Constructing Connections: Fiction, Art and Life (2017)

Constructing connections: Fiction, Art and Life was a series of art works and public events held in Croxteth Hall. This research was based on an interrogation of Tressell’s 1914 seminal socialist tract, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It investigated and made parallels with current societal inequalities and of the historical period as described in text. MacKinnon-Day engaged daily with the staff and volunteers at Croxteth Hall during this residency. This interaction was a key onsite catalyst for her research and was disseminated through subsequent a blog, seminars, community engagement, exhibitions and a publication. This interrogation of place as seen, through the lens of Tressell’s text, formed the basis from which further academic discussion took place at the Centre for Literature and Cultural History at LJMU. The project extended Mackinnon-Day’s previous research enquiry: An Artist's Anthropological Approach to Sustainability. This was published in The International Journal of Art and Design October 2016. The works produced are now incrementally integrated into the Hall’s permanent public displays. On completion of the exhibition, the imagery and text were circulated nationally in a ‘newspaper’ publication with essays offering a critical review of the exhibition from Tessa Jackson OBE and academic Dr Deaglan O’Donghaile. The onsite research created ideas for artworks in a place where contemporary art is not normally practiced or seen. It extended the contemporary discourse e.g. Lucy Lippard’s idea of ‘weaving lived experiences’ within the ‘subject of place’ The Lure of the Local (1998) and Paul Virilio's study of the ‘infra-ordinary’ The Everyday, Johnston (2008) about bringing the uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience into visibility. As planned, the artworks subverted the nostalgic narrative of Edwardian life portrayed in the permanent exhibits and promoted contemporary relevance. The resultant exhibition, blog, schools and public engagement expanded the themes and ideas of the project identified through a series of installations developed in response to the text and site