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Backgrounds and Backdrops
Full text linkThe output ‘Backgrounds and Backdrops’ is a curatorial research project by Taylor and Paul that brings together two short artists' films and interdisciplinary materials such as photography, painting, and domestic objects.
Collaboration Contribution: This exhibition brings together works by Painter Taylor and Filmmaker Paul. The collaboration was facilitated by Tsionki.
Research Process: The exhibition is an investigation into concepts of class and gender in relation to value systems in art and design practice. The two films, L’amour Pouf Du Vent, and Ghost Grey are new collaborations. The interdisciplinary practice (painting, photography and objects) forms a visual narrative thread that both responds to and links the two films both physically and conceptually.
Research Insights: Backgrounds and Backdrops considers how a curated space might continue the debate around a post studio practice, the concept of working together in a shared practice, in person or remotely, and the engagement that a curated site can offer as a situation of extending practice in a transdisciplinary way. Transdisciplinary in this context considers both the expectations of medium specific engagement such as film or painting and blends, morphs and identifies new threads made good for contemporary politicised consideration in relation to class, gender and hierarchies of value.
Dissemination: The exhibition was hosted at Leeds Arts University gallery B, 24th February - 27th April 2022, open to all users of the University and to the public by appointment
Unknown Fields Division – Rare Earthenware
Full text linkThis Photo Essay contemplates on the creative practice of Unknown Fields Division to reflect on the planetary geopolitics of rare earth elements. Knots interlace points, trajectories, and networks in their moment of becoming. In 2014, Unknown Fields Division developed an expedition in East Asia to follow the unmaking of electronics and reveal information and landscapes that are in principle absent from or unseen in urban societies’ everyday life. The group focuses on the raw materials of our global capitalist societies, their extraction, and refining. It investigates the production and distribution of a globalised commodity through container loads via ports in Shanghai, Singapore, and Busan. The group’s interest in industrial ecologies and precarious labour led them to carry out an exploration of global maritime trade by tracing large container ships routes, supply chains, factories, and working conditions. The project aims at revealing a tremendous ecological catastrophe as a consequence of global capitalism. Intensification of mining operations, loose regulations, small illegal refineries, combined with the environmental impact of the production of rare-earth elements (REE), have caused unprecedented ecological destruction in the Bayan Obo mining district
God Shaped Hole
No full textThis essay focuses on three bodies of work examining parallels between religious aesthetics and practice, and social media. The artworks, which include our own and Casper White’s, explore manifestations of the quasi-religious in the contemporary everyday–their subjects intersect with, or function like, Christian religious objects, such as votives, veils, shrouds, prayers, and icons. The works discussed in the essay draw on traditional religious artforms to explore our actions and interactions on, and with, social media. As the title of the essay suggests, these works are united by an interest in contemporary practices and objects, which perhaps latently occupy a space left by religion in secular life. We will
focus particularly on how these works elucidate intersections between religious practice and digital cultures through themes of space, presence and participation
John Constable was my first art teacher: Construction of desire in a working-class artist/academic
No full textThe development of ‘desire’ in a working-class artist/academic is explored through an analysis of the reminiscences between the author and her mother.
It is argued that the notion of cultural capital implies a deficit in working-class subjects that is deterministic and does not fully explain those who are successful in the art world and/or academia. Rather than thinking about works of art and art practice in terms of cultural capital, they are conceptualised as resources that can have existential significance for some people. This is because early interactions with the arts enable people to connect with the world and at the same time enable them to recognise their own desires and talents while learning to think critically about their lives. The findings of this study suggest a nuanced approach based on cultural assets and resources rather than cultural capital should be considered in educational policy and practice.
This chapter was included in the volume "The Lives of Working-Class Academics: Getting ideas above your station", which won the Ryan and Sackrey Award for Best book by writers of working-class origins or that speak to issues of the working class academic experience. The award was presented by WCSA (Working-Class Studies Association) 2024 Awards for work produced in 2022 and 2023
Networks of Trust
Full text linkThe output is a curated exhibition titled 'Networks of Trust'. This exhibition forms part of Tsionki’s research project 'A Common World in Transition – An Assembly', exploring eco-aesthetic manifestations of commoning as a new paradigm of economic, political, social and cultural practice.
Research Process: Through expanding notions of insular, remote, or localist existence and imagination flourishing
from the island (both as reality and metaphor), the project focuses on the idea that decentralised Wi-Fi networks
offer privacy and anonymity, but also new ways of connectivity and togetherness. Whether solitary or as part of an archipelago, an island may appear separate, isolated from the continent, yet it is defined by its potential to connect with the rest of the world, beginning anew, becoming a space of mobility and connectedness. In a similar way, the island’s seemingly solitary spatiality becomes a possibility to reconsider the past, present and future of networks through a poetic interconnection of the natural, human and machinic, where the mobilisation of data is shaping forms of co-existence. Using these concepts to touch sharply on the future of networks and connectivity, exhibition participants are invited to imagine possible futures of climate change, technology and migration and share their stories through this network.
Research Insights: Since 2020, conversations between curator Tsionki and artist Goni have taken place in the form of knowledge sharing and storytelling resulting in a curatorial collaboration which has developed into an upcoming publication. This exchange has impacted both practitioners and informed the collaborative thinking around the development of the research exhibition 'Networks of Trust' at the SixtyEight Art Institute as part of Tsionki’s curatorial project 'A Common World in Transition – An Assembly'.
Dissemination: the work was exhibited at SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen from 6th May – 18th June 2022
Bees, Mills and Museums
No full textThe output is an artefact created by Blagg, commissioned for the 'Following Threads' exhibition at Bradford Industrial Museum.
Research Process: Bradford Industrial Museum was originally a working textile factory built in 1875, and was eventually converted into a museum in 1974. Using the history of the building (and his interest in the position of museums in our current cultural and economic environment) Blagg modelled his sculptural making process on three key ideas: mill workers, bees, and museums.
Through this research Blagg comments on the perception of the undervalued mill workers in the industrial North of England. Blagg connected the decline of bees and their domestication with the mill worker and ideas about work, usefulness and exploitation. He selected ‘throw away’ found, familiar, and purely functional objects made from overly exploited materials to create this artwork. The final form of this research is an assemblage of sculpture presented as museological objects.
Research Insights: The resulting artwork draws upon the nature of museums as a repository of uncanny experiences and associations, drawing on ideas of familiar and unfamiliar (unheimliche).
As this work was created during the Covid-19 pandemic, Blagg had to take into consideration how his work would be seen – as his practice usually involves the handling of objects by audiences. With this in mind, he purposely focused presenting the objects as they might appear in a cabinet of curiosity. Blagg’s intention was to impress upon the audience the physical nature of the objects, imagined handling, and their curious yet familiar natures.
Dissemination: The work has been shown in the 'Following Threads' exhibition at Bradford Industrial Museum, from 26 February 2022 - 23 January 2023
Planning a pop-up exhibition: Reflections on a critical thinking club
No full textIn this book chapter adult, widening participation and lifelong learners (Broadhead et al., 2019) grapple with the ethics of solving a wicked problem (Sweeting, 2018), meaning an unsolvable social issue. It concerns a critical incident vignette (meaning specific events that happen during the pedagogic intervention explored in this study) at the Critical Thinking Club held at an arts university. The learners wrestle with the concepts of cultural confluence denoting the embedding of cultural inclusion (Sharma-Tankha, 2020) rather than cultural appropriation. Using two key texts, Thinking in Education by Matthew Lipman (2010) and Ken Brown (2018) Education culture and critical thinking, the Critical Thinking Club put into action Lipman’s Thinking Dimensions concept of critical, caring and creative thinking working in conjunction. Added to this the use of liminal educational spaces (Brown, 2018) created outside the traditional power dynamic of traditional educational settings. This was utilised as a way of working as a Community of Inquiry (Garrison et al., 2000) through the knotty theoretical issues when making artwork for a pop-up exhibition (Du Cros & Jolliffe, 2014). Francis Shor (1993) believes that adult learners are suppressed from thinking critically by societal norms of class and context (Bourdieu, 1993). In relationship to that assumption, I argue that lifelong learners can become confident critical thinkers who are able to understand and apply complex theories and concepts to creative projects both practical and theoretical through scaffolding (Vygotsky, 2012). This qualitative research employs post-structural theory and Barthes’ theory of decentring (1977) and Narrative Inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2004) to discuss the dataset
The Lost and the Found: Stories for the After-Life (of Objects)
Full text linkIn 2004 Liverpool-based artist Tabitha Moses undertook a residency at Bolton Museum and Art Gallery in Greater Manchester. Responding to the small mummy of a young girl in the museum’s Egyptology collection, Moses created a series of nine carefully wrapped and bound dolls that she had previously found in charity shops. She exhibited The Dolls in the museum display cases alongside the Egyptian artefacts already in residence "for the girl to take with her to the after-life" (Moses, 2004). This museum intervention titled The Lost and The Found, is analysed as uncanny in the Jentschian sense, for dolls are anxiety provoking; they are neither dead nor alive, yet both dead and alive simultaneously. X-ray images of The Dolls, where the pins with which Moses had held the swaddling fabric in place are visible, are considered here within the context of Steryerl’s (2010) identification of object forensics as a practice whereby ‘the bruises of things are deciphered, and then subjected to interpretation’ (Steyerl, 2010). Conceptual links are made between The Dolls as x-rayed images and the bodily fragility of the original mummified girl whose desiccated remains have undergone forensic investigation by Egyptology specialists in their quest for heuristic interpretation. The Dolls as museum intervention tell multiple stories; they have become witnesses to their former lives as little girls’ toys, and of their journey from desired object to disposal and reclamation by Moses. As objects for the after-life for the mummified Egyptian girl Moses’ artwork prompts questions as to the identity of the girl, of how she died, and of how she ultimately came to rest in Bolton
Working Girls
Full text linkWorking Girls is a solo exhibition of sculptural works by Chambers. This exhibition comprises sculptural works, installation, and film -- and includes works created specifically for the Whitaker made in response to the history of women mill workers in the region.
The film work 'Shame', included an original soundtrack by Erica Dawn Park created in collaboration with Chambers. The sound edit was undertaken by Pete Cunliffe.
Research Process: The artworks in this exhibition are material-led investigations of women’s histories of ambivalence. In the months prior to the exhibition, Chambers worked with the Whitaker Museum’s object archive researching the material culture of working-class women from the region. Many of these objects were exhibited as part of Working Girls alongside the sculptural works in the galleries.
Several of the pieces exhibited had been conceived and created as site specific works: 'Feminist Escape Route: Attempt No. 9', 'Feminist Escape Route: Attempt No. 13', and the two iterations of 'Her Magic Slippers'. In addition, a new film work was created specifically for the exhibition, was devised in response to the history of working-class women in the region, and shot on location in Rawtenstall.
Research Insights: The primary concern that became apparent through the process of reading first-hand accounts of working-class women’s lives, was the idea of shame. Women consistently spoke of the shame they felt in relation to their bodily functions, their sexual drives, their hidden wants and needs, and about their poverty and lack of material wealth. It was this that inspired the creation of the film work 'Shame'.
Dissemination: The exhibition was shown at the Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery, Rawtenstall, from 14th April until 12th June 2022, along with an artist’s talk held during the exhibition. The film 'Shame' is available on Vimeo and shared via social media
Tailor-made Maternal PKU Diet Education and Women with PKU: Reproductive Experiences and Needs Throughout the Journey
No full textThe output is an educational video. It was commissioned for an international teaching event for healthcare professionals to gain an insight into the metabolic PKU (Phenylketonuria) condition and the maternity perspective.
Research Process: This research engaged with a focus / interview group made up of individuals that had PKU and been through the maternal journey. Chimiak created an open and non-intrusive atmosphere (utilising a multi-camera setup) to help relax the participants to unwind and express their journeys.
Research Insights: The research provides an educational insight into the interviewee’s first-hand experiences with maternity and the PKU metabolic condition to healthcarers.
Despite Chimiak having PKU himself, the maternal side is something he has no personal experience of. For him the research provided insights into the PKU metabolic condition from a new perspective.
Dissemination: The research and conversations were shared with over 170 healthcare professionals throughout the world during an international online teaching event