Practice-led research: developing the impact of research conducted through art and design practice

'Keiskamma Guernica (2017)', held by makers Embroiderer Zoleka, designer Veronica and embroiderer Nombulelo, makers of the 2017 work commissioned by Nicola Ashmore, holding their creation in front of the earlier, larger-scale work. 

Nicola Ashmore, 'Guernica Remakings'

Dr Nicola Ashmore developed documentary films and curated a touring exhibition and website as part of an enquiry into how meaning is constructed and held in material form by textile crafting communities to reveal local and global political issues.

Analysing her documentary film work alongside other notable politicised remakings of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, Nicola Ashmore extended the long-term recognition of the painting's psychoanalytic significance, narrative content and religious meaning to understand what makes it translatable to global communities in distress. She used case studies of textile reproductions of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ contextualised by collection and study of other significant politicised reworkings of the painting in order to ask: How does collaborative activist craft practice foster solidarity, empowerment and socio-political engagement? Why does the painting ‘Guernica’ in particular resonate when translated into apparently different contexts? And, how can curatorial exhibition practice support engagement with the painting’s humanitarian message? 

... see a detailed pdf exploring Nicola Ashmore's practice-led research into community activism through crafting and the significance of Picasso's Guernica in that process. 

Entrance to Jeremy Aynsley's exhibition, 'Julius Klinger, Posters for a Modern Age' at the Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach.

Jeremy Aynsley. 'Julius Klinger, Posters for a Modern Age'

Professor Jeremy Aynsley undertook research into the Austrian poster designer and graphic artist Julius Klinger (1876-1942) as guest curator for The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach. The resulting exhibition, Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age, was shown at the Wolfsonian (2017-18) and The Poster House, New York (2021). Aynsley was also author of a single-authored book with the same title published to accompany the exhibition.

The exhibition and book shed new light on Klinger’s place within graphic art and design history, including his central role in establishing a distinctive poster style. It situated his work within the intense artistic and design experiment in ornament, graphic design and typography within Viennese and German-speaking visual culture and contributed to the recent re-evaluation of the Jewish contribution to Viennese modernism in design.

... see a detailed pdf exploring the exhibition and publication public output of Jeremy Aynsley's research into graphic design history.  

Little England Farm: sustainable master planning of a 375-acre estate.

Duncan Baker-Brown, 'Resource Mapping'

Resource Mapping represents the development and testing of a methodology for sustainable design and construction planning that utilises the local landscape and overlooked materials, commonly thought of as ‘waste’, in the construction of new buildings.

Duncan Baker-Brown's research investigated models of behavioural change that enable the construction sector to reduce annual consumption and wastage of natural raw materials, and the ways in which this can inform and shape ‘circular’ design strategies for the sector. It provided insights into sustainable practices for the construction industry and brought new understanding to hierarchies within the process, recognising the importance of collaboration between locally active agents and the gradual emergence of a vernacular design vocabulary.

... see a detailed pdf exploring Duncan Baker-Brown's theory and practice of sustainable construction in East Sussex. 

Duncan Bullen, in-progress photograph of a Breath Drawing.

Duncan Bullen, 'Breath Drawings'

 Duncan Bullen created a phenomenological, systems-based drawing methodology for investigating individual experience of the physical world, leading to an exhibited body of drawings generated in the process of developing and testing this methodology.

The research enquired into the physical experience of drawing and the nature of the non-representational artefact produced, considering the pivotal value of touch and the understanding of drawing as process and experience.  

The body of drawings are situated within a first person, experience-based arts methodology, developing methods through which repetitive, non-representational manual drawing can become a sensory and contemplative engagement with place aligned to mindfulness meditation. Bullen’s method used rhythm, repetition and rules as a framework for attuning attention and increasing his experience of being present in the space. This in turn enabled him to manifest details of his physical environment within his drawings in non-representational ways. 

... see a detailed pdf exploring practice-led researcher and artist Duncan Bullen's development of an experience-based arts methodology.

Duncan Bullen, 'Constructed drawing' (detail). (Pencil on paper, 50cm x 50cm)

Duncan Bullen, 'Constructed Drawings'

Constructed Drawings is a series of three framed 50x50cm colour pencil on paper drawings by artist and researcher Duncan Bullen. The format for each drawing is a square with a geometrical structure, composed of a basic grid designed to focus attention on the centre of each composition. This pictorial device activates the picture plane in such a way that each drawing’s centre appears to recede, protrude, fold or undulate. 

The drawings are an exercise in compositional restraint and slow durational procedures, in which the evenness of touch through repeatedly marking the surface of the drawing is key to the realisation of the outcome. The resulting works are an experiment in the relationship of movement and stasis in drawing process and exhibition. The research investigates how drawing can communicate spatial configuration mindfully, through a process of precision and patient method, and how this relates to the inevitability of flux and change.

... see a detailed pdf exploring practice-led researcher and artist Duncan Bullen's development of a site-specific, experience-based arts methodology.

Zoe Childerley, photograph from 'The Debatable Lands' publication.

Zoe Childerley, 'Beyond the Pale'

Inspired by walking the length of the Anglo-Scottish border as part of an artist’s residency with Visual Arts in Rural Communities (VARC), Zoe Childerley used arts practice research to challenge existing imagery and ideas of the frontier and statehood, nationalism and identity. She experienced the border landscape physically and viscerally, adding to her ongoing practice that addresses questions of belonging and nationhood. The resulting 'Beyond the Pale' exhibition included photography, artefacts, drawings, printed books and hand-drawn maps that together examined the significance of borderland identity, specifically the Anglo-Scottish border. It made visible a little-recorded border landscape as a site of political significance at the time of the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit and tightening borders in Europe.

... see a detailed pdf exploring practice-led researcher, artist and photographer Zoe Childerley's research at the Anglo-Scottish borderlands. 

Zoe Childerley, photograph from 'Dinosaur Dust' publication.

Zoe Childerley, 'Dinosaur Dust'  

Made with the community based around the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, California, photographer Zoe Childerley explored the appeal of extreme landscape, referencing the concept of the sublime and the seduction of the abyss.

'Dinosaur Dust' was based on observations of encounters between people and nature, and examined light, impermanence and the faculties of seeing, and resulted in an artist’s book that sits within the genre of documentary fiction or ‘crooked documentary.’ Zoe Childerley's photographic practice used documentary tropes to test the veracity of the image, to tell new stories and make new myths and to question the relationship between self and environment for the inhabitants, people who have chosen to live in the inhospitable and extreme landscape of the American western desert. Her research also asked whether this genre of photography was particularly appropriate to reveal the human struggles beneath hidden appearances in a hostile environment. 

... see a detailed pdf exploring practice-led researcher, artist and photographer Zoe Childerley's research for Dinosaur Dust in the Joshua Tree National Park. 

Framed photograph, 'Morecambe School of Art (detail)' from Cornford and Beck, The Art Schools of North West England, Bluecoat, Liverpool. 

Matthew Cornford working with John Beck, 'The Art Schools of North West England'

Art schools were once a common feature of towns and cities across the UK, though most are no longer in operation and the buildings have been repurposed or, in some cases, demolished. John Beck and Professor Matthew Cornford's research is interested in exploring the role of art schools in British cultural life, not only as educational institutions but as spaces of creative possibility open to all. Their exhibition of photographs and texts focused on the 32 art schools of the North West, where the industrial revolution fuelled the expansion of civic cultural institutions during the nineteenth century. The photographs were accompanied by captions providing short histories of the art schools; a series of talks and screenings provided historical and cultural context; and a series of interviews with former staff and students was produced as a podcast by Resonance FM.

The research sheds new light on the historical and cultural relevance of art schools, using the form of the photographic exhibition to generate debate on the place of the arts, and art education, in everyday life. 

... see a detailed pdf showing a selection of the research and exhibited work from the historical and analytical project to document the art schools of England undertaken by John Beck and Matthew Cornford. 

Still from film by Billy Cowie and Gabriela Alcofra, 'Retratos Número 2'.

Billy Cowie working with Gabriela Alcofra:  Retratos Número 2

By re-imagining dance choreography, and determining its equivalence to a specific style of twentieth-century portraiture, Professor Billy Cowie, in collaboration with the Brazilian artist Gabriela Alcofra, has documented ways in which experimentally extreme work might offer alternative perspectives on the fusion of art forms.

Their 'Retratos Número 2' [Portraits Number Two] is a three-minute black and white dance film investigating the shared territory between dance and fine art portraiture. It demonstrates how choreography of subtle movements can enhance and interrogate the medium of dance. The choreography slows the dance down to incremental head movement and a visual distortion created by lighting the dancer’s face by a projected photograph. The process draws on distorted facial portraits, notably those of Francis Bacon, and early experimental film, including Maya Deren’s experimental use of ritual and the extended concept of dance. 

... see a detailed pdf showing the evolution and production of this research film by Billy Cowie and Gabriela Alcofra.

Still from filmed performance by Billy Cowie and Rajyashree Ramamurthi, 'River.'

Billy Cowie, 'Rice Cakes', 'River' and 'Tangos Cubanos'

Rice Cakes, River and Tangos Cubanos are three closely related choreographies by Professor Billy Cowie using live performance and its transformation into stereoscopic film to investigate the fusion of dance traditions through experimental practice. Drawing on his specialist understanding of screendance, Billy Cowie tested how fusion could be achieved through cinematic approaches and recording technologies alongside live dance performance, and how this translates to new forms of digitally preserved danceworks. 

All three works broadened current stereoscopic screendance practice, extending the form through the presentation of life-size performers. Together they provide insights into forms of cultural and methodological fusion, bringing examples from diverse cultures to new choreographies and paying close attention to the balance of narrative and visual techniques, the use of metaphor and symbol, and the potential shift of audience perception between live and digital versioning.

... see a detailed pdf showing the development of this research performance and film by Billy Cowie and Rajyashree Ramamurthi.

Still from filmed performance conceived and choreographed by Bily Cowie with Ruri Han, Myung Hoon Park and Kim C, 'Shakespeare Needs You.'

Billy Cowie, 'Shakespeare Needs You'

Shakespeare Needs You was a forty-minute ballet commissioned by Festival B:om and fORbYaRTS in Seoul, Korea, with support from the British Council. It investigated how dance can disrupt audience expectations and present new interpretations of literary theatrical traditions. 

Professor Billy Cowie used inventive choreography and technical experimentation to create a work interlayered with live performance, recorded performance and projected artwork. It aimed to advance a new kind of dancework, in which a multilayered set of references exposed the boundaries between what is understood through language and what is understood through movement. The resulting work provided insights into how historic and iconic theatrical plays can take on diverse meanings through performative displacements. The research added to the performance community’s understanding of how and why live dance fused with film is a fruitful area for development in the context of the performance of an iconic theatrical text.

... see a detailed pdf showing the development of this research performance and film by Billy Cowie and Korean collaborators.

Installation photograph of exhibition featuring Amy Cunningham's 'Smart Appliances' alongside works by composers Daphne Oram, Nicola LeFanu, Helen Bowater and Pia Gilbert.

Amy Cunningham, 'Smart Appliances'

Smart Appliances is an artwork by Amy Cunningham using single screen HD video and music composition for soprano voice, cello and electronic sound. It forms part of a series based on female pioneers in technology and representations of women in the assimilation of technology into culture. 

Amy Cunningham researched the life and work of digital sound pioneer Daphne Oram. Through a process of videography, sound recording, drawing and vocal improvisation, the practice-led work then examines Oram’s vision for the future of domestically performed electronic music alongside other visions of a digitised future. The resulting audio-visual composition uses textures, including the resonant buzzing of a domestic refrigerator and the surface fingerprint patterns on touch-screen devices, that belie the smooth operations and invisible interfaces promised by technology. By bringing these elements together, Amy Cunningham investigated relationships with technological devices in the home and generated new insights into the ways in which technology can be understood through its material properties. 

... see a detailed pdf exploring Amy Cunningham's inspiration, background research and performance art research.

Susan Diab, 'Tie-Tongued', wall-mounted mixed-media.

Susan Diab, 'Autoethnos'

To date, autoethnographic methodologies and analyses have favoured narrative forms, particularly the written word. Susan Diab drew on her own practice and those of fellow autoethnographers to develop an understanding of the relationships between fine art practice and its exhibited form.

Using the process of sculpture and curation, and drawing on her own research into narrative and linguistic studies, Susan Diab investigated the elements of autoethnography that inform artefact production.  She used autoethnographic approaches for her own sculptures and developed the principle with two fellow artists, curating the resulting works into the exhibition Autoethnos.

... see a detailed pdf exploring Susan Diab's work in autoethnography through sculpted forms

Jules Findley, 'Edge of Grief 1,2 and 3'. Installation photograph.

Jules Findley, 'Fragmentation'  

Dr Jules Findley developed work through autoethnographic practice that respond to complicated grief, a term for acute grief which can become a chronic, debilitating mental health condition that worsens over time.

The research explored how the expression of complicated grief through creative embodied encounters can provide a ritual which contributes to the healing process; the exhibition of works made through an autoethnographic process offered the opportunity to broaden understanding of grief and mourning. Building on an established connection between paper and mourning ceremonies, for example the paper offerings that are burned at Taoist funerals, she used experimental methods to make paper, creating a material with inherent fragility. The practice provided insights into the means through which craft can help manage the grieving process and, through exhibition, enabled a more open discussion into the experience of complicated grief.

... see a detailed pdf following Jules Findley's research and development of paper-based artworks and their role in complicated grieving.

Alice Fox and Ashmina Ranjit, photograph during performance of ‘Paradox of Praxis 1 #2 (Pushing Together)’.

Alice Fox, 'Exchange'

'Exchange' is a series of four collaborative performance artworks: ‘Taxi Guff Gaff’, ‘Paradox of Praxis’, ‘Frozen Unfrozen’ and ‘Walking with Milk’. Contextualised by workshops and arts-informed encounters, they extend Alice Fox’s long-term research into how communication is fostered and developed, particularly with vulnerable or excluded people. Each of the performances investigates non-verbal conversation and, more specifically, the relationship between motion and communicative exchange.  

The performances experiment with forms of shared activity and exchange, pivoting on the notion of non-verbal meeting, informed by Tim Ingold’s concept of ‘dwelling together’, Jean-Luc Nancy’s expanded concept of listening, which accepts that listening involves attuning to that which is beyond signification, and Richard Sennett’s work on cooperation. The practice-led research created ‘meeting points’ through conscious engagement with material objects and highlighted the understanding of elements such as pace and movement in a process of emotional exchange. The framework of a journey provided insights into the effect of motion to develop expanded listening and enable creative exchange. 

... see a detailed pdf of Alice Fox's performance work researching expanded listening, exchange and presence.

Jane Fox, in-progress photograph of a Wind Drawing.

Jane Fox, 'Mourning Stone'  

Mourning Stone is a three-part series of drawings by Jane Fox: 'Wind Drawings', 'Distance Drawings' and 'Scrub Drawings'. Drawn to walking in the South Downs chalk landscape after bereavement and, carrying a small flint stone picked up on the day of her father’s death, Fox employed and developed new arts-based strategies both to ‘steady’ herself and to explore feelings of loss. 

The research process involved a phenomenological attention to lived experience through walking and drawing in selected settings, including a theorisation of and collaboration with wind, processes of attrition and accumulation within the landscape, and use of flint, chalk and sound as ‘materials’. Identifying a territory beyond existing social and cultural rituals allocated to mourning, the research revealed ways to create unfixed and agile ‘structures’ within which feelings of loss can be identified and focused upon through drawing, performative action and metaphor. 

... see a detailed pdf looking into Jane Fox's work on drawing with natural forces and understanding grief.

Photograph of New Note Orchestra during performance.

Conall Gleeson working with the New Note Orchestra

Conall Gleeson, a composer and research musician, devised and led workshops through which collaborative musical works were developed by New Note Orchestra, a music-creation initiative for people with challenges related to recovery from drug and substance abuse.

Working with New Note Orchestra, the research investigated the therapeutic benefits of collaborative composition and examined recovery as experienced by members of the orchestra through directing them to create and perform musical works. It provided insights into the distinctive roles of performance and composition in the recovery process. Collaborative composition was shown to provide an opportunity to explore identities, build confidence and restore a sense of control and achievement in sufferers’ lives, while the performances helped change perceptions about the realities of living with drug addiction and provided audiences with a model of recovery that was celebratory and empowering to its participants.

... see a detailed pdf exploring Conall Gleeson's developmental composition research with the New Note Orchestra's musicians.

Participants enjoy the telematic street screen immersive artwork.

Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon, 'Urban Screen Encounters'

Charlotte Gould and Professor Paul Sermon installed three large-scale, cross-continental telematic artworks linking audiences in cities across Europe, Australia and China. The installations and audience engagement underpinned research into the nature of public participatory art, audience agency, ludic wellbeing and embodiment. 

Telematic art places audience participation at the centre of the work, eliciting communal interaction by way of digital interconnectivity and chroma-key video technologies. In these examples, public audiences demonstrated their agency through reclaiming urban screens, playing with the notion of the selfie and interacting with famous cinema sets. 

The research generated insights into the relationship between artists and participants in co-created artworks, the nature of participant agency in co-created narrative art, the value and meaning of play, and participants’ experience of a digitally present self. It also considered the historical trajectory of audience participation in filmic art, and the value of telematic arts within this tradition. 

... see a detailed pdf documenting the three installations and what Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon concluded from the research. 

Ole Hagen and David Cheesman, installation photograph 'All There Was', mixed media sculpture exhibition.

Ole Hagen working with David Cheeseman and Roberto Trotta, 'All There Was' 

'All There Was' was an exhibition and gallery performance seeking to conceptualise the invisible features of the universe through a post-Newtonian orrery of sculptures. 

The sculptures were individual and collaborative works by artists Dr Ole Hagen and David Cheeseman, including a concertina black board that was unfolded and then used in a live conversation and drawing performance between Hagen and astrophysicist Roberto Trotta. Trotta’s use of the language of equations and diagrams was paralleled by Hagen’s figurative imagery in an exchange on recently discovered features of the universe. The researchers created and tested prototypes using the combination of mathematical and artistic investigation, demonstrating that three dimensional models can highlight how our embodied understanding of the world colours the perception of new abstract ideas.

... see a pdf of Ole Hagen's work with David Cheeseman and Roberto Trotta to conceptualise the invisible universe.

Planted roof detail of architect Nick Hayhurst's Garden House.

Nick Hayhurst working with Hayhurst & Co., 'Garden House'  

Designed by Nick Hayhurst, Garden House is a built work in London constructed on a micro-sized site of only 80m² in an established back garden setting. The two-storey space engages with emerging typologies of urban infill and the application of green technologies to support high-quality living environments. 

There is an emerging demand for innovative solutions to the provision of new housing that maintains a garden-like character. The research considered the form of contemporary urban infill, land-use and housing supply policies, reflecting on micro-scale urban housing that can positively support biodiversity. On completion in 2016, the building was a RIBA Regional Award winner, and a finalist for House of the Year. 

... see a pdf detailing Nick Hayhurst's development and build of Garden House.

Nick Hayhurst, architect, internal view of Pegasus Academy nursery school.

Nick Hayhurst working with Hayhurst & Co., 'Space for Learning' 

Space for Learning comprises the design and build of three state-run primary school buildings in London by architect Nick Hayhurst. The research context was set by the prevailing, government-led models of standardised primary school design, which have resulted in identikit teaching spaces and simple typological models. In contrast, this study applied immersive consultative techniques and co-design processes to support the development of spaces that respond to specific pedagogical, demographic, cultural and learning needs. 

The enquiry sought to identify the processes one might adopt and the corresponding differences in output compared to prevailing typologies and engagement-led design applied to schools. The designs were manifestations of the engagement and co-design processes. Each has been widely published in professional and mainstream media nationally and internationally and have received awards including RIBA Awards, Civic Trust Awards and the Architectural Review Schools Award.

... see a detailed pdf on Nick Hayhurst's development of new ways in which architects can work on school building projects.

Fergus Heron, 'Cawdor 3, April, 2018'. C type print 305mm x 243mm. 

Fergus Heron, 'Landscape Photography' 

Fergus Heron’s hand-printed photographs interrogate the process and theory of landscape photography, drawing on historic practice and contemporary methods to record British landscapes. These eleven photographs build on projects across Heron’s wider work exploring how photography pictures strange and familiar places. The research extends understandings of how photography concentrates looking, and renews interpretations of place and time.

Using a method that pays careful attention to images from the history of photography, Fergus Heron investigates how photographs reveal hidden cultural significance in everyday views. Placing opposing viewpoints in close proximity, pairs of images concentrate present looking, reflect upon the past and offer imaginative spaces for the projection of possible futures. The works thus offer insights into the cultural and historical construction of photographic points of view, as well as that of the landscape itself. 

... see a detailed pdf on Fergus Heron's work as a photographer and researcher in landscape photography.

Charles Holland (FAT) and Grayson Perry. A House for Essex. Front facade.

Charles Holland (FAT) working with Grayson Perry, 'A House For Essex'

A House for Essex is a collaborative architecture project designed and developed by the architect Professor Charles Holland as a founder member of architecture practice FAT, together with the artist Grayson Perry. The output is a built work located in north Essex that comprises two interconnected architectural functions: a house and a (secular) chapel. These twin uses allowed the project to explore the content, form and fabrication of ornament and decoration in contemporary architecture. 

While modernism was critical of the use of historic forms of decoration, postmodernism offered a re-engagement with ornament. A House for Essex related to this recent re-engagement whilst addressing the content of contemporary decoration, in order to create meaningful narrative and symbolic aspects and address a broad range of decorative techniques including sculpture, relief pattern and three-dimensional symbolism.

... see a detailed pdf on the development of this collaboration between architect Charles Holland and artist Grayson Perry.

Charles Holland and Ordinary Architecture, 'The Origin of the Grocer's Order'. Sculpture 2015.  

... see a detailed pdf on the development of the exhibition and the results of the research by Charles Holland.

Johanna Love. Beleuchten IV (Neumunsterschestr.) 2017. Graphite pencil on paper, 120cm x 140cm.

Johanna Love, 'Dust, Drawing and Time'

Dr Johanna Love creates large, hand-drawn or print-made representations of dust particles that are first collected from a specific site and then enlarged through laboratory-based digital microscopy. 

The research addressed the disconnection between scientific technological imagery and images made by the human hand. A practice-based, multi-method approach develops a dialogue between scientific and technological imaging and the making of artefacts within the context of fine art drawing and printmaking. Dust was collected from a site of personal significance and taken through a laboratory-based process to achieve enlarged digital images of individual microscopic particles; these were then submitted to digital manipulation and further manual intervention in order to create drawings and laser print artworks for exhibition and publication. The process of graphite drawing mediates between the objective and deeply personal forms of vision to provide the viewer with a new visual experience, introducing concepts from materiality, history and time. The final works offer new ways of seeing the ever-present phenomenon of dust and help re-connect scientific image-making to human experience. 

... see a detailed pdf on the process and research involved in Johanna Love's drawings of enlarged dust particles. 

Vanessa Marr, 'Mediating the Materiality of the Duster' (detail). 

Vanessa Marr, 'Women and Domesticity'

Women and Domesticity is an evolving collection of over 300 hand-embroidered dusters made by members of the public through a participatory and collaborative research process designed to elicit women’s perspectives on narratives and traditions of the home. The dusters are created through an invitation to stitch messages, sculpt and personalise iconic, traditional dusters, allowing participants to respond and add to the exhibited collection. 

Vanessa Marr’s participatory approach elicits autoethnographic stories through the haptic perception of cloth and the rhythm of piercing and stitching, establishing the practice as a phenomenological embodiment of experience. The research is underpinned by theories of narrative, phenomenology and autoethnography and sits within the context of ‘craftivism’, empowering individuals and movements through crafting. Through it, Vanessa Marr developed collective insights into women’s understanding of domesticity and brought new understanding of the valuable relationship between a personal and a collective response, while enticing reflection and change.  

... see a detailed pdf on Vanessa Marr's development of the Women and Domesticity practice-led research project.

Construction of the Solidarity Dome. Pikpa Camp, Lesvos, 2017. 

Robert Mull, 'The Architecture of Displacement' 

'The Architecture of Displacement' covers a set of masterplans, informal architectural designs and collaboratively built structures, co-designed with refugee communities, volunteers and students, realised primarily in Turkey and Greece. The designs and structures both embody and represent new forms of understanding of refugee place-making practices, cultural identities and appropriate forms of architectural response. 

The output constitutes an alternative form of architectural and urban practice that directly challenges the practices deployed by larger NGOs and state actors, which take little account of refugee identities and cultures. The research asks questions about how displaced populations establish and maintain their identity whilst in transit. Working directly with refugee communities, and the architects and architectural students of the Global Free Unit, of which he was a founder, Professor Robert Mull and his partners use online and face to face participatory processes and methods including co-designed drawing, model making, design development and master planning. 

... see a detailed pdf on Robert Mull's habitation and community projects with refugees and displaced communities.

Gareth Neal hand carving a wooden wheel.

Gareth Neal, 'Shoulder to the Wheel' 

Shoulder to the Wheel represents a large hand carved wooden wheel produced by internationally acclaimed wood craftsman Gareth Neal, together with a book of drawings investigating the form and essence of the wheel in an historical context. 

The 1923 publication ‘The Wheelwright’s Shop’ by George Sturt, a text documenting the last days and working knowledge of the craftsman in a wheelwright’s shop, served as the central point of reference for the curator and participating craftspeople at a set of workshops and an exhibition at the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham. Neal’s research and practice explored the object history of the handmade wheel through a craftsperson’s understanding of the material and the skills which govern the production, an investigation predicated on an intimacy with the material and historic tools. The undertaking recognised the primordial discovery of the wheel, and engaged with the significance of this through handworking a single oak block, developing and demonstrating the relationship between the material character of the block and the process of controlled shaping. 

... see a detailed pdf on wood craftsman and furniture-maker Gareth Neal's contribution to the Crafts Study Centre exhibition.

Gareth Neal, 'Twisted Pair'. Digitally designed 3D sand-printed vessel.

Gareth Neal, 'The Certainty of Uncertainty'

Gareth Neal's practice-based enquiry is predicated on an understanding that the term 'craft' has acquired a dual meaning: bespoke luxury on the one hand, romanticism and nostalgia on the other. Rapid developments in manufacturing technologies and digital production techniques have driven new methods of making that enable high-quality and precision in an almost limitless range of materials. The prevalence of these technologies brings into question the authenticity of ‘crafts’ and the role of ‘craftsmanship' as a contemporary practice. Contributing to this dialogue within the expert crafting community, Gareth Neal investigates how craft values can be maintained in objects created using computer-mediated manufacturing processes, and what alternative framings of craft can be offered to capture the role of ‘workmanship’ in digital manufacture. 'The Certainty of Uncertainty' comprises two of his collections, ‘Hack’ (a series of chairs) and ‘Certainty’ (a series of vessels). 

... see a detailed pdf on Gareth Neal's computer assisted projects exploring the nature and limits of handcraft.

Graham Rawle, Overland  

Overland is an experimental work of multimodal fiction in book form, created by Graham Rawle, in which a little-known historical narrative relating to Burbank, California, during World War Two provides the basis for graphic and textual experimentation in the context of dual narrative page formatting. Designed to be read with its spine aligned horizontally rather than vertically, Overland’s parallel narratives play out simultaneously above and below the page gutter, which is established as a physical and metaphorical demarcation line between two territories. 

The work builds on Graham Rawle’s practice-based research, spanning a career of over thirty years, in which he explores and reconfigures the conventions of literary fiction design by using graphic elements to create sub-textual indicators within the narrative. As in Graham Rawle’s previous experimental works, notably Woman’s World (2005), an unorthodox narrative delivery challenges readers to rethink how they read, absorb and learn from novels.

... see a detailed pdf on the development of Graham Rawle's experimental novel Overland in the context of his wider works including Woman's World. 

Xavier Ribas, 'Trinitat Nova, Barcelona, #14' (detail)

Xavier Ribas, 'Barcelona' 

'Barcelona' is a collection of 40 photographs by Xavier Ribas produced from an exploration of Les Roquetes and Trinitat Nova, two outlying neighbourhoods of the Nou Barris area of Barcelona, as part of a council commission to develop a better understanding of the lives and urban environments of their inhabitants. Ribas was one of eleven artists commissioned by Barcelona City Council to document the city as part of the project ‘Setze barris. Mil ciutats, Fotografies per altres relats de Barcelona’. 

This theme in Xavier Ribas’ photographic research is built on a career-long experimentation with representing the city through photography, contextualised in relation to Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus' as a materialised memory and a socialised subjectivity. The work interrogates the portrayal of the body in urban space, photographing inhabitants glimpsed in daily activities. It contributes to a decentring of the archive through the representation of these rarely-portrayed neighbourhoods and the exploration of inclusive and participatory modes, in contrast to established, official visual archives. 

... see a detailed pdf on Xavier Ribas practice-led photography research of the urban environment in Barcelona's Nou Barris.

Installation photograph, 'Trafficking the Earth'.

Xavier Ribas working with Louise Purbrick and Ignacio Acosta, 'Trafficking the Earth'   

Trafficking the Earth is an installation artwork and publication comprising 336 photographs and texts, first exhibited at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [MAC], Santiago, Chile (2017), and subsequently deposited for permanent collection in the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago. 

Produced collaboratively by photographer Xavier Ribas and visual cultural historian Dr Louise Purbrick between 2012-2018, and including photographic work by Ignacio Acosta, 'Trafficking the Earth' directly addressed a gap in historical understanding and cultural awareness of the global significance of the nitrate industry. It explored how transformation over time could be mapped to create ‘biographies’ of nitrate sites and artefacts, and asked what strategies of visual presentation were most effective in generating, sequencing and interpreting a dispersed material culture and a disparate historical record. 

... see a detailed pdf on Xavier Ribas' practice-led photography research and exhibition development of the Nitrate project and 'Trafficking the Earth'.  

Participant sits at a table on which is a projection of the surrounding Mar Menor lagoon.

Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould working with Jeremiah Ambrose, 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind'

'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' was an immersive virtual reality installation artwork created by Professor Paul Sermon, Charlotte Gould and Jeremiah Ambrose. It was designed to convey the ecological trajectory of the Mar Menor saltwater lagoon area on the south east coast of Spain. The work brought audiences into a 360° environment that incorporated both video and audio recordings as well as telepresent video interaction using a system of live 360° chroma-keying between two separate gallery spaces. 

The enquiry examined the effectiveness of an immersive artistic approach to the communication of ecological challenges, locating people within the retrogressive landscape as an alternative to disconnected observation. It asked whether scientific environmental data, manifested as an immersive virtual reality experience, might provide a tangible and accessible understanding of, and empathy with, environmental crisis and whether this might lead to a deeper sense of presence, empathy and a responsibility for actions and consequences. 

... see a detailed pdf of Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould's work with the Mar Menor community and the development of conservation understanding.

Participant exploring installation work '3x4' at Unbox LABS Future Cities, Ahmedabad.  

Paul Sermon working with Claire McAndrew and Swati Janu, '3x4 Metaspace'  

Professor Paul Sermon and colleagues developed two installation artworks for the Unbox Festival, New Delhi, and its preliminary Unbox LABS event in Ahmedabad. 

The artworks responded to the informal settlement housing in the city. Often referred to as ‘slums’, the city’s informal, illegal settlements spring from an unforgiving urban clearance programme. Paul Sermon investigated the relationship between physical and digital senses of space for the inhabitants, understanding how built and imagined narratives can create new visual and embodied commentaries about the occupation of space in cities. Visits to the informal settlements revealed resilient, self-organised communities, lost in the resettlement process yet able to articulate their social mobility and use of communications technology. It also evidenced a new type of urbanism based around communities’ self-made solutions, one that Paul Sermon and colleagues brought to wider audience engagement and improved understanding through the exploratory installations.

... see a detailed pdf of Paul Sermon's work at the Unbox LABS and Unbox Festival in India, exploring future cities and urban dwelling space.

Emma Stibbon, 'Summit' (detail). Indian Ink on paper, 201cm x 152cm.

Emma Stibbon RA, 'Polar Ice Retreat'

'Polar Ice Retreat' is a series of large-scale artworks on paper by Emma Stibbon RA, measuring from 153 x 167cm to 204 x 300cm, that resulted from fieldwork in the Arctic and Antarctica. The individual works were made as studio drawings in watercolour or Indian ink with graphite and carbon powder, or as Intaglio prints, . 

Building on her previous investigations of retreating glaciers and ice shelves, Emma Stibbon sought to advance the capacity of drawing to communicate fragility through mark-making and to engage the viewer in critical issues of polar ice retreat. She worked with geologists, environmentalists, writers and scientists to transform scientific data, direct observation and experiential interpretations of landscape collected during fieldwork. Through this process, she foregrounded the experiential, visceral and tactile quality of the drawing process, enabling time and weather to become evident in the surface of the work. 

... see a detailed pdf of artist and researcher Emma Stibbon's work in the Arctic and Antarctica working with scientist to interpret landscape under threat from climate change. 

Emma Stibbon RA, 'Aiguilles des Drus'(detail). Indian ink and salt on paper 224cm x 145cm.

Emma Stibbon RA, 'Storm Cloud'

Retracing John Ruskin’s steps in the Alps, Emma Stibbon RA investigated what remains of Alpine glaciers today, comparing not simply the extent of retreat against Ruskin’s daguerreotypes and drawings but also the artistic interpretation that would seem to have informed production.

The artworks were commissioned by York Art Gallery and Lakeland Arts for the exhibition Ruskin, Turner and the Storm Cloud held to mark the 200th Anniversary of Ruskin’s birth. They represent a contemporary response to the environmental themes of Ruskin’s ‘close looking’ at Alpine glaciers. Emma Stibbon’s process of information-gathering is based in the field, involving making drawings from observation, digital photography and gathering glacial flour, produced by the glacier scouring the bedrock. She tested her observations against Ruskin’s historic work, creating a contemporary response to environmental themes. Through experimental, large-scale drawing approaches and methods of installation, she identified methods of connecting audiences viscerally with issues of climate change.

... see a detailed pdf of artist and researcher Emma Stibbon's work in the Alps investigating relationships between artistic and environmental themes.

Emma Stibbon RA, 'Broken Ground I', Indian ink with volcanic ash on paper 211cm x 148cm.

Emma Stibbon RA, 'Uncertain Ground'  

'Uncertain Ground' is a series of 18 large-scale drawings approximately 200cm x 150cm, made with ink and volcanic ash on paper by Emma Stibbon RA. The works are based on Stibbon’s field observations of the volcanic environment in Europe and America, including flows of molten rock, eruptions, steam vents and fault zones.

Collaboration with scientists provided Emma Stibbon with insights into seismic landscapes and the dynamic forces that drive change set alongside historic precedents of artistic representation of volcanic terrain. She asked how the combined processes of drawing and print can communicate a relationship with these landscapes and whether the collaboration between art and science can connect audiences with landscapes in transition. To convey the physicality of the seismic landscapes, she incorporated volcanic materials into her drawing and, by melding scientific knowledge with haptic, human experience the resulting works established new research frontiers between visual art and the material environment.

... see a detailed pdf of artist and researcher Emma Stibbon RA's work in representing volcanic environments in Europe and America.

Installation photograph, Les Enfants De La Cité, with Julia Winckler

Julia Winckler, 'Les Enfants De La Cité'  

Dr Julia Winckler curated this exhibition of archival photographs examining the work of photographer Marilyn Stafford. Her distinctive approach brought ideas and methods from social anthropology to bear on the investigation of the photographer's practices and the wider significance for communities recorded in photographs, examining the relationship between Stafford’s practice and the social significance of the resulting work.

A curatorial research approach allows Julia Winckler to re-activate the archival photographs to give emotional understanding of the individuals and communities represented. She digitised a number of contact sheets and medium format negatives that had survived since Stafford first took the photographs in Parisian working-class neighbourhoods demolished in the late 1950s, turning these into large prints for the exhibition. The research highlighted methodological approaches of oral history and geographical placement which enabled this archive imagery to become resonant for modern audiences while foregrounding some of the complex histories, viewpoints and temporalities of Stafford’s photographs. 

... see a detailed pdf of photographer Julia Winckler's investigation and rediscovery of work by fellow photographer Marilyn Stafford.

Photographer Julia Winckler reactivates archive photography through projections in public spaces in Brighton.

Julia Winckler, 'From Streets to Playgrounds'

Working with photographic evidence, interviews and curatorial methods, including the projection of works onto historic buildings, Dr Julia Winckler investigated how archive material can be activated for contemporary audiences, displaying the work in exhibitions in the UK and Canada.

Archival research recovered photographs commissioned by public works departments for site mapping purposes, which included children photographed inadvertently in public spaces. In order to build narratives that linked this archive material to living histories, Julia Winckler conducted interviews with residents of the urban areas originally photographed. Further interviews gained perspectives from architectural historians and acclaimed photographer Wolf Suschitzky.

By researching the histories of children incidentally caught by the camera and then tracing their histories to the present day, Winckler and her collaborators improved understanding of the interrelation between social histories of this period and the photography that provided a concurrent visual history, while exposing some of the impact of slum clearance on the close-knit communities of these areas. 

... see a detailed pdf of photographer Julia Winckler's investigation of archive imagery of  urban street environments and her work on exhibitions in Brighton and Toronto.