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Digital Autoethnography: An Approach to Facilitate Reflective Practice in the Making and Performing of Visual Art
No full textThe ubiquity of the digital in a society which increasingly captures and shares 24/7 conjures for some images of narcissism, indulgence, confidence and knowing. The ‘selfie’ represents self-obsession rather than self-observation, a constructed self, a self as product and the projection of that self ‘outwards’. Similar criticisms have been made of autoethnographic practice. However, if undertaken in a genuinely inquiring way, we may encounter a version of the self that is both challenging and illuminating. In this chapter, Neil revisits earlier autoethnographic endeavours to demonstrate the ways in which digital technologies and platforms can be used as experimental tools to look inwards, to disrupt routinised practices, and to create new spaces for closely observing, documenting, and reflecting on the ongoing process of crafting her artistic and pedagogic self
Votives and Charm Bracelets Materialising Health-Related Experiences Through ‘Sacred’ Objects
No full textThe concept of a physical artefact acting as an intermediary between the embodied individual and the quasi-divine has historically taken many forms, including charms and tokens worn to ward off evil and ensure good spiritual and physical health. This chapter focuses on the artist Garry Barker’s practice whereby he aims to give material form to people’s psychological relationships with their bodies. Responding to themes that emerge from one-on-one conversations with project participants, Barker has used the making of votives and charms to articulate and materialise people’s health-related narratives. More recently he has been using the charm bracelet as a device for the presentation or exhibition of small sculptures and images that are designed as objects to help mediate between desires to transcend the problems of everyday reality and the need to seek wish fulfilment by channelling more spiritual forces
Breathing: An artist’s reflection on the visualisation of an interoceptive experience. The figurative imagination dissolves into the flux of process
Full text linkVisualisations of interoceptive sensations slide between visual invention and memories of past experiences, between a need to rely on physical resemblances to other objects and a more abstracted understanding of energy flow. This report explores how images that rose unbidden from the unconscious when trying to visualise a particular somatic experience, were then taken formally further on, as another set of images were developed that responded to more abstract visual principles. This research report also explores how interoceptual research can become inseparable from a growing awareness of how the body knows itself and its own metaphors. Centred on a reaction to a Covid-19 induced problem with breathing there is an attempt to show how in the mind images are enfolded into a continuum whereby differences between subject and object disappear. As the process of drawing and image making develops, the artist first of all finds parallels between remembered visual forms and his experience of the sensations associated with being unable to breathe, then on reflection, a further series of drawings are produced that are responses to the process or flow of somatic awareness
Art Now: An inquiry into the state of art and design teaching in early years foundation stage, primary and secondary education
Full text linkThe Art Now Inquiry explores the current state of art and design education across the four nations; however, the focus is primarily on England where there was more survey data to draw on. It was commissioned by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Art, Craft and Design in Education in response to concerns about the reduction in opportunities for children and young people to access high-quality art and design education. The Inquiry spans early years, primary and secondary phases of schooling.
The Inquiry ran between Spring 2020 and Spring 2023 and this report includes a rapid evidence review of the benefits of art and design education, a literature review of art teaching and teacher education, a national survey of 1,860 art and design teachers and testimonies from two APPG evidence sessions.
Drawing on each of these sources, the Art Now Inquiry report makes the case for art and design education, and the critical importance of investing in a diverse subject-specialist workforce. It starts with an examination of teacher education in art and design which is essential for equipping teachers with the necessary skills, knowledge, and confidence to deliver the curriculum. The Inquiry goes behind the numbers to explore the working conditions, wellbeing and career intentions of art and design teachers. The findings provide a health check on the training and retention of art and design teachers, and highlight the time and resources needed to support access to high-quality provision of art, craft and design education. Ofsted defines a high-quality curriculum in art and design as one that provides the conditions for pupils to develop a love of the subject that is both intellectually challenging and creatively demanding
Data Garden: Kyriaki Goni
Full text linkThe output is an exhibition catalogue accompanying Kyriaki Goni’s research exhibition Data Garden at the Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University curated by Tsionki. The book is edited by Tsionki, including her curatorial text Data Garden and the essay Learning from Narcissus by writer Tom Jeffreys, as well as documentation from the exhibition.
Data Garden explores assemblages of a biological and digital nature, issues of storage and privacy on networked technologies, and environmental impacts. It presents the stories of two endemic plants, Saxifraga depressa, indigenous to the Dolomites, and Micromeria acropolitana, which grows exclusively in the rocky terrain of the Acropolis. Secret communities attempt to protect the plants while experimenting with new technologies of storing data in the plants’ DNA. Fiction and scientific facts are intertwined in order to suggest alternative futures and forms of resistance. The stories are presented through two research-based installations that represent the two iterations of the project. Through developing a critical analysis of the two iterations, Tsionki’s curatorial vision and text offers a unique contextualisation of the overall project which presented as one for the first time at the Blenheim Walk Gallery, following two major commissions by the 8th Gherdeina Biennale and Onassis Stegi.
Data Garden is an Open Access publication published by RSS Press, which can be downloaded from the LAU repository and RSS website
Why Is Nina Simone such a huge icon?
No full textThe output is an educational/informative/entertainment podcast in the public domain, in which Attah discusses the life, work, and legacy of musician and civil rights activist, Nina Simone.
Research Process: Literature review of primary and secondary sources, including biographies, autobiographies, documentaries, and interviews conducted with the subject, her family, and her associates and collaborators.
Research Insights: The research highlights Simone’s continuing influence and legacy amongst musicians and audiences. It highlights Simone’s importance as a cultural icon with specific regard to her musical talent, her political activism, and her confidence and determination since regarded as her ‘feminism’.
Dissemination: This work was made available to the public via a Sony Music podcast "Shot & Chaser" on Spotify in March 2023
Halting Implosion
Full text linkThe output is a set of 50 cards created by Barker and Oben in response to a Frances Woodley’s collaborative project ‘At Cross Purposes (2021-23)’.
Research Process: Barker and Oben corresponded both visually and in poetic text over two years, their ideas bouncing back and forth as they each created 25 printed cards with an image on their face and text on their reverse. The research was conducted via email and post, which were used as communication systems that allowed for both textual interchange and visual juxtaposition.
Research Insights: The nature of collaboration as a vehicle for sustained invention and the development of insights into other people’s motivation and conceptual frameworks was understood far deeper than previously. Both artists had previously worked in collaboration with other people, but neither had examined the actual process of collaboration with the depth and sustained processes of joint thinking that this project allowed.
Dissemination: The texts and images of the cards, as well as the processes that lay behind their evolution were used as a focus for a book section authored by Barker and Oben in ‘At Cross Purposes ‘, which was published in 2023 by Aberystwyth University School of Art.
The cards as well as framed prints of them formed part of a group exhibition, ‘At Cross Purposes‘ which will tour several galleries: Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum and Galleries, 14 February - 21 April 2023; Oriel Môn, Llangefni, Anglesey - 29 April to 11 June 2023; Queen Street Studios Gallery, Belfast, - 7 to 28 September 2023; Elysium Gallery Swansea - November 7 to December 23 2023
Make it Happen Summer School: Experiential Learning to Develop Novice Socially-Engaged Artists
Full text linkThis article evaluates Make it Happen Summer School according to Bernstein’s writing on classification, framing, and recontextualisation. The project was a collaboration between a university and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) that aimed to develop a curriculum for creative practitioners so they could learn to propose successful socially-engaged arts projects for funding and commissions. NPOs are arts organisations that are funded by the UK Government and the UK’s National Lottery via the Arts Council England.
This article draws upon quantitative and qualitative data collected in relation to this project to evaluate the curriculum and pedagogy. In order to do this, models developed from Bernstein’s work guide the analysis of the findings. It was found that while many gained powerful knowledge from the project, some did not. The processes of recontextualisation demonstrated how ideologies based on accountability and performativity shaped the curriculum reflecting the depoliticisation of socially-engaged practice
"Bois of Isolation": Queering place, gender binaries and the 'self' through selfies in pandemic lockdown
Full text linkWhat happens to queer and gender-non-conforming community, bodily expression and identity when many queer spaces are closed and communities move to online spaces? In this article we critically reflect on our collaborative project bois of isolation (boi) - a platform within Instagram for people to share selfies of the spaces and processes through which they queer gender binaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We ask to what extent online social media spaces can disrupt normative, binarised gender identity and provide ways of reimagining the selfie. Operating within digital capitalism, selfies often serve to circulate and reproduce dominant ‘desirable’ subjectivities in ‘gender appropriate’ places. However, we argue through interventions like boi young people carve out small spaces of dissent and respite in/from social media platforms and create forms of community during lockdown. By queering the visual representations of binarised gender and questioning the neoliberal individualised ‘self’ in ‘selfies’, young people construct communal aesthetic spaces in which gender plurality and fluidity are expressed and celebrated
Lullabies in Lockdown
Full text linkThe output is a creative project which explores the collective storytelling power of illustration to uncover the experiences of new parenthood during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project includes a co-curated group exhibition, a publication, and a touring pop-up exhibition.
Research process: The original group exhibition featured the work of 19 artists, showcasing varied illustrative approaches exploring the experiences of new parenthood in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Through analysis of the exhibition artwork, artist statements, and audience feedback, a reflective account was written considering the role of collectivised authorial illustration in shaping our understanding of lived experiences. The analysis explores how sharing this form of illustrative work within public spaces offers the opportunity to recollect and bring together people who may benefit from reframing their own hardships as being experienced “on their own, but not alone.”
A pop-up show was then developed which can easily be transported and added to. This enabled further collaborations with communities and spaces that can host the work, extending beyond the traditional artistic world.
Research insights: Through this research, insights were gained into the transformative potential of illustration as a medium for capturing and validating lived experience, particularly in times of crisis. The research promotes alternative approaches within authorial illustration storytelling which complement singular perspective accounts commonly encountered in the genre of ‘lived experience illustration’ (visual diaries, comics, graphic novels etc). The project offers up a more diverse, multiple-perspective, collective and ‘holistic storytelling’ method for further exploration. The findings highlight the importance of collective storytelling in nurturing empathy and solidarity within communities, while also emphasizing the relevance of human-centred approaches in illustration amidst technological advancements and societal challenges.
Dissemination: Exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills Gallery, 1-30 October 2022; paper presented and pop-up show exhibited at ‘Blind Spots’ International Illustration Research Symposium, Washington University, St Louis, 2-4 November 2023; Comic Con, educational institutions, galleries, and other DIY creative spaces