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New Young Writers on Wool: My Life in Jumpers
Get PDFNew Young Writers on Wool: My Life in Jumpers is a short diaristic-style journal article focusing on the author’s relationship to jumpers and wool within the context of sustainability and the Yorkshire region.
Eleanor Snare has been in love with the jumper since they were young and their changing experience with the garment inspired them to write about it. Taking a reflective and personal approach to consider the relationships between author, clothing, material and location; Snare’s article highlights the intimate connection between people, clothing, place and material - a connection which forms the backbone of engagement with sustainable fashion production and consumption.
Increasingly, their interest in fashion is becoming twinned with their interest in the ways in which we can live more sustainable lives and own more sustainable wardrobes. Natural fibers, including wool, are just one way to do this. This article is a love letter to the garment, the material, and the social identities it represents
Modelling lines of sculptural thought: the use of a transcription project to interrogate, intervene and dialogue with a sculpture archive
Get PDFThis article is the outcome of a conference paper, part of the ‘Archival Interventions in Sculpture’ panel for the annual Association of Art Historians conference at the Royal College of Art in April 2014. It discusses how a formative encounter with sculpture early on in my artistic career has resonated over many years within my research. It explores whether and how objects from the past, encountered in gallery and museum conditions, can enable us to read the present. I use a personal exhibition project of my own as a case study which was the material outcome of a period of time spent using a transcription method. A transcription project is typically the taking of a master painting and drawing from it to understand how it is made. This is not copying because it is not an action of replicating it verbatim. Instead, the artist distills the image, taking from it what she desires, leaving the rest behind. I show how employing transcription can progress knowledge and understanding of sculpture from the past in the present. I account the way that I used transcription as a tool of interrogation, intervention and dialogue with history. I signpost ways that other sculptors have evidenced the reading or transcribing of art in the making of their own work. I use the psychoanalytical ideas of Christopher Bollas in his book The Shadow of the Object: psychoanalysis of the unthought known (1987) to explore how this particular form of thinking through making, that I have knowledge of as a creative practitioner, can be a research tool to reflect on a key moment of my own development, and more widely interrogate what was at play between British sculptors in the 1980s, who were working in the inherited sculptural field of British sculpture in the twentieth century
'Lucy Beech: me and mine' review
No full textA review of the exhibition ‘Me and Mine’ by Lucy Beech at The Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, 2 May - 4 July 2015. Discussing the works Me and Mine (2015), Buried Alive (2013), Cannibals (2013). Beech’s works represent women who are all searching for meaningful connections to others in world where ‘self’ has become a construct or commodity, and where interpersonal relationships are infected by corporate rhetoric.
Re-published as: Crouch, A. (2015) “Dorothy, you’re a blini”, Lucy Beech on Women Empowering Women, in Robertson, L. (ed) ‘On Being Curious: New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art from the North West of England,’ pp.12-15, The Double Negative, Liverpool. ISBN: 9781526202376. The article was commissioned by the Contemporary Visual Arts Network North West (CVAN NW), as part of a regional critical writing development programme funded by Arts Council England
The follies of youth
Get PDFThe Follies of Youth was an exhibition of historical research and contemporary art commissioning by visual arts organisation Pavilion hosted by The Hepworth Wakefield. Three artists – Giles Bailey (based in London), Amelia Crouch (Bradford), Ruth Lyons (Cork) –produced work in response to three landscapes in West Yorkshire – Stapleton, Whitley Beaumont and Byram – listed in the account book of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–1783). Supported by a collective of producers, nicknamed ‘the follies’, the artists undertook field trips to the ruinous and industrial landscapes. In an attempt to recover Brown’s lost designs, the artists engaged the follies in rehearsing certain eighteenth century practices: of Arcadian poetic fantasy, walking etiquette and lime kilning
Play to rehearse
Get PDFThe short graphic story, Play To Rehearse, narrates an account of the transitional experience between childhood ideals and adult realities. It is practical research contributing to the knowledge of how to communicate intimate emotional accounts through illustrated fictionalised stories. The comic looks to innovate approaches within the medium by partnering a ‘confessional’ (M.L Rosenthal, 1959) poetic style of writing with stylised sequential imagery to explore original methods for sharing and visualising complex psychological or emotive states. This piece in particular explores the concept of communicating authentically versus through a performed persona of oneself and ultimately plays with the notion of truth within the ‘confessional narrative’ genre. It does so through an exploration of character creation in comics and questions how the true narrator of the comic can be masked by using a visual representation of someone ‘acting’ a part instead. In doing this, the comic intends to challenge perceptions of the authorial voice within the confessional/biographical comic genre. The story contributes to a body of contemporary comic work exploring and evolving sequential illustrative practice through unpicking the structuring and creation of comics and the conventions within this field. Rigourous process has been used to validate the significance of the piece through its selection via juried panel for international exhibition and with this comic, the author is one of only a few women selected for exhibition at Salon Stripa, International Comics Festival 2015 in Serbia. The comic was also exhibited in Leeds City Library’s Art Library exhibition space as part of F= Presents “Festival Of The Body” exhibition, 2016
Kelly Cumberland: Expanded drawings [review]
Get PDFKelly Cumberland graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University in 1998 with an MA in Fine Art having instigated a collaboration between the departments of Microbiology, Radiology and Visual Art. She has exhibited in many group and solo exhibitions, including: Vestigium [Pulvis] (isw) at Whitechapel London; Local Imagination at San Francisco Art Institute; The Drawing Shed at Project Space Leeds; Multiples & Additions at Con|temporary Gallery, Berlin and Protoavisis opt at the Atrium Galley of St James Hospital, Leeds. She exhibited as part of La Nit de l’Art (Night of Art) in Palma de Mallorca, September 2013 and later participated in Art Palma Brunch 2015. Cumberland examines the change and removal, growth and deterioration of the life of a virus. Her installations and objects incorporate drawing which acts as a metaphor for how something seemingly delicate and insubstantial can overwhelm its environmen
Launchpad
Get PDFThe output is an exhibition that playfully explore the semiotics of language through film, screen prints and text art. The works were selected by Adam Smythe, Curator at The Bluecoat (Liverpool), and Castlefield Gallery’s Programme Manager, Matthew Pendergast. Research process: Starting points for Crouch’s playful works include word games, homonyms, anagrams, children’s songs and quasi-scientific experiments. Though accepting the unruly nature of words her works are haunted by a dream of systematic order. They emphasise repetitive learning, experiment and methodological actions, which ultimately appear absurd as the works loop or conclude with no defined resolution. Research insights: Experience tells us that language is indeterminate, uncertain and relational. Words often evoke something other or more than they are intended to, as they attempt to communicate the physical and visual world beyond written language. Dissemination: The output was disseminated as Launchpad at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 29 July – 7 August 2016
The virtual worlds project: geological mapping and field skills
No full textThe Virtual Worlds Project is a UK collaboration between the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, and the Leeds Arts University, to build a virtual environment in which to learn and practice basic geological mapping skills. Using the Unity game engine, a virtual landscape populated by rock outcrops with associated notebook entries has been created. This approach is not a replacement for field map work. Rather, it represents an in‐class tool with the appearance of a computer game with which to enhance basic mapping skills taught in the field in a virtual environment
Spare rib and subversive stitching: feminist strategies to documentary film-making
Get PDFThe output is a creative project comprising a short, independent film and a paper. The film captures a conversation between two women about the influence of Spare Rib magazines and Rozika Parker’s book, The Subversive Stitch, on their sewing practice and their politics. Research Process: Prior to publishing her book, Parker was writing about the relationships between craft, textiles and art in the late 70s and this was situated alongside other feminist discourses within Spare Rib (such as work; sexuality; violence; control over reproduction; education). Rozika Parker’s narrative research methodology in The Subversive Stitch and the predominance of women’s narrative in the film make connections between both the content and formal aspects of both. One participant rediscovers her personal archive of Spare Rib, artefacts from an ‘analogue’ age, and reconsiders herself through the lens of her younger, more radical self. A conversation about shared learning experiences gives rise to the women’s individual journeys and the film nods to cross- generational feminism and women learning from our feminist and embroidered past. Research Insights: It is a practice-based research outcome that explores women’s narrative and its effect on both content and aesthetic aspects of practice across stitching and film-making. Therefore, the form and content of the film are informed by its subject and line of research enquiry. In tandem with the film, a paper, Feminist Strategies to Documentary Film Making, was also produced. This argues that feminist documentary film has often been excluded from dominant feminist film discourse in favour of those films employing non-traditional techniques of distanciation. The paper argues for recognition of documentary as important representations of political voices and feminist testimonies since the 1970s. Dissemination: Radical Film Network conference, Birmingham University, 2015. The Textile Society Symposium, Armitage Centre, Fallowfield, Manchester, 2015. The Process Continues, Leeds Arts University, 2015