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The Radical Decade
Get PDFThe output is a curated exhibition called ‘The Radical Decade’, reviewed by Kevin Almond from University of Leeds. It explores the 1960s archive of fashion designer, Gerald McCann’s (1931-2019) work. It aimed to rediscover and celebrate the work of the designer. Research process: Riches discovered McCann’s large archive, stored in folders and multiple boxes in a garage. The enquiry involved the collection of this primary data. This included original designs, for example ‘Uniform’ (1960s). In addition to the archive material, a call was put out for people to donate original garments for exhibition in ‘The Radical Decade’. Riches decided that the documentation of McCann’s fashion illustrations was a key part of the exhibition. Research insights: The items of clothing displayed in the exhibition demonstrated McCann’s approach to design, pattern cutting and manufacture in the 1960s. It seemed that the fashion ideal of the 1960s was to make women look like little girls. The cut of the clothing had evolved through the tiny silhouettes of each style, for example Peter Pan collars, the A line and ‘Baby Doll’ silhouettes. The exhibition demonstrated how a designer can manoeuvre their own work to reflect the zeitgeist, in this case the cultural explosion of the 1960s. Dissemination: The exhibition was disseminated at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University, 7 October – 16 December 2016. The research was also explored at a one-day symposium, organised by Sharon Bainbridge. Riches was also asked to contribute to McCann’s obituary in The Times in 2019
The prison project
Get PDFThe output is a series of artefacts comprising small scale smoke stencil drawings,
produced specifically for a cell in the disused Dean Road Prison in Scarborough.
Research process: The drawings are informed by a previous visit to the Barracks at Berwick-upon-Tweed, in which drawings and messages were stencilled onto the ceilings by soldiers. The drawings are made by holding a flame beneath the stencil, leaving a sooty deposit. This method became part of a working practice for a series of drawings which were included in the Scarborough Prison Project. Research insights: The drawings responded to the nature of the architectural spaces of the prison whilst imagining spaces of transition and escape. The use of smoke suggests an impermanence and provisionality, and the marking of time. The work was presented as part of a group exhibition of site responsive drawing projects in the cells of the Victorian prison. Dissemination: The drawings were disseminated as part of the ‘Scarborough Prison Drawing Project’ at Dean Road Prison, Scarborough, 12-14 February 2016. The work was also disseminated through an accompanying exhibition catalogue: The project was sponsored by Arts Council England, Coastival and Scarborough Borough Council
Thank you Estelle
No full textThank you Estelle is a creative project comprising a collection of photography,
digital montage and gif. It is part of a broader and ongoing body of photographic
work responding to bereavement and inheritance, to explore the power and meaning of the familial object. Research process: Craddock’s research is based on a family archive of a small collection of domestic objects inherited from the artist’s aunt, alongside vernacular family snapshots and press photos of her from the 1950s. In a playful process, it photographically explores these now decontextualized objects and photographs. The work draws on ideas about the ‘affective object’ (Casella and Woodward 2014: 104), ideas of ‘copresence’ (Barthes 1980), and the ways in which materiality (or immateriality) enables the image to be performed (Edwards & Elart: 2004: 10). Research insights: The photographs refer to the lived experience of the person constructed through the
visual culture associated with their life. Family photographs, objects and artefacts
act memorialise, they are still resonant in some way and that through a creative
process of repurposing and re- contextualisation, existing meaning can be drawn out and re-animated through new creative and visual associations. The work highlights changing notions of femininity, shown through dress, gesture and pose, and the artefacts of gendered material culture; a retirement cake encountered in a family photograph is remade and reimagined as a moving image to spin eternally in
networked space, highlighting notions of gendered domestic ritual, repetition and
time. Dissemination: The work has been disseminated online in peer-reviewed journal, Feast, and Soanyway magazine, and via exhibition at Leeds Arts University (2016, 2017 and 2018) and St Martins Church, Leeds (2018)
Transcendental housework
Get PDFMy mother was not a feminist, yet growing up in 1970s suburban north London I was witness to, and complicit in, my mother’s active refusal to conform to the expectations of a good housewife. Cleaning, tidying, dusting, washing up, were all low on the list of my mother’s priorities, instead she played tennis, she grew vegetables, she went out dancing; my sister and I were left to our own devices.
As a feminist artist and a mother, I have adopted my mother’s domestic dissent, integrating it as philosophy into the processes and outcomes of my art making practice. I do not have a studio but make art in my kitchen; I rarely clean or tidy up, but instead utilize my domestic space and the objects that inhabit it, as a temporalized site of domestic resistance.
This paper is a brief representation of how I have materialized my ongoing relationship with my mother. The sculptural objects that I discuss here can be read as an iconography of the domestic sphere; in particular, the ambivalent understanding I had as a child of my mother in her role as a mother. I re-enact the domestic unease of my childhood, projecting maternal dissent on to the haunted objects that formed my sense of self in the world. I subvert meaning and ideologies through affective interrogation of subservient domestic objects; coffee tables, footstools, and ornaments
The trial of Roger Casement
Get PDFMy first graphic novel, The Trial of Roger Casement, examines the last 18 months in the life of (the former) Sir Roger Casement, who was hung for treason in 1916 after the failed Irish Easter Rising. It combines fiction and non-fiction- in parallel to how he recorded his own life in his public-facing ‘white’ diaries (intended for publica- tion) and his private, intimate ‘black’ diaries. I do not want to simply replay the known facts (as much as they can be known) of his last years. Casement is an opportunity to explore our (or my) inability to truly know the inner life of another person (or oneself). The comic form is perfect for exploring the different levels of self- the inner life as perceived by others (such as a biographer), the observable outer life, the inner life as perceived by oneself (in a diary) and the actual, lived experience of one’s own life. I explore this through what is drawn and how it is drawn. The same sentence can be said by the same (named) person, but when coming from a figure drawn in two different ways the effect of those words will be different. The Trial of Roger Casement is as much about the failure of biography as it is a biography. Casement rose to prominence from a civil servant of the British Empire to expose the grotesque human rights abuses committed by the regime of King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Free State. His 1904 report for the British Parliament was the first expose published from within an institution of European colonial power to detail the brutality and horror inflicted for profit in the aftermath of Europe’s Scramble for Africa. His first-hand reporting showed the hollowness and hypocrisy of European colonial expansion and capitalist exploitation, the legacy of which still resonates today. Casement’s work with exploited people in the Congo and Peru radicalised him against imperialism, at home and abroad. He returned to Ireland to join the campaign for Home Rule and-when that became frustrated by politi- cal manoeuvering not dissimilar to contemporary British politics-he began to work on what would become the 1916 Easter Rising alongside other seminal figures of Irish and socialist history such as Countess Markievicz and James Connolly. Among the Irish revolutionaries, he was also an outsider. He did not believe in pressing ahead with the Easter Rising plans, knowing that the rebels were outnumbered and outgunned compared to the British army. He argued passionately against the loss of lives that action would cause. Casement was also a gay man who had mul- tiple intimate and sexual relationships at a time of public revulsion against homosexuality. His trial for treason and hanging were a direct consequence of his sexual identity. A gay man was not seen as worthy of a military tribunal and execution by firing squad. While the bodies of the other 1916 Rising leaders were returned to their families, Casement’s was thrown into a lime pit outside of Pentonville Prison. The diaries he kept chronicling his sex-partners and gay cruising were circulated to his former friends and allies, such as Arther Conan Doyle, who might otherwise have pleaded for clemency. His public outing caused him to be written out of both Irish and British history, and even today he is a problematic figure, refusing to fit into any pre-defined conceptions of masculinity and heroism often applied to early 20th Century narratives. Casement’s life touches on issues still relevant today: European exploitation, the inner and outer lives of individuals, the right to demand a society for all, and the quixotic dream of freedom
An insight into the challenges that mature learners encounter across the student lifecycle in Art & Design Higher Education
Get PDFMartell Baines, Progression Manager: Poster presentation at the Open University Widening Participation Conference HE: Transforming lives through life-wide learning? April 2016, alongside a paper presentation by Head of Research Dr. Sam Broadhead. An insight into the challenges that mature learners encounter across the student lifecycle in Art & Design Higher Education. In the paper ‘Art of surviving and thriving’ (Broadhead, 2012) one of the research methods was to capture the student voice by one to one interviews. Broadhead says it was; ‘to discover how well Access to Higher Education students were prepared for Higher Education level study in art & design at a specialist college.’ Broadhead’s case studies came from diverse backgrounds and often had ‘unconventional educational histories’. Also one of the findings was ‘the importance of having other mature students on the course. The support they received from each other, a feeling of belonging to a small community of mature students had helped them through this transitional time’ This poster provides a glimpse at the experience of 5 mature students, who are studying or have recently studied creative degrees at Leeds College of Art to understand the challenges they have had to overcome in order to stay on course . Also presented is the framework of developmental activities that students can elect to participate in along the student lifecycle to aid the stages of Access, Student Success and Progression. (OFFA, How to produce an access agreement, 2016). This research poster was produced in response to the recommendations within the paper ‘The Art of Surviving and Thriving: How well are Access Students Prepared for their Degrees in Art and Design?’ (Broadhead, 2012
RBMK1000
No full textRBMK100 is a short film inspired by the experiences of the residents of Pripyat during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Research Process: The film takes its name from the reactor that exploded on 26th April 1986. Accounts from residents of Pripyat and ‘Liquidators’ who took part in the clean-up inspired the verses in the first part of the film. The official report of the disaster was analysed and ‘factual’ information was extracted to give the ever-growing numbers in the second half of the film. Found footage from Pripyat filmed before the disaster was interspersed with the text. The style of the film was influenced by ‘La Jetée’ (Chris Marker, 1962). As the film progresses, the ‘film’ begins to become damaged from the bottom of the screen, a reference to the photographs of Igor Kostin, who’s pictures taken at Chernobyl were damaged due to the high levels of radiation. The soundtrack to the film is the sound of an RBMK100 nuclear reactor. Research insights: The methodology of making ‘RBMK100’ came from Young’s Reductionist Manifesto. Reductionism is defined as ‘storytelling through absence’. What is absent in this story is a sense of the truth. ‘Truth’ becomes increasingly abstract and points to what was left out official accounts. The film ends with the official number of fatalities - 31. Given all the previous information, this is intended to make the audience question the authenticity of this figure. Young found that the quantitative data alone did not tell the human story. Adding verses told from an eyewitness perspective made more of a human connection. Dissemination: ‘Storytelling as a Means of Communication in the United Kingdom’s Creative Industries’, Fifth International Conference on Media and Popular Culture, UK. 12th January 2019. The Fashion Institute of Technology New York. 28th February 2018. Mediendesign DHBW Ravensburg, Germany. 10th May 2017. Turku University Arts, Finland. 28th February 2019. Desiatka Hotel, Ukraine. 20th April 2016
Indisciplinarity as social form: challenging the distribution of the sensible in the visual arts
Get PDFThe concept of ‘the distribution of the sensible’, sometimes translated as ‘partition’ or ‘division’, arguably underpins all of Jacques Rancière’s work, though is only directly articulated in one of his later works ‘The Politics of Aesthetics’ (2004). This concept has quickly gained currency in the discourses surrounding cutting edge contemporary art biennales, and Rancière himself has become the ‘philosophe du jour’ for the progressive or radical artist. However, one rarely hears his name uttered in conversations concerning Graphic Design practice, either inside or outside of the academy.
For Rancière, ‘the distribution of the sensible’ refers to implicit conventions, laws, social structures, modes of consciousness, the function to separate individuals or social stratas from each other, preventing participation in the creation of a common world. This system enables, legitimises, and authorizes some, whilst at the same time stultifying, disabling, and censoring other. For Rancière, this distribution operates at a meta-level, across both the political and aesthetic realms. Thought in this way, Rancière’s philosophy politicises aesthetics and even aestheticises politics, though not in the sense that Benjamin meant.
Through a reading of Rancière’s philosophy, this paper will interrogate a specific aspect of the ‘the distribution of the sensible’ in operation within the arts, particularly their institutionalized forms in the universities and the creative industries. I wish to argue that it is the specific effects of this distribution, rather than the physical properties of the work, or qualities of the human creative labour, which separates Graphic Design from Art; which designate Graphic Design as not art; that creates certain institutional accolades.
As a speculative proposition, this paper proceeds from the Rancièrian presumption that a creative ‘community of equals’,beyond disciplinary antagonisms, heirarchization, and seprations, is at least a possibility, and tries to imagine what the creative industries would look like if we proceed from this assumption. I reintroduce Rancière’s use of the term ‘indisciplinarity’ here to suggest that collaboration between Graphic Design and Fine Art is both possible and the necessary characteristic of a truly egalitarian democratic society
Consumed: stilled lives - Dyson Gallery.
Get PDFMy research examines the relation between people and objects, and the impact that adverts have as producers and disseminators of social values. My central argument is that commodity culture turns everything into adverts, from seventeenth century still-life paintings to selfies and thinspiration photographs.
The still life table expresses the dual meaning of the term ‘consume’ because the objects on display are edible and connote an individual’s social position through the ability to buy prestigious objects. I therefore approach the still life table as a portrait of a particular type of consumer. This allows me to consider the food in a still life as an expression of a relation between an individual and consumer society, as well as a figuration of the effect of commodity consumption on the consumer’s body. The exhibition encompasses a variety of Still Life’s suggestive of different consumers. Commercial advertising and social media networks are examined as methods of circulating and embedding the social value of products but also a site for potential disruption
KALEID 2016 Oslo: artists who do books
Get PDFFollowing an international call for submissions, On Innards | Publication, by artists Richard Nash, Amanda Couch, Mindy Lee, and Andrew Hladky, was selected for KALEID 2016 Oslo. Thirty-five artists from Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom were selected from over two-hundred and fifty submissions.
KALEID 2016 Oslo took place at Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo, Norway’s leading National Academy for the Arts; as an artists’ book exhibition, seminar and networking event. An exhibition of the selected artists’ books was curated in KHiO’s library between 10th – 12th May to launch KALEID editions’ annual collection. The collection was promoted to an international audience at Tate Modern’s Offprint London in the Turbine Hall, and subsequent tour of venues throughout the US.
KALEID editions represented European-based bookwork artists between 2009-2017; disseminating an annual curated selection of artists’ books, for leading arts institutions supporting academic research and future public access. The founder of KALEID editions, Victoria Browne, has since established an academic framework to foster publishing as artistic practice at Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo. KALEID editions distributed artists’ books to the following institutions and universities:
Europe:
Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo, Norway; MACBA, Spain; Saison Poetry Library, UK
Chelsea College of Arts Library, UK; V&A Museum, National Art Library, UK
USA:
Boston Athenaeum; Brooklyn Museum; Clarke Art Institute;
Layfayette College; Metropolitan Museum of Art; MoMA; Newberry Library;
School of Art Institute Chicago, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection;
Swarthmore College Library; Yale Center for British Art; Yale Universit