Thought Positions in Sculpture

Thought Positions in Sculpture presents ten contemporary artists who have encountered the archive through the stories of their own art practice. The physical exhibition at Huddersfield Art Gallery refers to existing works of art from Leeds Museums and Galleries Sculpture Collection, archival material from the Henry Moore Institute, digitised archival material from the Tate Gallery, audio material from the British Library and other archival sites, some of which are inventions by the artist themselves. Intended as a starting point for thinking in, with and through the archive, the exhibition serves as a platform and context for different narratives of sculptural thinking. Over the duration of three months, conversation pieces will be generated through this website alongside the physical work on display at Huddersfield Art Gallery. Thought Positions in Sculpture features the following artists: Brass Art are an artist collective who explore the Freud Museum house, London as an archive site for capturing uncanny resonances through digital sculptural forms. Desmond Brett explores the notion of ‘assemblage’ through the photographic archives of Eileen Agar and Paul Nash. Liadin Cooke responds to the parallels of her own sculptural thinking in relation to Geoffrey Clarke (Leeds Sculpture Collection/Henry Moore Institute archive). Sheila Gaffney stages her own thought position through the object relations she believes are in play in the evolution of twentieth century British sculpture. Juliet MacDonald addresses Henry Fehr’s memorial ‘Head of Victory’ (Leeds Sculpture Collection). Nicola Perren explores Ghisha Koenig’s drawings and sculpture works housed at the Henry Moore Institute archive and Leeds Sculpture Collection. Nicola Redmore encounters some of the plaster works of Kenneth Armitage (Leeds Sculpture Collection) and digitised archival materials from the Tate Gallery. Hester Reeve listens to the audio interviews from the ‘Artists’ Lives’ project at the British Library to address the concept of ‘sculptural substance’. Lisa Stansbie explores a series of swimming machine patents from Google to produce her own sculptures. Jill Townsley, a sculptor influenced by serialisation, engages with the processes of making an archive through the retrieval of stones from the West Yorkshire landscape. Curated by Dr Rowan Baile

Editorial: Craft and the Handmade: Making the intangible visible

In November 2014, the Department of Fashion and Textiles at the University of Huddersfield hosted the conference Transition: Re-thinking Textiles and Surfaces. The conference sought to scrutinize current and future developments in textile research and its applications within the wider context of the creative industries. With keynote presentations from Professor Becky Earley, Professor Jane Harris, Dr Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu, publisher David Shah and Trend Union forecaster Philip Fimmano, this two day event brought together a myriad of theoretical perspectives and material approaches through four distinct tracks: Science and Technology, Sustainable Futures, Craft and the Handmade and Enterprise/Industry/Business. This guest edited issue of Craft Research focuses on Craft and the Handmade and features articles that were first delivered as papers within this track

The Sleeping Bag Landscape

This essay considers the ‘sleeping-bag’ as a travelling concept for developing new relations between the landscape and textiles. It examines the sleeping-bag within the wider historical and cultural contexts in which the material qualities of cloth are carried and transformed. By examining the appearance of the sleeping-bag in different landscapes and its own structure as a vehicle for conceptual thinking, the essay considers how certain strategies of thinking-through-making are brought to the fore in the analysis of specific examples, from an examination of the interconnectedness between materials and the landscapes from which they derive to the distancing of this relation as the sleeping-bag travels through unfamiliar terrains and climates. In turn, this cultural analysis provides the framework for The Sleepingbag Project, which was first developed in 2010 and which uses the tools and skills of craft to reveal unacknowledged and hidden identity relations between craft-making and homelessness. It is argued that through this project an identity of place for the displaced is made possible in and through an ethics of care

Editorial

Archives are sites of exploration and discovery for all kinds of practices. They are also reinforced structures. Whether as a library of manuscripts, museum store or personal collection, the ‘archive-as-repository’ catalogues and categorizes, houses and buries, its items. Bringing the contents of an archive to life requires that one ignite what is dormant so as to draw archival materials out into the space of the world to be received and experienced in new ways. Designed to stimulate collaborative conversations and exchanges, in and around the archive, with a view to presenting new approaches to archival experiences, and with them, styles of writing that resonate with the ‘archival’ as a concept and as a practice, this guest-edited issue expands the field of the archive to incorporate a variety of different practitioner perspectives. Whether through animation, art education, contemporary art, costume, creative writing, information retrieval studies, performance, sculpture, sound and textiles, re-writing the archive from these positions can inform how historical and material remnants of the past may be re-thought in creative practice

Themes of drawing and digital context: student engagement with theory and practice using the tool of the integrated learning portfolio

This article presents a reflective visual narrative documenting the learning encounters of BA (Hons) Surface Design undergraduates using the Integrated Learning Portfolio (ILP) tool in Year one. Theoretical themes of drawing, digital drawing design practice, and visual design research experientially blended the physical and the virtual learning tools, environments and collaborative culture through this integrated first year route. Parallel theory and practice on specific themes such as ‘drawing lines within the urban landscape’, ‘creating shadow silhouettes’, ‘using the body as a tool for drawing’, and ‘cultivating fortuitous accidents in drawing practice’, created a conceptual space for students to evaluate the future relevance of these drawing experiences within the context of their design programme

Concrete Thinking for Sculpture

This article proposes to explore the variegated plays of concrete as a travelling concept through four specific examples, viewed from the locality of the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle in 2015. It will be argued that ‘concrete’ makes possible a triangulated reading practice in, of and for sculpture. The first example looks to the use of concrete, as a material, in some of the ‘technical’ experiments of Henry Moore, from the 1920s-1930s. The second example is the only public concrete sculpture by Barbara Hepworth on record, entitled Turning Forms. This is a kinetic work which was commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The psychic registrations of form-in-concrete will be explored through the aesthetic reception and understanding of these works. The third example examines the interplay between abstraction and concretion in a work of structural engineering: the Arqiva transmission tower on Emley Moor. This structure is a working utilitarian model of the telecommunications industry which took hold in the 1960s and 1970s. It is also a sculptural monument in a landscape of other design ‘types’. The fourth example considers the recent display of Lygia Clark’s Bichos at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, in 2014-2015. Bicho Pássaro do Espaço (‘Creature Passing through Space’) (1960) reveals a particular translation between concrete thinking and concrete experience. These examples call upon the semantics of the concrete as a thought process and will track a journey into a region marked by three interconnected points: the concrete specificity in the material works selected, the broader field of concrete forms within which the sculptural may sit and the philosophical/aesthetic language of concrete for sculpture

Developing creative health provision:Policy briefing, No. 1, Sept 2023

There is a rapidly increasing evidence base showing the value of creative community-based activities as a credible alternative for improving health and wellbeing. Creative health concerns the use of non-medical community-based provision to aid better health and wellbeing. This includes the creative arts, physical activities including sports and outdoor and nature-based activities. Over 50% of cases presented at GP surgeries are the result of social rather than medical conditions [REF]. Within a context of over stretched resources across the Health Sector including long waiting lists, there is a clear rationale for support and wide-spread adoption of creative health approaches which offer a more appropriate and cost-effective alternative to medical provision

The value of creative health:Perspectives from people with lived experience: Research briefing, No. 2, November 2023

This briefing provides important evidence of perspectives from People with Lived Experience about the value of creative health approaches in improving health and wellbeing and what is needed to enable people to live well in their communities. Creative health approaches refers to the use of non-medical community-based provisions including art and creative activities (including singing, drama, visual arts and crafts) as well as sports, outdoor & nature-based activities and use of community facilities. The evidence in this briefing derives from collaborative research funded by the UKRI-AHRC Mobilising Community Assets programme with partners and community members across West Yorkshire that explored what it means to mobilise community assets in response to health inequalities. A participatory action inquiry approach was adopted involving the active engagement of stakeholder organisations and people in communities working together to explore possibilities for evolving creative health systems and approaches to enable people across West Yorkshire to live well. A total of 76 people with lived experience and 80 professionals from 67 different statutory and third sector organisations were involved in the project. The perspectives in this briefing are derived largely from workshops and inquiry groups with people with lived experience. The project was undertaken between November 2022 and July 2023