The prison project

The output is a series of artefacts comprising small scale smoke stencil drawings, produced specifically for a cell in the disused Dean Road Prison in Scarborough. Research process: The drawings are informed by a previous visit to the Barracks at Berwick-upon-Tweed, in which drawings and messages were stencilled onto the ceilings by soldiers. The drawings are made by holding a flame beneath the stencil, leaving a sooty deposit. This method became part of a working practice for a series of drawings which were included in the Scarborough Prison Project. Research insights: The drawings responded to the nature of the architectural spaces of the prison whilst imagining spaces of transition and escape. The use of smoke suggests an impermanence and provisionality, and the marking of time. The work was presented as part of a group exhibition of site responsive drawing projects in the cells of the Victorian prison. Dissemination: The drawings were disseminated as part of the ‘Scarborough Prison Drawing Project’ at Dean Road Prison, Scarborough, 12-14 February 2016. The work was also disseminated through an accompanying exhibition catalogue: The project was sponsored by Arts Council England, Coastival and Scarborough Borough Council

Emergence

The output is a creative project comprising a series of thirty paintings responding to the theme of 'Emergence'. The series was exhibited in ‘Emergence’ alongside three other artists. Research process: The work produced for this exhibition was the result of the development of ongoing artistic practice over the course of a year. This series of new paintings was exhibited alongside three other artists. The paintings were hung in groupings that alluded to tenuous relationships between the works, and foregrounded the spatial play between individual works and the space of the gallery. Research insights: Thematically the work produced for the exhibition explored the idea of emergence in terms of visibility and concealment. This new series of paintings allude to architectural spaces that are negated or concealed by grid like structures. Previous themes of uncertainty, illusion and negation were reconsidered through a shift in scale and support, resulting in an attentiveness to the object nature of the painting and the potential for experimental configurations. Dissemination: The research was disseminated through a group exhibition curated by Rebecca Wild at AIR Open exhibition in 2018. The exhibition brought together the work of four prize-winners from the AIR Open exhibition of 2017 at which Virgoe was awarded the Jacksons prize

Phase III le modulor /Phase IV intersections art/architecture

The output consists of two sets of paintings that were included in the following two related exhibitions: ‘Phase III Le Modular’, Galerie HLM, Marseilles, and ‘Phase IV Intersections: Art/Architecture’, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwhich, London. Research process: Virgoe was invited to exhibit in ‘Phase III Le Modulor’ in Marseilles, 2019. For this a new body of work was produced, which responded to the 1948 text by LeCorbusier, and to be exhibited in the town where the Unite D’Habitation was realised. ‘Phase IV’ brought together artists from the UK and France along with ‘Outside Architecture’ research group from the University of Greenwich. Research insights: For the first exhibition Virgoe produced a series of paintings using a loosely modulor system of repeated units within the paintings, which to some extent reflect the adaprations that LeCorbusier himself made to his system. These were conceived as a series in a grid format, and as such bear a relationship to the numerous layout iterations in the text. For ‘Phase IV’, Virgoe exhibited four paintings that consider the space between architecture and abstraction. Dissemination:Phase III was a group exhibition at Galerie HLM, Marseilles, and Phase IV was a group exhibition at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich

Lost and found

The output is an installation called ‘Lost and Found’ within a disused tower block in Grimsby. It was produced by a collaboration between April Virgoe, Patrick Holley, Chris Lillywhite (visual artists) . The work was funded by the Arts Council and supported by the Shoreline Housing Trust. Research process: The installation was created in response to the East Marsh tower blocks, formerly occupied by the residents of the Freeman Street area, which is the centre of the former fishing community in Grimsby, with a strong connection to the sea. The project was the result of a continual process of negotiation with Shoreline Housing, who supported the positive effect of the project as a ‘farewell’ to the tower blocks before demolition. Research insights: The installation was located in one of the vast garages between the tower block on Grimsby's East Marsh Estate. The intention was to respond to the seafaring history as well as the space itself. The installation comprising a boat, models, projections, sound, a 12ft smoke drawing of a ship and a disco ball, and, over the course of two weeks, underwent several transformations in response to the site. Dissemination: The installation was disseminated at the Lightworks Festival, Grimsby, 15 October–13 November 2016

Rural South West Lancashire in the eighteenth century : the land and the people

This thesis sets out to examine the rural communities of south west Lancashire in the eighteenth century, and their response to the important changes taking place at that time in the surrounding area. Rural south west Lancashire in the eighteenth century was an area of small farms and conservative farmers who made a satisfactory living from a few acres by production of niche products such as vegetables, potatoes and cheese for the increasing markets of the nearby growing towns. Most farms also produced small amounts of cereals, predominantly oats, probably for domestic consumption on the farm by the family, and livestock. Such farms required little capital investment, and in terms of their overall wealth their farmers were poorer than their contemporaries in the com-growing areas, but in terms of savings and investment in household goods ( indicative of lifestyle), they could not be considered impoverished. Farm labour was mainly provided by the family, supplemented by casual labour supplied by neighbours. There were a number of important, eighteenth century local landowners who were far-sighted in appreciating the importance of growing markets and made considerable financial investments in land reclamation, and establishing a progressive attitude to agricultural change. Eighteenth century farming in the area was not backward, but was different from that in the areas usually considered progressive, such as East Anglia, and had more in common with the reclaimed lands of the Low Countries. The eighteenth century laid the foundations for south west Lancashire to become an important vegetable-growing area in the twentieth century. Eighteenth century society in the area was remarkably stable, a situation sustained by the persistence of leasing for lives until the end of the century, and a form of partible inheritance. Community life was only partly based upon the township, and many people lived their lives within the ambit of the district and could be considered to form a south west Lancashire community. The late eighteenth century landscape was a landscape in transition. It comprised a mixture of old, small enclosures, and new, reclaimed, mosslands with larger fields bounded not by hedges but by ditches; a mixture of dilapidated, timberframed thatched buildings, and new, mainly stone-built and flag-roofed yeomen's houses. The thesis shows eighteenth century south west Lancashire to be an area which, whilst influenced by the economic and social changes in the surrounding county, yet retained its distinctive character

Just another day in Chancery Lane: disorder and the law in London's legal quarter in the fifteenth century

The legal quarter of late medieval London – the district outside the city’s western gates which included eleven Inns of Court and of Chancery and the royal courts at Westminster and in Chancery Lane – was a liminal area. Rather than being a peaceful and law-abiding district, as at least one fifteenth-century apologist would have it, it was the setting for periodic outbreaks of violence fomented to a high degree by the tribalism of the communities of the various law schools. Litigation in the royal courts added provincial rivalries and disputes and their protagonists to this already heady mix, making the space between Temple Bar and Westminster Hall one notable for its explosive potential for outbreaks of violence. Using a case study of an incident in the early 1450s that is unusually well-evidenced in the court records, and other sources, including the well-known correspondence of the East Anglian Paston family, and that drew over time drew in litigants, witnesses, lawyers and eventually a magnate and his affinity, the article explores the tensions inherent in London’s legal district and their interplay with disputes and law-breaking in the regions

Nexus, veil: Robert Ryman and the equivocal spaces of abstraction

It is now understood that the two great defining points in the history of western painting ‐ the emergence of illusory space in the Quattrocento and its disavowal in the mid-twentieth century ‐ represent significant shifts in a perpetual tide in which pictorial space is re-invented. Outside of modernist teleology, the ‘abstract’ in painting is a malleable term, denoting a tendency, or a move away from, rather than a polemic against depiction. How productively, then, can notions of pictorial space be mapped between ‘abstraction’ and ‘figuration’? In this article, I focus on the work of the American painter Robert Ryman (1930‐2019). Ryman defined his work as ‘realist’ and deployed a materialism that foregrounded the processes of painting. His paintings are both disarmingly simple and spatially complex, and, despite his disavowal of illusion, this complexity is, paradoxically, concerned with the production of pictorial space. I bring together two texts, Hubert Damisch’s A Theory of /Cloud/ and Hanneke Grootenboer’s The Rhetoric of Perspective, to address the complex and contradictory spaces in Ryman’s paintings and to suggest that they enter into a negotiation with a perspective that is something very different to a rebuttal. To look at Ryman again in this way is to offer a rethinking of the paradoxical spaces of abstract painting, its past and its present

Grimsby School of Art architectural facade

The output is a design commissioned for the façade of the Grimsby School of Art building, in collaboration with Ryder Architecture and RMIG. Virgoe was responsible for the visual design. It was manufactured from perforated anodised aluminium. Research process The panel designs began as drawings, that were then reconfigured digitally, and produced as sheet panels. The process of creating an image through various sizes of perforation had previously been used for more organic, or photographic images. The geometric nature of the design presented new challenges both in terms of developing the digital designs and applying these to the panels. The perforated skin of the building is illuminated at night from behind, and as a result the flat schematic drawing becomes more illusory and three dimensional at night. Research insights The intention of the design was to convey something of the nature of the work that was going to take place in the building, and as such the design needed to be fluid and changing, rather than a distinctive image that would quickly become too familiar. The image was conceived as something that could express universal ideas about the creative processes and practices that the building facilitated. The design was equally a response to the potential of the medium and the site, along with the lighting that would be visible through the perforated sheets.Dissemination In addition to the building opening, the design was disseminated via Architects Journal (August 2015), Architects Data File (August 2015), blogs, including Refurb and Developer update (September 24 2015), the architect (Ryder) and manufacturer (RMIG) websites and the media