst also contributing as an artwork in its own right. The exhibition is an immediate experience whilst the printed exhibition exists as a longstanding memory over time. This episodic process enables the artist to renew, re-consider, rework and re-engage with the possibilities of expanded drawing practices as part of the cycle of making. Dissemination: The publication was disseminated via Aba Art Lab Gallery as part of Art Palma Brunch, April 2016
When the past overhauls the present, you will forget that you can't remember
Get PDFA solo exhibition of drawings, textiles, animations and ceramics.
This solo exhibition focused on the development of allegorical narratives including drawings made in response to stories told to the artist by recent migrants to Chapeltown in Leeds. The exhibition also included textiles, ceramics and animations, all of which were designed to open out the allegorical possibilities of recent stories told to the artist.
The exhibition was an opportunity to show a much more extensive range of approaches to making work than previous exhibitions, as it included an opportunity to take over other spaces as well as the large gallery space itself.
The exhibition was also used to showcase a second new set of specially designed cards and a board game that were used to help audience members generate their own narratives.
Two artist’s talks were held during the time of the exhibition, one in the gallery itself and the other at Edinburgh Printmakers.
A catalogue including a dedicated text by Angela Kingston and a short story by Ray French, accompanied by maps made by the artist, was produced for the exhibition
Building dreams
No full textThe output is a creative project comprising a light projection titled ‘Building dreams’. Research process: The proposal for Leeds Light Night 2016 was a further development of 3 years experimentation of filming with the high-resolution capability of an iPhone in creating digital film installations. The final film and accompanying sound track was constructed and rendered in Adobe Premiere Pro. From this master copy, 3 films were cropped, re- sized and rendered to create the projections for each floor of the building. Research insights: The intention and importance of Building Dreams was creating a new digital projection technique that opened different opportunities to re-imagining the urban environment. Light Projection artworks, to this point, predominantly used the architecture of the city as enormous screens, filled by a powerful digital projector and utilising techniques such as projection mapping to create a visual spectacle. Building Dreams used 3 synchronised standard projectors inside a building projecting onto screens set in 6 windows across 3 floors with a synchronised sound system playing the soundtrack. This innovative technique used to achieve the exhibit was only made possible through the technical experimentation of Lumen, a leading digital projection company who were able to synchronise the 3 digital projectors across 3 floors rooms of the building. Dissemination: ‘Building Dreams’ was exhibited as part of Leeds Light Night on 4-5 October 2016. The film ran for five hours and the majority of the audience viewed the exhibit from across the street. It was then recommissioned by Ghent Licht Festival and exhibited on 31 January – 4 February 2018. The audience in Leeds was estimated at 70,000 people over 2 nights whilst in Ghent 835,000 people walked the city centre route to view the 40 installations over 5 nights