There is a disconnect between modernism and the landscape. Modernism, with its rationalist framing, objectivism and measurement, has allowed us to extract ourselves from the landscape and to treat it as a resource in even very context responsive modern architecture, as on the West coast of Scotland. Evans's PhD research engages with narratives around the clearances and diaspora in/from Scotland, speculating that a creative deep mapping of place and landscape can disclose a narrative which has been overlooked and suppressed by a modernist, rational architectural approach. Narratives of landscapes may be factual, fictive or mythic. These are tensions between the disclosure and the occlusion of such narratives, but equally, the act of occlusion sometimes enables the act of disclosure. Using Deep Mapping as an emergent method, a multi-media open-ended explorative portfolio of creative work seeks to examine multiple aspects of a place or landscape.
Working at the intersection of sociology and art practice. Harris's PhD project 'Knowing from Inside the White Cube', uses artists' filmmaking to explore and express embodied and sensory knowledges. In particular, the project is concerned with the hidden labour required by the 'white cube' model of arts institutions. Working with gallery technicians, cleaners and volunteers, the project interrogated the installation of an exhibition 'In the Peaceful Dome, Bluecoat 2017-18'. Focusing on the materiality of the exhibition as it interacts with embodied practice and tacit knowledges, the research aims to make visible the 'white cube' obscures: manual labour and unruly, lively materials. Sociological filmmaking tends towards the documentary format. Harris attempts to challenge this, using the film camera instead as a tool for 'sensuous scholarship'. Resisting linear narrative or voiceover, her films are an invitation into sensory worlds and as an exploration of artists filmmaking for sociological research.
John Carney- Symbolic Retribution (2018-2019)
A fetish describes an object that possesses a power that is somehow inordinate, misplaced or inflated, resulting in our submitting to our own creations as if they were alien powers, or as anthropologist David Graeber describes, falling down and worshipping that which we ourselves have made. In this sense, fetishism described an attempt to concretize the sacred and enshrine it in a material thing- a condition whereby the material and the immaterial become entangled. Under this condition, a fetish doesn't merely represent the deity but rather becomes it- animated by the perception of its devotee. Fetishism constitutes a social theory of objects- a condition wherein the object is elevated to become a social agent in its own right. By exploring the affinity between art objects and sacred objects- or fetishes as per my line of enquiry- it is Carney's objective to investigate the agency that these objects possess, how that agency is generated and how this might be harnessed within an art practice.
McKinlay is working on a collaborative practice-based PhD at Leeds Beckett University in partnership with Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI). YSI is a new sculpture festival delivered by the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park from June to September 2019. As part of her research for YSI, McKinlay has been researching the space and facilities for sculpture production in Yorkshire. Visiting foundries, fabricators and quarries has revealed new materials, accidental assemblages and industrial fabrication techniques. Finding links between processes and material by-products of these spaces for production and geological and biological formations has influenced the direction of her studio research.
Carney is currently engaged in a practice-led Masters by Research at Manchester School of Art, titled Concretising God- Dematerialisation, Fetishism and the Social Construction of Objects. As an artist he produces work that investigates the power and social agency that material things possess, to address the contention surrounding 'the material' of artworks (as well as documented problem for art production since the 1960s) and their immaterial antipodes (the mental and social forms that artworks produce, prompt or instigate). It is by viewing the agency of immaterial form as a sacred power- and by exploring the potentials of this affinity- that his practice takes root. It is his intention to investigate the creative potential of this affinity through the phenomenon of fetishism.
The Quarry series developed from visiting the stone mason's yards near sculptor Isamu Noguchi's studio in Takamatsu. McKinlay was intrigued by the raw blocks of stones that were from the nearby quarry, the voids and channels carved into them, traces of the stones being removed from the mountainside.
Julia McKinlay- Quarry I and Quarry II (2018)
The two works within this exhibition Quarry I and Quarry II are part of a series of water based woodblock printing, at Mokuhanga Innovation Labroratory (MI:LAB) in Japan. Mokuhanga is an ideal method of printmaking for depicting three dimensional objects in space. The medium allows layers of ink to be built up and brushed out to create gradients of colour- something less possible in other print mediums.
Adrian Evans- A port facility for the return of the Knapdale Diaspora
The artefacts within this installation explore the following manifesto of seven points:
- How can the rational framing of the museum make a place for narrative?
- The narratives of place in a haunted landscape are ghosts which occupy both the past and the present. The creation of artefacts which engage with these narratives provides access, through this temporal disruption, to the deep time of landscape.
- Re-engagement with the landscape is wayfaring, a navigation, and in the full meaning of the phrase, 'making a way',
- The nature of this particular place is highly defined by the imbricate nature of the land and sea, although land, inevitably, is the place of occupation and the key navigation is by sea.
- I become an instrument of navigation. My deep mapping (artefacts) are the outputs of my instrument.
- The instrument must be calibrated.
- The vessel is both a container and a fundamental tool of navigation. It contains, and occludes, a cargo. This is a curation- of a cargo of curiosities- and an artefact that tells of a place in the landscape. The vessel, with its cargo of curious artefacts voyages on a diaspora of narrative carrying its place with it."
Symbolic Retribution (2018-2019) is a series of public actions and interventions where Carney creates and leaves flower memorials in public settings. These actions serve as a method of transforming an otherwise inert and ordinary space into a 'sacred' space and to explore the public's capacity to generate meaning. For this exhibition, alongside the archive of documentation within the Market Gallery space, Carney has created an intervention within the space of Queensgate Market.
Laura Harris- Knowing from inside the White Cube (2019)
Knowing from Inside the White Cube (2019) invites the viewer into the sensory world of the gallery install through a multi-channel projection. The footage was shot during the install of an exhibition at Bluecoat, Liverpool, Challenging the 'hands-off' knowledge culture of arts institutions, the projection reflects the skilled manual, material work required by the 'white cube'. Gallery spaces tend to proscribe tactile experiences of artworks as material things; artworks exist in the social imaginary as 'out of arms reach'. This erases the bodies and labour of manual workers (the technician or cleaner) who have an intimate knowledge of the materiality of the gallery. This projection invited viewers to interact with the materials of the 'behind the scenes' work of installing Bluecoat's exhibition while making visible the labour that produced it.
The artist thanks all those whose labour made this installation possible.
Using her artistic practice as a methodology to investigate what it means to be an audience member, Eagles has created a socially engaged platform to be both observed and engaged with. Her practice explores and investigates ideas of the audience, community, collaborative narratives and participation.
Susan Carron Clarke- The Girl with the Paua Shell Eyes
The Girl with the Paua Shell Eyes is loosely a self-portrait of the research practitioner. It was carved by hand from a block of Maltese limestone using traditional fire sharp tools and mallets. The exhibition documented the processes and techniques involved, including the original clay maquette, research diary, tools and the final carved form.
Caitlin Kiely- The Body as Landscape, Landscape as Archive
This body of work began with Kiely's late grandfather's archival photo album, which documented his time in the construction industry. As he suffered with dementia his stories were often fragmentary and expressed incoherently. She, therefore, began to see a parallel between this and his photo album which had been subject to removal, loss and reorder throughout the years. In order to obtain the stories contained within these photographs, it involved asking her father questions in order to excavate his memories, which would otherwise have remained buried. Through this surfacing of memory, they collectively connected images with specific locations- allowing the archive photograph to transform into a physical place. This journey through place and memory not only pieced together her grandfather's fragmentary narrative, but also marked a new one between herself and her father.
Clarke's PhD research investigates the resurgence and revival of traditional stone carving techniques in community art and craft organisations. As an embedded researcher with the West Riding Stonecarving Associations (WRSA) she is documenting learning processes, techniques and the attraction to the materiality of stone in a communal workshops environment. The use of creative practice is part of a multi-method qualitative approach to studying a stone carving community in a way that allows for total immersion in a situated context.
Kiely is a visual storyteller. Her practice is concerned with the landscape and how it is an archive for memories, histories and narratives to be contained and unearthed. She has developed a type of archeological methodology to her practice, as she observed, surveys, and excavated meaning and information fro the landscape by considering traces of the past. Kiely is continuing to develop a practice-based research approach toward place. With this, she is challenging the conventional parameters of the landscape whilst exploring alternative methods of representation.
Beth Morgan- A Walk in Scarborough (2019)
The series of works on display, in paint and ceramic, are developed from a walk Morgan has undertaken along the long stretching coastline of South Bay in Scarborough; walking amongst thriving rock pools, barnacle-covered sea walls and craggy rocks, across barren sandscapes littered with seaweed cast onto the shore by a violent sea. Her practice is situated within these natural environments, immersing herself within them, considering the ways in which the weather alters the colours around her, how the wind catches a certain leaf, how the sun distorts the view or how tiredness can disrupt focus. No photographs are taken during the walk, only notes and quick sketches in her 'field journal'. These are used in the studio to prompt a memory or feeling. Within the gallery setting, the works themselves take on a whole new phenomenological experience for the audience, prompting feelings of the strangely familiar, as most people will have, at some point in their lives, been immersed in a similar landscape.
Charlotte Eagles- The Forum (2019)
The Forum, installed in the satellite space from 25.05.19 to 01.06.19, has been developed as a structure comprised of a desk, a question, a chair and a typewriter with a roll of paper attached. The purpose of the platform is to provoke participation and investigate the varying positions and states of being the audience. It can be used as a tool to translate the reflections and perspectives of the audience by acting as a mediator between the audience and the displaying of work, whilst also questioning how common interests can influence a sense of unification and community. The Forum activated the space of Queensgate Indoor Market, allowing the audience the opportunity to engage with the work as viewer or participant, either visually by analysing the displayed text, or through assuming the position of participant t contribute to the ongoing collaborative narrative between the audience and the artist.
Christin Skovgaard Petersen- Practice Fictions (2019)
In his PhD project, 'Practice Fictions' Petersen uses field study, artistic research and design fiction with an aim of formulating a theory of creative practice with mobility and displacement at its centre. One that acknowledges and responds to issues around the free movement of labour and the consequences of automation. In this exhibition, he presents a fictive reconstruction of ceramic fragments collected on field trips to the Thames foreshore between 2014 and 2017. One of these includes a set of fragments from which an abridged reconstruction of a 19th Century transfer-ware pattern through the collation of its multiple design elements.
Natural stone is an organic material and often considered with great reverence because it was formed millions of years ago and is one of a kind in its composition. This carving was Clarke's first substantial attempt at 'carving in the round' and forms part of a broader case study about the West Riding Stone Carving Association, based in Halifax. The carving process involved making a side and front template of the maquette and using it to carve across the block of limestone. A claw chisel and medium weight mallet was used for a roughing out phase along withe some 'pitching' to remove larger pieces that were not required. To further refine the points a grid and plumb line helped to transfer additional measurements to the maquette. Flat, bullnose and gouge chisels were used with a dummy mallet to add detail and refine the shape. Finally, a range of files and rifflers helped to smooth the surface before finishing the sculpture with fine abrasive pads and sealing the powdery surface. Some colour and paua shell eyes were added to enhance the carved features and reflect light.
The Body as Landscape, Landscape as Archive explore the concept of landscape, as well as how it can be a potential container for personal narratives and histories. It was informed by sedimentary rocks and how they provide an archive into the earth's history. It was through identifying a relationship between the reconfiguration of these rocks (as a result of metamorphism), and the reconfiguration of self brought about by dementia, which helped her to consider the landscape as both an interior and exterior space. Through using materials and processes to represent this abstract perception of landscape as well as the landscape as archive. Retracing place from an archive meant the archive became a starting point rather than an end point, reflecting the delineation of time present in both metamorphic rocks and dementia.
Travelling towork between London and Yorkshire on a weekly basis, and having trained in Denmark, Sweden and Britain, Peteresen is a veteran commuter who self-identifies with the travelling journeyman. Both in his research and practice as a maker and graphic novelist, he looks to the artisan craftsmen and craftswomen that have taken to the road to train an ply their trades across Europe since the 17th century. In anticipation of challenging current models of creative working, Petersen believes that the travelling journeyman can serve as a model for future creative practice.
Morgan's creative practice is focused on giving her own personal, remembered experiences of walking through landscapes visual form. Overly saturated colours, biomorphic shapes and layered forms build up as she recollects her experience of a specific walk in a particular site, transforming and shifting until it inspires a sculpture. Her paintings and sculptures are complete abstractions yet the shapes remain familiar due to their organic nature. Her practice-based Masters by research concentrates on understanding her relationship with the landscape, considering how it is transformed through the act of walking and how memory distorts and abstracts, forming new experiences. Walking is an important part of her practice, the more she walks the more responses she creates, giving her a greater understanding of how walking informs and encompasses who she is as a creative practitioner.