Points of Departure: exhibition text

This text was published to accompany The Hunterian exhibition 'Still Moving: the films and photographs of Ulrike Ottinger' and served as both an introduction to the artist's work and to set out the rationale for the particular selection of her work included in the exhibition

Weighing the work of love: on Kate Davis's re-visioned iconoclasm

This essay offers a close reading of recent work by Glasgow-based artist Kate Davis to argue that her practice engages iconoclasm in ways importantly modified by her feminist commitments. Often Davis’s source material has significant historical, political or art historical import, as in her works dealing with the Suffragist attack on Velásquez’s Rokeby Venus in 1914. What is at stake in her ‘re-visioning’ of such moments, which often involves labour-intensive drawing as a key method, is a formal commitment to a kind of delicate or caring vandalism, often pursued through labour-intensive drawing (iconoclasm as a means of making images) and a specifically feminist contention with existing hierarchies of value and systems of representation (iconoclasm as contestation). To reckon with these stakes, Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of ‘the pleasure in drawing’ and the feminist concept of the ‘work of love’ are brought into relation with Davis’s work

Everything In Its Right Place: Foucault And The 'Ideology Of The Aesthetic’

There are several ways in which we 'rediscover' things. Sometimes rediscovering means finding something we had thought lost—to take a relevant example, let's say a painting that was stolen, or thought destroyed, that turns up in a dingy attic, from where it is rescued, and then authenticated, valued and preserved, finally restored to its rightful place. In such an instance, there will be a place waiting for the rediscovered painting from where it has been missing, and known to have been missing; a blank space on a gallery wall. Rediscovery, in this mode, is a kind of restoration

A Synchronology: the contemporary and other times

I curated this group exhibition in collaboration with Glasgow-based art's organisation The Common Guild. Drawing of the roster of highly significant contemporary artists with which TCG has worked over the past decade I selected a number of artworks that reflect on how time is marked and measured. These works often contested the restrictions of the conventional means of mapping and organising time, such as the clock, the calendar and the timeline. The artists included were: Robert Barry, Gerard Byrne, Phil Collins, Tacita Dean, Ruth Ewan, Sharon Hayes, Roman Ondak, Simon Starling and Corin Sworn. As a foil to the works made by this internationally renowned group of artists, which ranged from film and photography to conceptual statements and performance works, the exhibition also included a noted nineteenth-century timeline, Stephen Hawes' 'Synchronology of the Principal Events in Sacred and Profane History.' A series of events supported the show itself. These included a public discussion with Common Guild Director Katrina Brown and curator Kitty Anderson, and screenings of Tacita Dean's 'Event for a Stage' (a Scottish premiere of the work) and of Phil Collins' 'Baghdad Screen Tests'. In collaboration with Glasgow Film Theatre, the exhibition's closing was marked by a special screening of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 'Barry Lyndon,' selected and introduced by artist Gerard Byrne. The exhibition was well reviewed in The Skinny, Art Agenda and Art Monthly

Making up mothers: Georgina Starr's channelling of the maternal

No abstract available

Alex Impey: -gnostic cautery

I curated this solo exhibition by contemporary artist Alex Impey as part of the exhibition programme at The Hunterian. I received funding from the Henry Moore Institute to support the commissioning of new sculptural work by Impey, and that work formed part of an investigation of technology and animality in a range of mediums, including sculpture, film, installation and text. An artists' book was published as part of the exhibition, and it was accompanied by a film screening plus Q&A with Australian director Dan Ross, and a 'finnissage' with contributions from Impey, entomologist Dr Oskar Brattstrom and accompanying artists films. The exhibition was Impey's first solo show at a public institution, and reflects and ongoing interest in his practice, which began in the early 2010s

Ilana Halperin: Minerals of New York

This curated exhibition was developed in partnership with Leeds Arts University and featured new works by contemporary artist Ilana Halperin, along with additional existing works by the artist and material selected from The Hunterian's collection. It was accompanied by several talks, screenings and events and that programme has contributed to the development of a forthcoming monograph on the artist which will be published by Strange Attractor press and distributed by MIT Press. An exhibition booklet published to accompany the exhibition featured texts by myself as well as Halperin and Lisa le Feuvre (Inaugural Director, Holt-Smithson Foundation)

Genealogy and aesthetics: Art, history, Foucault

My thesis combines poststructuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to investigate the actual and the possible relations between art history and philosophical / critical discourses. To do so it combines framing case-studies of key art works in Chapters One and Five with more concentredly theoretical central Chapters. Although the work of Walter Benjamin and Slavoj Zizek strongly informs what I have done here, my primary theoretical orientation is towards Michel Foucault's "genealogical" approach to historiography. My thesis is underpinned by two assumptions: first, that the historico-philosophical writings of Foucault can be usefully deployed in relation to a number of theoretical and critical problems facing art history in its interpretation of, and relation to, postmodern art practice; second, that Foucault's work has been inconsistently and inadequately addressed by both proponents and detractors of his way of writing history. I argue that close reading of Foucault's texts produces a more complex body of thought than art historical appropriations have allowed. It seems to me that it is the overdetermination of both positive and negative readings of Foucault by the particular stakes surrounding critical-theoretical approaches to art that has produced this situation. In particular, the role of aesthetics in Foucault's thought has been generally missed; on the one hand by those (such as Terry Eagleton) who argue that Foucault capitulates ethical and epistemological concerns into aesthetics in a characteristically postmodern and irresponsible way; on the other by those (such as Craig Owens) who see him as an antidote to art history's bourgeois aestheticism. In contrast to both these interpretations I argue that Foucault's writing produces a complex interplay of epistemological, ethical and aesthetic levels. Specifically I contend that his epistemological insights are delivered via an "aesthetics of the text" that necessitates an appropriate "ethics of reading." This reading looks at the development of Foucault's thought as a whole, emphasising persistent themes (however radically reworked) rather than rupture. Central to my thesis is the claim that the truth value of Foucault's work is both expressed, and needs to be interpreted, in Nietzschean terms. To that extent, my aim is to evaluate the actual and potential "uses and abuses of Foucault for Art History." The potential uses of Foucauldian principles are identified and enacted in two related case-studies of art historical / art critical problematics. The first centres on a reading of Cornelia Parker's 2003 work The Distance (a kiss with string attached), an appropriation of Rodin's Kiss which makes an allusion to Marcel Duchamp. Analysis of this work relates it to problems of institutional and "curatorial" art, to Duchamp as an originary figure for strategies of appropriation, and to broader issues of interpretation and visual culture. The second case-study concerns two appropriations of historical figures by the American artist Matthew Barney. These appropriations work according to a process of excessive identification within a hermetic narrative structure, and my reading of them, by extending this identificatory and narrative logic, attempts to reconnect Barney's Cremaster Cycle - a work deemed too "spectacular" to support such a reading - to important critical perspectives on art, aesthetics, and theory. The thesis concludes, then, by offering an alternative paradigm of critical writing on art to that of the October group- whose influential texts form the interpretative context of Chapters One and Two. This alternate paradigm is based in looking back to Benjamin and Foucault and reinterpreting their relation to art historical discourse, but it does so in order to look forward to new possibilities for engaging with cultural practice

Implantation of subcutaneous heart rate data loggers in southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina)

Unlike most phocid species (Phocidae), Mirounga leonina (southern elephant seals) experience a catastrophic moult where they not only replace their hair but also their epidermis when ashore for approximately 1 month. Few studies have investigated behavioural and physiological adaptations of southern elephant seals during the moult fast, a particularly energetically costly life cycle’s phase. Recording heart rate is a reliable technique for estimating energy expenditure in the field. For the first time, subcutaneous heart rate data loggers were successfully implanted during the moult in two free-ranging southern elephant seals over 3–6 days. No substantial postoperative complications were encountered and consistent heart rate data were obtained. This promising surgical technique opens new opportunities for monitoring heart rate in phocid seals

Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness against Hospitalisation with Confirmed Influenza in the 2010-11 Seasons: A Test-negative Observational Study

Immunisation programs are designed to reduce serious morbidity and mortality from influenza, but most evidence supporting the effectiveness of this intervention has focused on disease in the community or in primary care settings. We aimed to examine the effectiveness of influenza vaccination against hospitalisation with confirmed influenza. We compared influenza vaccination status in patients hospitalised with PCR-confirmed influenza with patients hospitalised with influenza-negative respiratory infections in an Australian sentinel surveillance system. Vaccine effectiveness was estimated from the odds ratio of vaccination in cases and controls. We performed both simple multivariate regression and a stratified analysis based on propensity score of vaccination. Vaccination status was ascertained in 333 of 598 patients with confirmed influenza and 785 of 1384 test-negative patients. Overall estimated crude vaccine effectiveness was 57% (41%, 68%). After adjusting for age, chronic comorbidities and pregnancy status, the estimated vaccine effectiveness was 37% (95% CI: 12%, 55%). In an analysis accounting for a propensity score for vaccination, the estimated vaccine effectiveness was 48.3% (95% CI: 30.0, 61.8%). Influenza vaccination was moderately protective against hospitalisation with influenza in the 2010 and 2011 seasons