Art and Design events 2020/21

Experimental and Creative Approaches to Collecting and Distributing New Media Art Within Regional Arts Organisations

Wednesday 28 April 2021

Georgia Smithson, NPIF/AHRC PhD Researcher

This presentation is an overview of my research undertaken towards creating new models for collecting and distributing new media artworks from a regional gallery perspective. I’ve been working with my partner organisation, NGCA, a gallery on the University of Sunderland campus which collects photography, sculpture, prints and new media art. The new media collection is small and the artworks and components are relatively uncomplicated. My research deals with the key concerns for the practicalities of collecting new media art going forward and I’m also looking at innovative digital distribution methods by the use of new media.

New media art is recognised as being a relatively new art form. Curator, Christiane Paul, traces it back to Duchamp’s Rotary Glass Blades from 1920 due to the artwork’s interactive feature. From the 1960s practitioners have experimented using computers, and the art-form now ascribed as new media art has evolved into multiple strands of production, presentation and distribution. The creative possibilities of new media art seem as unlimited as modern technology will allow us to explore. But are we, as collectors, researchers, artists and enthusiasts facing an uncertain future concerning the integration of new media art into institutional cultural organisations? Recently, concerns have been raised by curators regarding the importance of learning how to collect new media art if there is to be any hope of preserving its past. This research explores how by collaboration, experimentation and the transference and distribution of knowledge and resources, these concerns may be conquered to preserve and make accessible new media art for future generations to enjoy.

Simon Martin, Untitled, 2011, HD video exhibited as single screen projection. NGCA Collection.

Research Methodologies in the Arts and Creative Industries: A Symposium

Wednesday 3 February 2021

Explored a range of research methodologies across the different disciplines of the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries. Postgraduate research students present their working research methods and share their experiences to date. Find out what they do, what works well, what has not, what comes next. Individual presentations will be followed by a group Q&A session and an online social event.

Programme:

13:30 Introduction, Dr Kevin Yuill, Associate Professor of American History, and Dr Alexandra Moschovi, Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media

13:35 Welcome by Prof. Kevin Petrie, Head of the School of Art and Design

13:40 Greg Forrester

13:50 Siouxsie Barber

14:00 Ben James

14:10 Break

14:20 Helen McGhie

14:30 Angela Tait

14:40 Q&A

15:00 Social

Abstracts and Bios

Greg Forrester (School of Media and Communications)

Magical Realism and Northern Identity
In the wake of Brexit, I intend to explore, through a combination of a creative element (experimentally-structured novel) and a critical element, what it means to identify as either ‘British’ and ‘Northern’ in these changing times. The creative element will explore these themes by following a young immigrant girl who relocates to a refuge in Hamsterley, and her journey to find an identity of her own in a world determined to place labels on her which she does not identify with. This story will be interwoven with retellings of County Durham folktales to explore the theme of a specific northern identity. Alongside this, the critical element will track the developmental journey and creative praxis of producing this piece, including analysing and addressing relevant research into the areas of magical realism, folklore morphology, the novella, and national and regional identity.

Greg Forrester (he/him) has BA and MA degrees in Creative Writing and is currently working towards a PhD in the same discipline. He writes, mostly magical realism, and has been published by Fairlight Books. He is the Managing Director of Bandit Fiction, and offers writing development and editing services through his website: www.gregforrester.co.uk.

Siouxsie Barber (School of Media and Communications)

An Examination of Societal Beliefs and Traditions Reflected in the Variation of Oicotypes in Celtic Folktales found in the British Isles
This thesis examines how oicotypes are formed and within a select group of Celtic folktales by examining multiple variants of the same story recorded in various locations in the British Isles. The oicotype approach to analysing folktales is a comparative method that focuses on the migratory movements of folktales and how they adapt to new environmental factors. In past studies this approach has been used to highlight differences in custom and tradition between different countries or cultures, and by applying it to folktales variants found in different areas of the British Isles, this thesis hopes to examine the differences in belief and custom found between different Celtic communities in closer proximity to one another.

Siouxsie Barber’s research interests include cultural anthropology in folklore, supernatural literature, and the history of fairy tales and folklore. Her current research examines the oicotypal changes that occur in migrating Celtic folktales, and what this can tell us about the beliefs and traditions of the communities in which the oicotype occurred. Siouxsie holds a BA Hons in Literature and Linguistics, and an MA in English Studies, both acquired through the University of Sunderland. She has a varied working background, including teaching modules in History and Philosophy, and delivering advice and tutorials to KS4 students concerning Higher Education.

Ben James (School of Art and Design)

‘Make a Map not a Tracing’
My research asks what happens when a film is edited. By responding to this question, the research looks to identify links between filmic editing processes and curatorial practice. The objective is to identify curatorial strategies that can help create, extend and support films—and the fictional worlds they create—within the exhibition environment.
Last year, I began to have concerns that I might be getting ‘lost’ in my research. In response, I began to construct simple flow diagrams in illustrator. Over time, these diagrams expanded and began to function in three key ways, they:
i) helped me better identify links between aspects of my research and to create a visual map as to where gaps might exist;
ii) provided a visual space where theory and practice could interact with one another;
iii) began to create a narrative for my PhD. In many ways, the diagrams read as a visual essay with key arguments constructed through arrows and text that follow the page downwards.

Ben James is a curator and filmmaker. Currently, he co-directs the London art space South Kiosk and is the film curator of Transmediale Festival in Berlin. He recently released his latest feature film, an experimental documentary that premiered at Visions du Réel 2020.

Helen McGhie (School of Art and Design)

Stargazing at the ‘Invisible’: Photography and the Power of Obscured Light—A Research Partnership with Kielder Observatory
This practice-led project explores the relationship between photography and astronomy in partnership with Kielder Observatory (KOAS), Northumberland. It investigates how lens-based art can operate within and in response to an observatory in Northern England, testing:
i) what new encounters with dark skies emerge when a fine-art photographer works in partnership with an astronomy organisation;
ii) can photography visualise the experience of dark sky observation in Northern England?
iii) how can lens-based art communicate a speculative practice of astronomy?
Funded by the National Productivity Investment Fund (enabling new partnership-focused research projects that offer mutual benefit to the field and an industry partner), the work supports a new arts programme at KOAS. Additionally, it offers a model for collaboration between artists and local science organisations. The research expands previous multi-method approaches in fine-art photography-science projects, combining the still and moving image, conversations with a community, exhibitions, and reflective practice.

Helen McGhie is a photographic artist and researcher based in Greater Manchester. Her practice explores and reimagines ubiquitous images through the still and moving image. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently in Observe, Experiment, Archive (Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, 2019-20), Exploring Skyscapes (Nottingham Contemporary, 2020) and 209 Women (Portculis House/Open Eye Gallery, 2019). Recent publications include ‘Stargazing from the forest’, Photomonitor (online, Dec. 2020) and Monthly Photography (South Korea, Jul. 2020). McGhie is a Lecturer in Photography at the University of Sunderland and a studio member of Islington Mill, Salford.

Angela Tait (School of Art and Design)

Things which Go Round: An investigation of the Relationship between a Creative Practice and Domesticity
This practice-based research uses an autoethnographic approach where the researcher is also the subject which being investigated. Central to the methodology is an experimental writing process that acts variously as diary, method of data capture, reflective tool, and creative outcome. It will also, eventually, be embedded (in part) in the thesis giving patches of text that add richness and thick description to the traditional academic voice. The complex position of the Blovel (a portmanteau of blog and novel) has been problematic and altered the trajectory of the research. This said, it also creates its own original outcome as both a method, and outcome and a way of presenting the research.

Angela Tait is a third-year PhD researcher in the expanded field of ceramics with the University of Sunderland, and a lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Salford. Research interests focus around the use of the vessel as a universally understandable ‘object/thing’, which is equally at home in the public and private domains. Tait uses the vessel (both the making of it and the final object) to explore the temporal experience of working alongside domestic obligations.

Crossing Boundaries

Wednesday 9 December 2020

Dr Manny Ling, SFHEA, HFCLAS
Programme Leader for MA Design

This presentation will concentrate on my research with western calligraphy. For many years I have explored the theme of ‘Crossing boundaries’. This is not a conscious choice, but a natural development of my ‘self-being’ in knowing (and sometimes not knowing) what I need to do with my creative expressions. It is about the building of bridges between east and west, handmade and digital media, simplicity and complexity, energy and stillness, old and new, control and spontaneity. 

Calligraphy to me is like drawing with lines. I move the linear elements along the page and compose them intuitively. When the ink and my energy are inter-mingled, the two entities are inseparable. They are working in unison—a unity. Calligraphy is also a process of capturing the essence of the line—it is an expression of life and beyond. When we write, we give birth to each stroke, and each stroke has a life and path that are unique to itself. In Chinese, they call this phenomenon ‘Ch’i Yuen Shen Tong’, or more commonly known as ‘Ch’i’ in the west.

One could try and intellectualise this process, but it feels pointless at times. If you know it, you can feel it. The truth is, it is the unforced but intuitive manner in which we create the instantaneous marks that unifies everything. It should be as natural as breathing.

“Every day is a journey and the journey itself is home” by Basho, Calligraphy by Manny Ling and Sumi painting by Christine Flint-Sato.

Associate Professorial Lectures

'Photography, cultural democracy and gender politics at the San Francisco Museum of (Modern) Art' by Dr Alexandra Moschovi
Wednesday 5 May 2021

‘Participation and Radio’ - new approaches to participation, action and research' by Dr Caroline Mitchell
Wednesday 21 April 2021

“A man should be permitted to go out of this world whenever he thinks fit.” Suicide and Euthanasia in the USA in the 1890s by Dr Kevin Yuill
Wednesday 17 February 2021

'Colour - Space - Light' by Lothar Goetz
Wednesday 10 February 2021