Doctorate in Fine Art and MA in Photography Critical Research Journal
Tag: LO4
Professional Location of Practice. Establish an understanding of the range of professional contexts for the dissemination and consumption of contemporary photographic practice, and identify opportunities to engage with audiences and markets.
Slade Research Centre, School of Fine Art, UCL, 21st March 2019.
Colour & Poetry Symposium, Slade School of Fine Art, 2019
This was the launch of an inter-disciplinary network concerned with materials research and innovation across the arts and sciences. It was the closing session of a two day symposium on Colour and Poetry, with an accompanying exhibition ‘The Nomenclature of Colours’.
The Nomenclature of Colours, Slade School of Fine Art, 2019
The key message for me was to think about collaboration between the arts and sciences. The session was held in the Slade Research Centre, in the room where Ramsay had his lab and where he discovered the noble gases. Whilst collaboration is growing (the Slade has Scientist in Residence) and there are clear areas of common interest (this network focuses on materials) there remains a gap in conceptual frameworks, language and ways of working.
In my own work, I need to think more about surfaces, textures and colour (an interaction between the nature of the reflective/transmissive surface and the sensitivity of the viewer). Made me think about how I can better use the facilities at the Institute of Making, both in making artifacts and digitising objects. With the recent ‘digital turn’ in my work for this module, a core issue is the movement between the analogue and the digital, and the virtual and the material.
Wolf (2010), in a survey of the impact of new imaging technologies on the art of photography, states that:
‘digital technology calls upon us to rethink previous arguments or ideas about what a camera does and how photographic images function in contemporary culture. It allows us to consider reality as mutable, not fixed, and to think of space and time as fluid, not static’ (p.52)
For me, it is the dialogue between the analogue and the digital, and the virtual and the material, that will drive forward the development of the work, and create the space for collaboration. In the discussion, the role of the artist was seen as providing new ways of looking and making, about exploring and working with materials, doing and engaging rather than prescribing.
References
Wolf, S. 2010. The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Digital Age. Munich: Prestel Verlag.
I’m going to explore the work of the four featured artists, and the manner in which the work is exhibited, in relation to the development of my own work (particularly given the focus of the course material on galleries and the gallery system this week).
Mark Ruwedel explores marks made on the landscape by geological, social and political events. Often he photographs the same place or the same phenomena (for instance, bomb craters or ruined houses) a number of times. I should explore this kind of approach around the estates I am focusing on. One option would be to see what kind of effect is achieved from using the channel mixing process on the same scene photographed with different lighting.
Mark Ruwedel, ‘Artist and Society’
In the accompanying video, Ruwedel observers that ‘Regardless of their intentions, almost all photographs grow up to be documentary photographs’, raising an interesting perspective on the distinction between art and documentary (and other forms of) photography. Ruwedel sees his work being possibly of more interest to geologists or engineers in the future, as opposed to being seen as art. Paul Graham has noted the same phenomena in relation to his DHSS photographs, which are now used an historical record of a particular period of social history. This reverses the passage noted in the Week 9 presentation (in relation to Richard Prince’s appropriation of the Marlboro Man image) from commercial to art photography.
The exhibition covers an number of series of work, and includes books as well as prints (analogue, often with handwritten captions) which stress the craft aspect of photographic practice.
The other three photographers are working in a more conventionally documentary form, and present a range of different media. Susan Meiselas includes films, maps, letters, found photographs, booklets and artifacts. The show emphasises the manner in which her way of working adapts to the project. The map with booklets telling the stories of migrants is particularly effective in combining text and image.
Susan Meiselas, ‘Mediations’
Whereas the the Ruwedel and Meiselas exhibits cover a range of projects, Laia Abril’s exhibit focuses on her On Abortion publication, the first part of her long-term project A History of Misogyny. The longer term project provides an overarching conceptual framework, and the projects are viewed as chapters. This particular project started as an exhibition and became a book. As with Meiselas, there is a mix of images, texts, objects and films, and it is both an emotional/political exploration, and informational (in making certain practices visible). As an exhibition, it allows the viewer to chart their own way through the material, and their own pace, but could clearly be presented in other settings.
Laia Abril, ‘On Abortion’
Arwed Messmer’s exhibit similarly focuses on one particular project, an exploration of the Red Army Faction. Taking the decade from 1867 to 1977, Messmer charts the activity of the group almost in the style of a police or forensic investigation (similar, in this sense, to Forensic Architecture’s work, but drawing on archival and historic material). He presents his work as ‘authored documentary photography’, but with a heavy reliance on uncredited documents and photographs from which he constructs and presents a narrative. Details of what is shown in the photographs is withheld to allow the viewer to make sense of what they see, and to retain the enigmatic nature of photography (details relating to the material presented are given in an appendix). The archive provides the basis for the book and exhibition.
Arwed Messmer, ‘RAF – No Evidence’
For my own work, I have four distinct examples of how a range of media are presented and how coherence is achieved and an audience engaged. As the work on urban regeneration is developing, I need to think about how the different types of work produced can be integrated. If, for instance, it does give rise to a kind of archive (or a number of archives relating to different setting), I have to think about how this would translate into, say, exhibitions, in community as well as gallery settings. The work presented here emphasizes that there need not be a chasm between gallery and other settings. Rather than agonize about the extent to which photography can be seen to be art (as some of the readings and presentations this week have), it is more productive to consider the particular strengths of photography in being able to incorporate and work alongside other media within inter-disciplinary settings (this is reinforced by the manner in which film and photography is used by the Turner Prize shortlisted artists this year, see discussion here).
Exhibition of some of the portraits made with participants and volunteers on the Shed Life project at the Sue Bramley Centre, Barking Thames View Estate. To co-incide with showing of A Northern Soul, and question and answer session with Director, Sean McAllister.
No formal task for the reflection this week, so I’ll just briefly reflect on the development of my work over the past week and point to other relevant posts. I have posted reflections on the portfolio reviews and the skills building workshops at the Falmouth Face to Face.
Arriving, Falmouth 2019
The former were really useful in reflecting on my current work, how I will develop this over the next module (Surfaces and Strategies, with a focus on different ways of presenting and making images material) and how to prepare (in terms of development of my practice) for the FMP. The latter helped me to develop skills in producing, processing and presenting images, and get to know other participants and tutors on the programme. I have written about The Living Image conference and how the themes addressed relate to the development of my own work here.
Over the past week I have been able to develop my thinking and practice in relation to a number of the issues raised last week. Time and the archive have been major themes. The Moving Objects Symposium raised questions about the place of the archive in the life of displaced communities, including those in refugee camps, and highlighted the role that the creative arts, and arts based methods, can play in understanding and empowering communities. More detailed consideration of this, and the Moving Objects: Stories of Displacement exhibition are posted here. I also went to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019 shortlist exhibition (reflections on that are here) and Grace Weir’s installation Time Tries All Things at the Institute of Physics (reflections on that here, in relation to the theme of spacetime and photography). I also took part in the London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Users Group workshop at the Institute for Global Prosperity, which provided a good opportunity to strengthen links with with community and local authority stakeholders around the Olympic Park and in Barking and Dagenham, which I will need for my FMP, and to help shape the use of the Index in east London.
The major development in relation to my own work was studying the work of Moshe Raviv Vorobeichic, and in particular how he deals with time through photomontage in his two 1931 photo-books, Wilna and Paris (see discussion of this work in Nelson, 2010).
Pages from Vorobeichic, M.R [Moi Ver]. 1931. Paris. Paris: Éditions Jean Walter.
It was good to discuss this in relation to my own composite images with Michelle at the 1 to 1, and I’ll develop this further. In particular, I want to consider how I can juxtapose images with the composites (we decided that to put the constituent images alongside the composites would be distracting). In response to developments in contemporary understandings of spacetime, I am also thinking about pulling out smaller sections of the composites (a technique that was also used by Vorobeichic).
In relation to practical image-making, I attended a session on the ethics of exhibiting human body parts and spent half a day with students at the UCL Pathology Collection, photographing items from the collection that they will use in their presentations next week.
UCL Pathology Museum, 2019
This collection is not open to the public. I have spoken to the curator about the possibility of working with the collection in producing artistic work, and she is keen to do this.
Hand, UCL Pathology Museum, 2019
I’ll follow up, and could possibility use this as a focus for the activities and portfolio work for the Surfaces and Strategies module.
References
Nelson, A. 2010. ‘Suspended relationships: the montage photography books of Moshe Raviv Vorobeichic’, in Baetens, J., Streitberger, A., and Van Gelder, H. (eds), Time and Photography. Leuven Univeristy Press, pp. 141–164.
Vorobeichic, M.R. 1931. Ein Ghetto in Osten (Wilma). Schaubücher 27. Zurich/Leipzig: Orell Füssli Verlag.
Vorobeichic, M.R [Moi Ver]. 1931. Paris. Paris: Éditions Jean Walter.
Really useful to get to know the facilities at the Institute of Photography, and to figure out how to make best use of what’s on offer when I visit again in the future to work on my FMP. The workshop helped to build skills in particular areas:
(i) Medium format digital. Got to know the Capture One software (similar in most respects to Lightroom) and work with the Mamiya/Leaf system in tethered mode. It would be good to hire a medium format system for the Object Lessons work in the UCL Museums, Collections and Galleries
(ii) Studio lighting. Great afternoon with Matt Jessop and fellow student Len Williamson. I have done a studio lighting course before. This gave me the opportunity to experiment with lighting and get immediate feedback by making images tethered to Lightroom (again, a new experience for me). See headshots below. My own work is in the field, but it was useful to be able to play around in a ‘controlled environment’, and this will certainly help me in the lighting design for the Object Lessons work, and for the portraits for the urban regeneration project.
(iii) Machine processing. I shoot on film from time to time. Good to learn to use the machines. However, as I think through my major project, I think there are environmental issues to consider in using film (particularly given that parts of Barking marshes are heavily polluted by the chemical plants that used to be there (and this is increasingly of concern as the use of the surrounding land switches from industry to housing).
(iv) Film scanning. As for machine processing, good to be able to use the Hasselblad scanners, particularly for my large format negatives.
(v) Preparing for print. A refresh rather than something new. Useful for getting to know the print service at Falmouth, and how to produce files specifically for that. Also helpful in thinking about file naming of outputs for web and print (which is pretty random for me at the moment). Will follow up advice on colour management at theprintspace.co.uk and tutorials on software at lynda.com
Together this made a fairly coherent package. I certainly feel more confident in planning to spend some time at the IoP in the future, and its good to get to know the academic and technical staff, and to work alongside fellow MA students.
The independent reflection task for this week asks us to consider whether our practice may or may not be seen as adhering to a specific ideology. In the creative process, ideology will influence both the production of our work (through the intent that informs the work, and the conceptual frameworks that underpin this) and its interpretation (through the systems of ideas that inform our audience in their reading and the contexts within which they encounter our images). The means by which our work is circulated and reaches an audience (via social media, or the gallery system, for instance) is also shaped by ideology. For instance, we produce and distribute our work in a period that is politically and economically grounded in neo-liberalism and increasingly subject to the push and pull of popularism, which will influence the nature of the means of distribution and the value attributed to the work in different contexts and by different groups and communities. Whilst recognition that production, consumption and circulation of photographic images is ideologically infused is necessary, we can adopt a critical or oppositional position in our work. In doing so, it is important to be clear that this will involve contestation: we need to have a sense of what we stand for and what we stand against, and the consequences of this. My own work seeks to create or provoke different ways of thinking about social and environmental phenomena. It is inherently critical of both current practices in urban regeneration (adopting the view, as expressed by Jane Jacobs, 1961, that ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody’) and some forms of contemporary theory and discourse in the arts (through, for instance, critical engagement with the idea of the anthropocene (see Demos, 2017), and the influence of object oriented ontology, (see, for instance, Harman, 2010, and critical commentary by Lemke, 2017.) How this impacts on the reception and reading of this work depends on the form of the audience and the context of engagement. Whilst the work is theoretically informed, and positioned, engagement with theory is not a prerequisite for reading and understanding the work. The work is intended to be accessible to anyone interested in issues relating to community involvement in urban regeneration and those interested in contemporary arts. The ensuing dialogue, in turn, leads to further development of the work.
Power relations are inherent in all levels of the work, from initial engagement with communities through to the circulation of the work, as is the commitment to ethical practice. I will expand on this, and how my practice relates to other practice and theory in the visual arts, in subsequent discussion of the development of my project and my work in progress portfolio, which will focus on the more political aspects of the regeneration project and more experimental form of photography.
References
Demos, T. J. 2017. Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Harman, G. 2010. Towards speculative realism: Essays and lectures. Winchester: Zero Books.
Jacobs, J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
Lemke, Thomas. 2017. Materialism Without Matter: The Recurrence of Subjectivism in Object-Oriented Ontology. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. 18: 133-152.
A quick catch up on where I am, in practical terms, with the various strands of my project.
1. Community engagement with urban regeneration
This is the focus of my research proposal for the FMP. Building networks, contacts and relationships is core to the development of the work. This is focusing on two areas.
(i) Barking and Dagenham.
I have been making images to feed into an image bank for the Thames Ward Community Project (TWCP). My images of the Barking Riverside development were used in a presentation at the recent TWCP summit (at which the CEO of the development company, the Bishop of Barking, a local headteacher, the leader of the residents association and the local councilor spoke). I took photographs of the event and have added these to the TWCP repository. This contributes to the component of the project concerned with collaborative creation of images for advocacy.
I am working with a local arts project (ShedLife), and have an exhibition of portraits and other images of the participants to accompany a showing of the film ‘A Northern Soul’ and Q&A with the filmmaker (Sean McAllister) at the project on 27th March. The project also involves supporting young adults who are documenting the process and working with participants’ photographs and their own image making, which contributes to the component of the project concerned with working with images to gain mutual insight into and understanding of the lifeworlds of the residents.
Through the project, I am now also in touch with the Barking Creekmouth Preservation Society, the Barking Heritage Group, Thames View Community Gardeners and residents on the Gascoigne Estate. The work in Barking has contributed to the development of all three levels of my project work, and provides lots of opportunities for development at the FMP stage. I also want to open up the use of the local authority archives at Valence House and the use of images in community mapping by JustMap.
(ii) Stratford Olympic Park.
In addition to being a member of the London Prosperity Board, I am now an invited member of the EAST Education Leadership Group. This gives me direct insight into and involvement with the development of initiatives on and around the Olympic Park. In relation to image making, I am putting this on hold for the moment. I’ll continue to form links and networks to keep open the option to carry out the final project in this area. Chairing discussions at the Creating Connections East meetings has helped me to form links with community groups across the four boroughs surrounding the Olympic Park. I’ve also met with people on the Carpenters Estate through the ESRC Displacement Project, and with people organising arts related aspects of the project (principally to ensure that there is no confusion between my own work on the estates and their work – I’ll write more about community arts initiatives related to research and to urban development in a later post).
2. Object Lessons
I’ve continued to attend the weekly lectures and take part in the workshops. The students are now working in groups to produce online exhibitions based around different kinds of objects. They will present these at an all-day workshop on 22nd March. I have spoken to the course team about making images with the students and their objects in the various collections participating in the programme. The major contribution to my work, however, has been the focus of the programme on objects, which fits with the more materialist turn in my own work, and interest in artists like Cornelia Parker, and writers such as Peter Stallybrass (for example, Stallybrass, 1998) concerned with memory and materiality (see, in particular, Freeman, Nienass & Daneill, 2016). The programme has focused on the narratives that can be created around objects, and the value of objects in well-being and therapy (Solway et al, 2017). There is also, however, a growing contemporary theoretical interest in the disruptive and obstructive function of objects, and our projection of agency into the material world, creating ‘uncanny objects’ with an apparent agency and insistence, and resistance, of their own.
I am thinking about ways of using the collections, for instance the zoological collection at the Grant Museum (created to provide ‘artifacts’ for teaching and research in the Nineteenth Century but fulfilling a very different function now) in exploring these issues, and the role played by the collections in the emergence of eugenics and other oppressive regimes of thought.
The ‘uncanny object’ in a later era is explored by Lisa Mullen (2019), in ‘Mid-century Gothic’.
‘Mid-Century Gothic defines a distinct post-war literary and cultural moment in Britain, lasting ten years from 1945-55. This was a decade haunted by the trauma of fascism and war, but equally uneasy about the new norms of peacetime and the resurgence of commodity culture. As old assumptions about the primacy of the human subject became increasingly uneasy, culture answered with gothic narratives that reflected two troubling qualities of the new objects of modernity: their uncannily autonomous agency, and their disquieting intimacy with the reified human body’.
This opens up new visual possibilities in exploring the relationship between the students and the objects they have studied.
This work has influenced all other aspects of my photographic work, and, in particular, treatment of images, in print form (and also, maybe, in materialised form on a smartphone screen), as material objects. In the other projects I am exploring this, and the form that my own ‘images’ will take, and how they will be circulated and encountered (for instance, made material as different kinds of prints, as books, as artifacts, in exhibition space and so on).
3. Digital Discrimination
This is a project looking at the relationship between location and quality of internet access, the uses that young people make of the internet and the manner in which advertising algorithms feed young people in different areas with different kinds of content. The project is running in Germany and the UK. I have been making images alongside colleagues who are collecting data through surveys, focus groups and mapping. Early days in terms of seeing where this might go visually. Recent interviews in Hull indicate that there might be potential in exploring the ‘layering’ of the located embodied lives of young adults and their virtual lives online (predominantly through their phones).
In relatively poor areas there appears to be a possible interaction between the decaying physical infrastructure (public transport, for instance) and an increasingly complex, and differentiated and disempowering, online world (with snapchat and instagram being used as the dominant means of communication, bringing commercial competition for users’ online attention, but in demographically differentiated ways, driven by algorithms that appear to have a locational component, as well as being shaped by usage).
References
Freeman, L. A., Nienass, B. and Daniell, R. 2016. ‘Memory | Materiality | Sensuality’, Memory Studies, 9(1): 3–12.
Mullen, L. 2019. Mid-century gothic: The uncanny objects of modernity in British literature and culture after the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Solway, R. et al. 2017. ‘Material objects and psychological theory : A conceptual literature review’, Arts & Health. Taylor & Francis, 8(1): 82–101.
Stallybrass, P. 1998. ‘Marx’s coat’, in P. Spyer (ed.), Border fetishisms: material objects in unstable spaces. London: Routledge. 187–207.
I have written earlier about the notion of ‘photographies’ rather than considering ‘photography’ as unified (or even unifiable) practice or discipline. Accordingly, I have divided my practice into a number of different domains of practice, each having its own intent, audience and means of dissemination/circulation (and outside this self-consciously photographic work, of course, use photography and photographic images in a variety of other activities). There are, however, a number of underlying concerns (about theory, practice and the nexus between these, for instance). Although I have described my project as having three levels of production and circulation of images/artifacts, there is no a priori hierarchy – these domains of practice (my own art, collaborative campaign image making, engagement with community image making) are just different contexts for the deployment of photographic image making (and therefore all contributing to my development as a photographer, and the development of my skills and understanding of the processes, practices, contexts and fields of photography).
Over the past week, I have made advances in all three domains (which I will describe in other posts). For the purpose of this reflection, I will focus on my own artistic practice. The aim of this work is to develop a distinctive means of exploring areas of material, social and cultural domains of human experience, for instance the impact of the process of urban regeneration on residents. The intent of the work is to examine the interaction between different interests in, experience of and aspirations for a particular place and the changes that take place over time. There is thus a need to bring time and place, and different subjective relationships to these dimensions, into the same space, through, for instance, juxtaposition within or between images and artifacts. To do this also entails a multi-modal approach. At this point in time, I am experimenting with images; ultimately these will be combined with sound, text, moving image, artifacts and other media in exhibition, installation and/or book form.
The principal audience for this work is others with a critical interest in arts-based practice and research and the contribution this can make to the critical understanding of human experience and engagement with the world. The audience would also include those who are interested more broadly in the issues I am exploring, or having overlapping interests from other disciplines and areas of practice. The audience would also include people directly involved in the contexts being explored (for instance, residents, developers, councillors, activists, in the case of urban regeneration), as well as those with a direct interest in the visual arts. At this point in time, I am engaging with people in a variety of communities in the evolution of the work.
For me, ambiguity is one of a number of strategies available in making images and juxtaposing them with other modes. If work is specifically aimed at examination of photography as a practice or field, I can see that ambiguity might be an intent in its own right. However, ambiguity without context is untethered from meaning: in making sense of the ambiguous image, the reader imposes their own context which, it might be argued, radically alienates the image from the maker. Ambiguity as a sole intent thus might give rise to a number of novel and engaging images, but ultimately will not provide the basis for an enduring and coherent body of work: that would require a broader conceptual base, and a corresponding (but not necessarily all encompassing) sense of direction.
Over the past week I have experimented with the overlaying of images, and in particular the exploration of multi-channel works. Although the aim has been to produce works in colour, some of the most satisfying images have been monochrome (working with monochrome images in three colour channels and then converting back into monochrome by de-saturating, or using a gradient map, at the final stage). The image below juxtaposes the built (fence) with the natural (macro plant images).
This image combines different scales of image taken in the same place (Stratford Station, from a train).
The form of the third monochrome image combines human forms in the built environment, with urban nature and a macro shot of a corroded surface.
In all cases the distinct and discontiguous (in time, space, scale, natural/human/constructed) are brought together in the same space, with the intent of produce an open text which invites interpretation. There are similarities, particularly the second image, with the work of Antony Cairns (who uses chemical not digital processes and has experimented with printing on aluminium plates and displaying images on Kindle screens).
In the colour work, I have explored the use of existing images. The following three images are formed by overlaying images from the triptychs produced in the first module.
The final image combines a developer produced image of the future, with an image of construction in progress and an image of the natural landscape that is in the process of being ‘over-written’.
A monochrome version of the same image opens up an exploration of the affordances of colour and monochrome images in this context.
How I address the questions posed for independent reflection depends of which aspect of my photographic practice I take as a principal focus (given that my project proposal has three distinct forms of image making). Over the past week I have had the opportunity to gain insight into the lifeworlds of others through their own images (at the Shed Life meeting). Interpretation of these is predicated upon the co-creation of a shared context and language. It also requires a creation of mode of communication of the outcomes that is mutually comprehensible, and accessible to an audience. These kinds of images do not speak for themselves, but rather give us insight into a lifeworld, to be mediated by not just images but also different levels of accounts, from different perspectives. In this context, the image acts as something to talk about. The image being held by one of the group members below shows (according to him) his wife, who died in 2014, and himself at home at Christmas. Irrespective of what it might be taken to represent or authenticate, or how if might be read semiotically by another viewer, in this context it acts as an artifact, with strong emotional charge, to talk about and stimulate dialogue.
The images produced for the second level of the project (co-created images for campaigning) are read in very different contexts (public rather than intimate, for instance) and provoke a very different type of interaction. Likewise, my own personal image making is read in very different contexts (including the pedagogic context of a higher degree programme), with very different forms of dialogue about and interpretation of the images.
One major development this week is advancement of my thinking about photographic images as artifacts, provoked by visiting the UCL museums, collections and galleries with students, and thinking about ways of writing about images (including fictional accounts and imaginings of the ‘life-course’ or trajectories of the objects: I’m reminded of Tim Hunkin’s ‘Secret Life of …’ series, and Cornelia Parker’s work focusing on Freud’s chair, and Peter Stallybrass’s (1998) piece ‘Marx’s Coat’).
Cornelia Parker, Marks made by Freud, Subconsciously (macrophotograph of the seat of Freud’s chair), 2000
The lecture by Helen Chatterjee on the ‘Psycho-social significance of objects’, and the accompanying paper (Solway et al, 2017) which surveys research into the different ways objects have been used in interventions relating to, for instance, physical well-being, mental health and homelessness, has given me a range of ways of thinking about the use of images as artifacts (as well as images of artifacts). I’ll explore this over coming weeks. It also relates to my deeper engagement with the work of Cornelia Parker. As she notes in her interview at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, her own work pays particular attention to the qualities of the materials and objects with which she works, noting that Marcel Duchamp ‘annexed objects in order to convey meaning’.
The focus of the relationship between people and objects, and the use of images as objects, enables me to relate my photographic practice both to other areas of artistic practice and to discourse and practice in other disciplines, in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences, and in particular areas that, in recent years, have taken a ‘material turn’.
References
Parker, C. 2018. Objects of Obsession. Interview at Bethel Museum of the Mind, London. Video available at https://museumofthemind.org.uk/objects-of-obsession [accessed 08.02.19].
Solway, R. et al. 2017. ‘Material objects and psychological theory : A conceptual literature review’, Arts & Health, 8(1):82–101.
Stallybrass, P. 1998. ‘Marx’s Coat’. In P. Spyer (ed.) Border fetishisms: material objects in unstable spaces. New York: Routledge, 187–207.
Over the past week I have continued to develop relationships and links relating to my proposed FMP. The Thames Ward Community Partnership summit on Thursday provided the opportunity to make images to feed into the work of the group and to make contacts with community groups for project related work (eg. JustMap, Creekmouth Preservation Society, Shed Life and the New View Arts Project). My images were used in the visual presentation that ran during the evening. I also attended further Object Lesson sessions, including some work on writing about objects at the Grant Museum.
The webinar with Michelle helped me to think through how, over the course of this module, I might link these two strands of my work. In the exploration of the relationship between individuals and groups and changes that are taking place in their communities through regeneration, objects clearly have a part to play (both in exploring experiences and aspirations with participants, and in making images, and making artefacts from/for the images).
Karen Knorr, The Order of Things (Academies Series 1994-2005).
Karen Knorr’s Academies series (1994-2005) covers very similar settings to the university galleries and museums. She explores the dominance of the western aesthetic, whereas my interest is more in the roots of the collections in eugenics and colonialism, and the attempts to moderate (or even atone for) this through public engagement (for instance, in the use of the collections in social prescribing and other well-being related initiatives). One possibility would be to attempt to bring these different interests into the same visual space.
Karen Knorr, Love at First Sight, Palazinna Cinese, 2017.
Knorr does this through digital manipulation in her most recent work (for instance, in the image above from the Metamorphosis series), though has in the past, as in the Academies series, used taxidermy (noting the effect that photographs appear to bring these animals to life, as Sugimoto observes in his waxwork and diorama series). The lighting of these settings is clearly key, and I want to look at the lighting used in 19th Century painting, from the period in which the museums were founded (Tom Hunter has explored painterly lighting schema, referencing Friedrich’s window motif through the use of the window as the principal source for lighting an interior, in his Persons Unknown series in Hackney).
Tom Hunter, A Glass of Wine, 1997 (Persons Unknown series).
This would form a link with the Riverside work through the issue of regeneration, place, identity and well-being. I want also to ‘reverse’ or mirror the settings, and make related images on the estate, reinforcing the link through objects, materiality and touch. This clearly relates to the material turn in photography discussed in relation to Squiers’ exhibition this week, and to my intention to work more with prints, not just digital images.
I’ve also been exploring Cornelia Parker’s use of photography, making a further link to materiality, but also to precariousness and experiment. I’ll post more about this and other artists, such as Danny Treacy, who work with both photographic images and artefacts, over the coming weeks.
