Involvement, inbetweenness and abstract painting

This is a catalogue essay to accompany the exhibition Painting The In-Between, a group show held at the Bowery in Leeds, 29th March – 12th April 2019. The Exhibition was curated by Richard Baker and Marco Cali, and featured works by Marco Cali, Alex Hanna and Cara Nahaul – from the Contemporary British Painting Group – and Tom Palin, April Virgoe, and Richard Baker, who are Fine Art staff at Leeds Arts University. All of the painters included make forms of representational painting, and yet at the same time, and in varying manners, retain a marked concern for formalism and abstraction. The text itself situates this concern within an art historical narrative. In the process, the author draws attention to issues relating to what E. H. Gombrich termed pictorial representation: to spectatorship and the act looking in respect of the functioning of language and the possibilities of depiction. This essay, then, looks to abstract painting’s situation with regard to the idea of figuration (the showing of other things). And so, both semiotic and phenomenological frameworks of understanding the meaning of paintings become foregrounded in the course of seeking to establish a clearer sense of abstract painting’s peculiar persistence. What might it mean for one ‘to be with abstract painting’, and, moreover, what is implied today when a claim is made for a painting to be other than abstract: i.e., figurative or representational? To locate abstract painting’s position is thus, in part, to speculate on its perceived boundedness—on the indeterminacy of location and the presumed ontology of its site of meaning

Myth

Based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this series explores the transformation of the human form; the body is a mutable canvas, subject to the whims of the Gods. Myth is expositional- here Ovid suggests the vulnerability of the human condition in the face of time, illness and eventually death. Galatea, sculpted from marble by Pygmalion- such is the power of his obsession with her that the sculptor animates the cold stone with his touch and she is brought to life. Tyresias- both Male and Female, the blind prophet had the gift of prophecy, sight being the classical paradigm for knowledge. Narcissus- The beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection and eventually pined away, unable to break free from this infatuation. He was eventually transformed in his longing into the Narcissus flower

Reconnecting practice: pedagogies of fashion thinking

Broadly speaking, the issue of sustainability in the fashion industry is nothing new (Fletcher, 2016; Gwilt,2014; Siegle, 2008), and it continues to gain momentum; unsurprising, given that, despite the warnings, there are more garments in circulation than ever. However, although the inherent problem with ‘Fast Fashion’ lay in the over-production and over-consumption of clothing, to, ultimately, satisfy the consumer’s desire, we cannot blame the consumer. We must return to the first stage of the cycle; the designer, and contemplate how we, the educator, can awaken the student’s relationship to their practice, with a sustainable and conscious mind-set. In her 2015 Anti_Fashion Manifesto for the next decade, Li Edelkoort (2015) stated that we are witnessing “the end of fashion as we know it”, making reference to the impact of ‘Fast Fashion’ on the future drivers of the fashion eco-system; today’s ‘Generation Y’ fashion design students. Edelkoort declares that the expectation to create accessories, brochures, to arrange shows, photography, and communications, only serves to dilute the essence, and purpose, of 21st century, sustainable, fashion design thinking. Within a year of the publication of Edelkoort's manifesto, Kate Fletcher's 'Craft of Use' (2016) project paid homage to the 'tending and wearing' of garments as much as their creation, revealing the expression of fashion 'in a world not dependent on continuous consumption', where garments, whilst 'sold as a product, are lived as a process'. This paper considers these two globally renowned fashion educators’ predictions and practices, and demonstrates ways in which their influence has served as a bedrock in the advancement a BA (Hons) Fashion curriculum, in the context of sustainability, and a conducive re-alignment of fashion design thinking and practice, pedagogically. A case study will demonstrate the methodologies applied by a final year BA (Hons) Fashion student through a graduate collection that articulates a holistic approach to sustainable design practice. From mindful practice at the initial stages of exploration, to a collection that takes a non-binary approach, not only in its aesthetic, adaptable sizing and fit offer, but in offering solutions to wider social, economic, and consumptive issues

The artists’ house: the recontextualised art practices of British postgraduate students in conversation with Italian amateur artists

The article is developed from a paper presented at the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) Access, Learning Careers and Identity Network Conference 2017: Exploring Learning Contexts: Implications for access, learning careers and identities. It explores how the recontextualisation of creative practice and communal living as part of a pedagogic device reveals the ideology behind what constitutes a professional artist and a successful art student. This is achieved through the application of Bernstein’s theories of horizontal and vertical discourse in conjunction with his theory of the pedagogic device to a case study based on a residency at ‘The Artists’ House,’ based in Canale Di Tenno in Italy. It was found that the participating students were able to perform those successful creative practitioner identities which were regulated by official art and design pedagogic discourse. However, the Artists’ House residency also reproduced disadvantage. Those students who did not take part were in danger of being positioned as unsuccessful creative practitioners because they could be seen by tutors, their peers and themselves as not being gregarious, risk-taking or globally-orientated

Under an artificial sun

‘Oh yeah, I would have been a coal miner, I would think, if I hadn’t had tuberculosis when I was 12.’ Tom Jones, Singer-Songwriter Under an Artificial Sun focuses on materials in the Stannington Children’s Sanatorium collection held at Northumberland Archives. This collection contains a wealth of material including: patients medical records and reports, radiographs, educational logbooks from the Sanatorium School from 1906 – 1970, a Matron’s Day Book from 1906 – 1933, photographs, ephemera and a collection of twenty-six oral history interviews with former patients recorded in 2013. The project is a collaboration between Leeds Arts University researcher, writer and filmmaker Debbie Ballin and Dr Janice Haigh, Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Many of the children hospitalised at Stannington Sanatorium with tuberculosis were from working-class backgrounds and had been living in extreme poverty. In addition to medical treatment, hospitalisation included a multitude of emotional and developmental experiences. Under an Artificial Sun investigates connections between this historical material and contemporary debates around attachment, resilience, creativity, boredom and institutionalisation within childhood studies. It seeks to uncover stories of the emotional legacy of hospitalisation; examine experiences these children may not otherwise have been exposed to and to explore how hospitalisation may have shaped their lives in unexpected or seldom-discussed ways. The medical and social aspects of hospitalisation at Stannington Children’s Sanatorium are well documented. The research builds on this body of work to create a more textured understanding of the experience of major illness in childhood and the way it shapes us as adults. The research informs the development of a new multi-disciplinary work that will weave together new and existing oral history testimony, writing and archival material. Practice-based methodologies will be utilised to tell detailed and layered stories about hospitalisation in childhood to enrich our understanding of this experience. The project is supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Bursary Award, Northumberland Archives and Leeds Arts University

[Im]moral food

What do popular Instagram posts of food communicate about the morality of health in Neoliberal Capitalist Societies? This slideshow of appropriated Instagram posts demarcates the visual identity and linguistic tropes attached to contemporary moralising rhetoric around food, which has become a mainstay of social media platform Instagram’s pictorial oeuvre. This simplistic division of foods into those which are good and those which are bad is often accompanied by deeper moral judgement of ways of living and a quasi-religious partition between the clean and the unclean. Such damning ideology is symptomatic of the neoliberal agenda of individualisation, which places full responsibility for physical and mental health and wellbeing at the level of the individual; an ideology which conceals the social and economic complexity of the choices we make about our food and lifestyle. Commodified and spectacularised, the ‘healthy body’ acts as a sign-value for success, a strong work ethic and self-control; viewed as a productive resource and medium for creating ‘bodily capital’. By the same token, the unhealthy, shamed body: traditionally working class, poor, and other marginalized people; ‘are subjected to the “bio-power” of experts who impose upon these bodies judgments that explain their pathologies and failures’. On Instagram this logic is further codified into the semiotics of food, and underscored by accompanying hashtags. These hashtags sparingly spell out the user’s values through direction to others on how to behave, whilst also serving to affirm allegiances with virtual communities bound by these shared values through incantation like repetition of use. Through the use of hashtags a seemingly innocuous image of a meal is incorporated into a wider, ongoing dialogue about bodies, health and personal responsibility, and a private act becomes a public statement. The slideshow of appropriated Instagram photographs of food represents a snapshot of this dialogue, emphasising the moralising binaries between healthy and unhealthy, good and bad, clean and unclean

Horizontal discourses in adult art and design education

This article draws upon research from a longitudinal study (2011-2014) that sought to capture the experiences of adult students as they studied their degrees in art and design in the United Kingdom. Due to the entry qualifications to higher education held by these students they were perceived by their institutions as being ‘non-traditional’. They also tended to be mature students with a variety of backgrounds and life experiences. The project entailed the participants meeting with the researcher twice a year during the duration of their higher education. The methodological approach that was used is based on narrative inquiry. Bernstein’s (1999) theories that relate to horizontal discourse (everyday talk that is informal and specific to the context in which it is enacted) informed the analysis of the participants’ stories. It is suggested that informal, day-to-day dialogue is as important as the formal, specialist discourse about art and design in the studio. The sense of belonging seems of particular importance for those learning in an art and design studio where the students are diversified due to their age. It prevents a sense of exclusion among ‘mature' students who stand out with their appearance, clothes and behaviour. In conclusion, the author suggests establishing a relevant curriculum and developing a strategy fostering better social integration of "mature" students, which can greatly affect their sense of belonging to the group as well as educational experience directly related to the studied subject matter

Pictures, truths and methods: from function to form in abstract painting

This paper was delivered as part of a one-day painting symposium, titled: Abstract Painting Now, which took place in the main gallery of The Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, on Monday 4th February 2019. The speakers were: Brendan Fletcher, Matthew Macaulay, Katrina Blannin, Nadja Plein, Tom Palin and the Key Note, Michael Tooby. The symposium was co-hosted by the University of Gloucestershire, and focused on the current status of non-figurative painting, within contemporary art practice, considered against the background of the history delineated by the exhibition Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism. That is, from the high-water mark of American painting in the 1940s and 1950s and its seminal influence on a generation of British artists, non-figurative painting has often been sustained against the grain of artworld fashion. My paper takes an assertion of Patrick Heron’s as to the abstract nature of painting as a starting point for a phenomenological investigation into the way in which abstract works comport themselves. I seek to re-mobilise the ideas of Hans-Georg Gadamer in the course of foregrounding what it is that the spectator is able to bring to the table when confronted by abstract paintings. Moreover, the relationship of abstract painting to the world has proven to be a problematic one. To revisit it is to wrestle with the notion of resemblance, and therefore to speculate as to how it is that one thing is able to point to another. In this work I examine the degree to which abstraction – as idea – is compatible with an understanding of the serviceability of pictures, and, in so doing, consider the extent to which pictures operate within painting as language

Leonora Carrington: “wild card”

The “Artists in Exile” surrealist group portrait of 1942 arguably marks a moment of recognition and inclusion for Leonora Carrington as well as, paradoxically, her moment of “exoticization” and temporary exclusion from Anglo-American criticism at large. The existing literature on Carrington is already unfairly weighted towards her early career in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when indeed she would go on to produce radical and challenging paintings, sculptures, novels, tapestries, plays, set designs and costumes well into her nineties. So why another reading of Carrington’s wartime output? For one, it is useful to present a clearer timeline of her movements and locations, and secondly, it is necessary to review her intermedial contributions to the surrealist magazines of this period. This paper will propose that Carrington was, in fact, at the heart of the avant-garde during this period, a point which has provided fertile ground for future-feminist revisionary commentaries such as Marina Warner, as well as more recent historiographies and creative reinterpretations by Lucy Skaer. A reconsideration of Carrington’s output from this wartime interlude in New York City, including her short story “White Rabbits” (1941) and her Untitled etching for VVV Portfolio (1942), provides insights into her instinctual avant-garde senses of liminality and transgression as well as evidencing the profound respect and acknowledgement her peers held towards her

Accessing postgraduate art and design, transitions and intersectionality

Inherent within this chapter is a criticism of the notion of higher education participation as a form of transformation, in particular class transformation (Reay, 2002; Hudson, 2009; Byrom,2010). It can be seen that socio-cultural factors still impact on students’ experiences within postgraduate study and beyond. The intersections of class with age or life stage are explored through the students’ experiences which are the focus of this chapter. By reading the stories from students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds who have successfully undertaken postgraduate study within the arts it can be seen that firstly identities are not ‘overwritten’ by new experiences within higher education and secondly, the intersectional nature of identity would make such a transformation problematic. The idea of transformation also implies that students’ previous experiences and identities are deficient and need to be improved or cleansed. Experiences in education can therefore be seen as adding to an individual’s wider life experience through a process of reflection