Obsession is a powerful force, and an obsessive interest in the classical past wrote the Western ... more Obsession is a powerful force, and an obsessive interest in the classical past wrote the Western European artistic canon, up to and well beyond the era of the Grand Tour. This was a passion fed by truncated fragments, for Greek and Roman sculptures were dug up as ruins: imperfect, damaged pieces that could then be reimagined and reassembled, if decontextualised from their original ritualistic settings. Whether in a museum collection or patrician home, the acquisition of these antiquities was informed by conspicuous consumption: the urge to display perfect specimens of spectacular material value. And while the drive was also at least intended to be educational, to trace human creation through time, it's no coincidence that many of the most prized works constitute nude bodies. After all, the human body, whether male, female, or at times, fluidly in between, has always been the vessel of a turbulent fascination-and in these terms, the obsession was transferred from the real to its simulacrum.
This script was co-authored by Dr Robyne Calvert and Dr Thea Stevens as part of the co-design tea... more This script was co-authored by Dr Robyne Calvert and Dr Thea Stevens as part of the co-design team for the 'Digital Laocoon' Project (AHRC Immersive Experiences Project, Steve Love PI & Stuart Jeffrey Co-I, GSA School of Simulation & Visualisation; in collaboration with Damien Smith, ISO Design). It provides an engaging narrative for the audio voiceover within the Digital Laocoon (see below), incorporating historical contextualisation and reflections on authenticity and the replica. Dr Calvert also did the voiceover for the VR experience. A digital replica of one of GSA’s plaster casts, the Digital Laocoon was developed by Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and digital studio ISO Design as a part of an interdisciplinary pilot project in the context of a 'Next Generation of Immersive Experiences' that takes a holistic view of the issues around practical design, development and deployment of an Immersive Experience related to the themes of Place and Memory. It focuses on creating a prototype immersive exhibit using the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art as an exemplar. The outputs of the project are a digital AR/VR experience, and a preliminary set of standards relating to this technology which will help mitigate real and perceived obstacles that currently obstruct deployment of this technology more widely throughout the sector for diverse user-groups. This is an innovative approach to furthering the deployment of a new generation of immersive content, experiences, and services across the creative industries in that it focuses not solely on the end-user but on how industry professionals are critical voices that must be included in the conversation if projects are to be successful.
While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using pla... more While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using plaster casts for pedagogical reasons, The Glasgow School of Art’s collection can be viewed through a particularly resonant lens in terms of damage, conservation and reproduction. In 2014, the School’s Mackintosh Building was damaged by fire, and a selection of the plaster casts held there underwent extensive conservation conducted by Graciela Ainsworth, a campaign positioned within a large-scale Recovery Project led by GSA Archives & Collections. In this presentation, we will look at two case studies – the Luca della Robbia Cantoria panels, and the central figure of the Laocoon – examining how, in the academic remit also, their conservation conferred additional layers of meaning, and indeed of value, in terms of aura and patina. In the final part of the presentation, we will discuss the further object biography of the Laocoon cast by introducing the AHRC-funded project led by the School of Simulation & Visualisation (GSA) and ISO Design that reproduces it in virtual and augmented reality. In fact, in the aftermath of the second fire of 2018, this reproduction of a reproduction helps to make distinctive value of damage and loss, as well as serving to narrate the important conservational implications.
The notion of mediated experience is intrinsic to the materiality of souvenirs, offering a critic... more The notion of mediated experience is intrinsic to the materiality of souvenirs, offering a critical route into the lineaments of memory. While hitherto the creation, consumption and collecting of souvenirs have been quite rightly presented within the typology of the formation of the personal wunderkammer, less attention has been devoted to how these objects can signify a tabula rasa onto which collective meanings can be inscribed in the sphere of political memory and national or civic identity. In this paper, we present an object that formed part of an innovative design project, Scotland Can Make It!, curated by Panel Glasgow as part of the cultural programming of Scotland 2014. In it six design teams collaborated with local makers and industry to produce new ‘souvenirs’ that elicited a process of materiality and making, and of these The Golden Tenement, a small die-cast architectural model of a Dalmarnock tenement block, was arguably the most reflective on the processes of self-feeding consumption and the generation of detritus that was one of the by-products of Glasgow’s transformative identity in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games. The object quite literally commemorates the invisible: a tenement block fought for, but destroyed, as a means to generate a new tabula rasa for the facilities of the Games; a human story, that of a family challenged and evicted, whose collaboration with the designers and makers Neil McGuire and Marianne Anderson became in a sense an exquisite corpse, an object that evokes absence, the disappeared and the lost but in which meanings and interpretations were and remain intrinsically fluid. Designed to be seen, held, displayed and collected, the Golden Tenement offers a development on the new souvenirs promoted in Scotland in the second half of the twentieth century – a means to activate collective memory in a manner that transforms object into material essence. By presenting the Golden Tenement within the framework of politicised souvenirs, such as the objects produced in the wake of historical seismic moments, we frame the process of its creation as one in which maker and object join within a critical voice to signify material absence as well as a narrative presence.
This talk took place at Splendour: Adornment, Bodies, Gender in Early Modern Europe, a public-fac... more This talk took place at Splendour: Adornment, Bodies, Gender in Early Modern Europe, a public-facing event at the Queen's House, Royal Museums Greenwich on 28 June 2019. Exploring Mary, Queen of Scots' legacy and image-making, the talk discussed 16th and 17th century portraiture, jewellery, textiles and fashions alongside contemporary responses created by Glasgow School of Art Textiles and Silversmithing & Jewellery students during the Splendour project (The Glasgow School of Art / The Queen's House, Royal Museums Greenwich, 2019). The afternoon of talks also featured Beatriz Chadour-Sampson and Dr Kit Heyam, with performances by artist Anja Olofgors and interventions by GSA students and Christopher Green. Staging Splendid Bodies in Early Modern Scotland and England is a creative brief and an exploration of adornment and fashion, as tools for the expression of love, power and politics. It has been created with The Glasgow School of Art involving more than 150 students and staff.
Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens... more Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens (CEO, TBL International - Titanic Belfast, Titanic Exhibition Centre, SS Nomadic), Dr Stephanie Smith (Executive Director, Archives, Museums & Libraries Nova Scotia), Chris Walker (Founding Director, Bright White), Malcolm Maclean (Arts and Heritage Consultant). Panel descriptor: In this XPO North panel session, we discuss how story telling plays into tourism and cultural heritage. From battlefields to urban landscapes, tragic tales and hidden stories, how do we narrate our heritage – whether that’s orally, visually, or digitally – as effectively, and innovatively, as possible, and how can we communicate this to a variety of audiences?
International Journal of Art and Design Education, Nov 1, 2019
In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am acade... more In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am academic coordinator and which is enacted across six design programmes at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). I unpack Design Domain's context and intentionality as a 'created space', where student learners are exposed to different ways of thinking, making and doing, with an emphasis on working within discipline but pushing boundaries beyond the discipline. Next, I evaluate Design Domain as a 'creative space', unpacking its lineaments and evaluating its positives and challenges. Then, I set out initial reflections on the taxonomy of disciplinarities, arguing that these can be usefully reappraised when applied to a pedagogical framework like Design Domain, which blends predominantly individual learning with particular and specific points of collective commonality of purpose and action. Finally, I describe how I will go onto develop my understanding via an action research informed evaluation of a recent Design Domain project in Communication Design, where students of graphic design, photography and illustration worked together. I frame the type of critical questions I might ask of staff and student respondents in an action research informed evaluation study, and I offer a preliminary conclusion: that it is more appropriate to focus on ways of thinking than prescribing ways of doing, and that this might bring practice and process into a more adaptive theoretical framework.
Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer,... more Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer, School of Design, Glasgow School of Art), Michelle Fisher (Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts), Arwen Fitch: Press and Communications Manager, Tate-St Ives, Chair: Jacob O’Sullivan: Collections and Interpretation Support Manager, Museums Galleries Scotland. Panel descriptor: Any discussion in Scotland about Scottish culture inevitably comes to a discussion of avoiding tartan and heather. Is the image real and what do audiences want to see? Some of Europe's most important museums and galleries discuss how cultural artefacts can be presented and interpreted, who should have a say in how this is done and how they engage audiences with very different demands and expectations.
The relationship between architectural site and ruin is a heavily contested one; while ruination ... more The relationship between architectural site and ruin is a heavily contested one; while ruination can signify entropic process, it can also denote deliberate action. In the run-up to the Commonwealth Games of 2014, Glasgow’s civic authorities undertook a process of presenting the city as the product of dynamic development and evolution for both the internal gaze of its inhabitants and the external gaze of the visitor. Yet it could be argued that this romanticised sensibility of improvement in relation to the built environment came at the expense of a more nuanced reality. In this paper, we examine the case of Dalmarnock in Glasgow’s East End, one of the key sites of urban renewal in relation to the Games, by discussing the narrative of a family who fought a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful battle to avoid the destruction of their own tenement property in favour of the new wave of construction. In the event, the form of this forcibly removed architectural leitmotif had an afterlife in the context of an innovative design project, Scotland Can Make It!, curated by Panel Glasgow and motivated by the desire to revisit the idea of the souvenir in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games. One of the six object types produced, The Golden Tenement – a small die-cast model of the Dalmarnock tenement block – was the product of a collaboration between Neil McGuire and Marianne Anderson, and it refocused the idea of the ruin through an elegaically architectural lens. Through the filter of the dialectograms of Mitch Miller and the work of documentary photographer and filmmaker Chris Leslie, we relate the example of Dalmarnock to other instances of the actual or attempted obliteration of sites that compromised a narrative of Glasgow’s civic positivity such as Red Road. In conclusion, we offer that The Golden Tenement problematises the cultural memory of this troubling moment of abjection, taking us beyond the sublimated notion of the ruin to a still more resonant interpretation.
This invited article examines the ethics of ruin photography through the autoethnographic lens of... more This invited article examines the ethics of ruin photography through the autoethnographic lens of a return to L’Aquila, Italy, a city that was affected by a devastating earthquake in 2009. The discussion draws upon critical theory on ruination, ruin photography, and the abjected gaze
In this study, I examine the 'Trade Reliefs' of the main portal at San Marco and the rela... more In this study, I examine the 'Trade Reliefs' of the main portal at San Marco and the related cycle of the theme of urban work, the Piazzetta column base sculptures, in the light of three chief factors: their possible dating, the issue of their patronage and the conceptual climate that surrounded their production in thirteenth-century Venice. In Chapter One, I establish that the historical and formal context for the 'Trade Reliefs' and the Piazzetta column bases was the ambitious campaign of civic works undertaken at the basilica and in the Insula Sancti Marci in the course of the duecento. In Chapter Two, I consider the problem of the date of the 'Trade Reliefs' in relation to that of the main portal as a whole. In Chapter Three, I outline the regulation to which trade and manufacture were subject in medieval Venice, especially in reference to the statutes of the guilds, in order to establish the worth of the 'arti argument' for the analysis of the &#...
Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens... more Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens (CEO, TBL International - Titanic Belfast, Titanic Exhibition Centre, SS Nomadic), Dr Stephanie Smith (Executive Director, Archives, Museums & Libraries Nova Scotia), Chris Walker (Founding Director, Bright White), Malcolm Maclean (Arts and Heritage Consultant). Panel descriptor: In this XPO North panel session, we discuss how story telling plays into tourism and cultural heritage. From battlefields to urban landscapes, tragic tales and hidden stories, how do we narrate our heritage – whether that’s orally, visually, or digitally – as effectively, and innovatively, as possible, and how can we communicate this to a variety of audiences?
While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using pla... more While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using plaster casts for pedagogical reasons, The Glasgow School of Art’s collection can be viewed through a particularly resonant lens in terms of damage, conservation and reproduction. In 2014, the School’s Mackintosh Building was damaged by fire, and a selection of the plaster casts held there underwent extensive conservation conducted by Graciela Ainsworth, a campaign positioned within a large-scale Recovery Project led by GSA Archives & Collections. In this presentation, we will look at two case studies – the Luca della Robbia Cantoria panels, and the central figure of the Laocoon – examining how, in the academic remit also, their conservation conferred additional layers of meaning, and indeed of value, in terms of aura and patina. In the final part of the presentation, we will discuss the further object biography of the Laocoon cast by introducing the AHRC-funded project led by the School of...
International Journal of Art & Design Education, 2019
In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am acade... more In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am academic coordinator and which is enacted across six design programmes at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). I unpack Design Domain’s context and intentionality as a ‘created space’,where student learners are exposed to different ways of thinking, making and doing, with an emphasis on working within discipline but pushing boundaries beyond the discipline. Next, I evaluate Design Domain as a ‘creative space’, unpacking its lineaments and evaluating its positives and challenges. Then, I set out initial reflections on the taxonomy of disciplinarities, arguing that these can be usefully reappraised when applied to a pedagogical framework like Design Domain, which blends predominantly individual learning with particular and specific points of collective commonality of purpose and action. Finally, I describe how I will go onto develop my understanding via an action research informed evaluation of a rec...
Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer,... more Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer, School of Design, Glasgow School of Art), Michelle Fisher (Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts), Arwen Fitch: Press and Communications Manager, Tate-St Ives, Chair: Jacob O’Sullivan: Collections and Interpretation Support Manager, Museums Galleries Scotland. Panel descriptor: Any discussion in Scotland about Scottish culture inevitably comes to a discussion of avoiding tartan and heather. Is the image real and what do audiences want to see? Some of Europe's most important museums and galleries discuss how cultural artefacts can be presented and interpreted, who should have a say in how this is done and how they engage audiences with very different demands and expectations.
This essay was an invited contribution to the catalogue for an exhibition in the Reid Gallery (Th... more This essay was an invited contribution to the catalogue for an exhibition in the Reid Gallery (The Glasgow School of Art) for the project Splendour: Staging Splendid Bodies in Early Modern Scotland and England. The project was a collaboration between The Glasgow School of Art and The Queen’s House, Royal Museums Greenwich, with the core team including Matilda Pye (National Outreach Curator, Royal Museums Greenwich), Silvia Weidenbach (Lecturer, Silversmithing & Jewellery, The Glasgow School of Art) and Anthony Brotheridge (Subject Leader, Fashion, The Glasgow School of Art). Involving more than 150 GSA students and staff from Textiles, Silversmithing & Jewellery and Fashion, the Splendour creative brief was an exploration of adornment, textiles and fashion as tools for the expression of love, power and politics. As well as the exhibition, the project involved a photo-shoot on location in Stirling Castle, and a symposium and performative event at The Queen’s House, Greenwich on 28 Ju...
Obsession is a powerful force, and an obsessive interest in the classical past wrote the Western ... more Obsession is a powerful force, and an obsessive interest in the classical past wrote the Western European artistic canon, up to and well beyond the era of the Grand Tour. This was a passion fed by truncated fragments, for Greek and Roman sculptures were dug up as ruins: imperfect, damaged pieces that could then be reimagined and reassembled, if decontextualised from their original ritualistic settings. Whether in a museum collection or patrician home, the acquisition of these antiquities was informed by conspicuous consumption: the urge to display perfect specimens of spectacular material value. And while the drive was also at least intended to be educational, to trace human creation through time, it's no coincidence that many of the most prized works constitute nude bodies. After all, the human body, whether male, female, or at times, fluidly in between, has always been the vessel of a turbulent fascination-and in these terms, the obsession was transferred from the real to its simulacrum.
This script was co-authored by Dr Robyne Calvert and Dr Thea Stevens as part of the co-design tea... more This script was co-authored by Dr Robyne Calvert and Dr Thea Stevens as part of the co-design team for the 'Digital Laocoon' Project (AHRC Immersive Experiences Project, Steve Love PI & Stuart Jeffrey Co-I, GSA School of Simulation & Visualisation; in collaboration with Damien Smith, ISO Design). It provides an engaging narrative for the audio voiceover within the Digital Laocoon (see below), incorporating historical contextualisation and reflections on authenticity and the replica. Dr Calvert also did the voiceover for the VR experience. A digital replica of one of GSA’s plaster casts, the Digital Laocoon was developed by Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and digital studio ISO Design as a part of an interdisciplinary pilot project in the context of a 'Next Generation of Immersive Experiences' that takes a holistic view of the issues around practical design, development and deployment of an Immersive Experience related to the themes of Place and Memory. It focuses on creating a prototype immersive exhibit using the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art as an exemplar. The outputs of the project are a digital AR/VR experience, and a preliminary set of standards relating to this technology which will help mitigate real and perceived obstacles that currently obstruct deployment of this technology more widely throughout the sector for diverse user-groups. This is an innovative approach to furthering the deployment of a new generation of immersive content, experiences, and services across the creative industries in that it focuses not solely on the end-user but on how industry professionals are critical voices that must be included in the conversation if projects are to be successful.
While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using pla... more While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using plaster casts for pedagogical reasons, The Glasgow School of Art’s collection can be viewed through a particularly resonant lens in terms of damage, conservation and reproduction. In 2014, the School’s Mackintosh Building was damaged by fire, and a selection of the plaster casts held there underwent extensive conservation conducted by Graciela Ainsworth, a campaign positioned within a large-scale Recovery Project led by GSA Archives & Collections. In this presentation, we will look at two case studies – the Luca della Robbia Cantoria panels, and the central figure of the Laocoon – examining how, in the academic remit also, their conservation conferred additional layers of meaning, and indeed of value, in terms of aura and patina. In the final part of the presentation, we will discuss the further object biography of the Laocoon cast by introducing the AHRC-funded project led by the School of Simulation & Visualisation (GSA) and ISO Design that reproduces it in virtual and augmented reality. In fact, in the aftermath of the second fire of 2018, this reproduction of a reproduction helps to make distinctive value of damage and loss, as well as serving to narrate the important conservational implications.
The notion of mediated experience is intrinsic to the materiality of souvenirs, offering a critic... more The notion of mediated experience is intrinsic to the materiality of souvenirs, offering a critical route into the lineaments of memory. While hitherto the creation, consumption and collecting of souvenirs have been quite rightly presented within the typology of the formation of the personal wunderkammer, less attention has been devoted to how these objects can signify a tabula rasa onto which collective meanings can be inscribed in the sphere of political memory and national or civic identity. In this paper, we present an object that formed part of an innovative design project, Scotland Can Make It!, curated by Panel Glasgow as part of the cultural programming of Scotland 2014. In it six design teams collaborated with local makers and industry to produce new ‘souvenirs’ that elicited a process of materiality and making, and of these The Golden Tenement, a small die-cast architectural model of a Dalmarnock tenement block, was arguably the most reflective on the processes of self-feeding consumption and the generation of detritus that was one of the by-products of Glasgow’s transformative identity in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games. The object quite literally commemorates the invisible: a tenement block fought for, but destroyed, as a means to generate a new tabula rasa for the facilities of the Games; a human story, that of a family challenged and evicted, whose collaboration with the designers and makers Neil McGuire and Marianne Anderson became in a sense an exquisite corpse, an object that evokes absence, the disappeared and the lost but in which meanings and interpretations were and remain intrinsically fluid. Designed to be seen, held, displayed and collected, the Golden Tenement offers a development on the new souvenirs promoted in Scotland in the second half of the twentieth century – a means to activate collective memory in a manner that transforms object into material essence. By presenting the Golden Tenement within the framework of politicised souvenirs, such as the objects produced in the wake of historical seismic moments, we frame the process of its creation as one in which maker and object join within a critical voice to signify material absence as well as a narrative presence.
This talk took place at Splendour: Adornment, Bodies, Gender in Early Modern Europe, a public-fac... more This talk took place at Splendour: Adornment, Bodies, Gender in Early Modern Europe, a public-facing event at the Queen's House, Royal Museums Greenwich on 28 June 2019. Exploring Mary, Queen of Scots' legacy and image-making, the talk discussed 16th and 17th century portraiture, jewellery, textiles and fashions alongside contemporary responses created by Glasgow School of Art Textiles and Silversmithing & Jewellery students during the Splendour project (The Glasgow School of Art / The Queen's House, Royal Museums Greenwich, 2019). The afternoon of talks also featured Beatriz Chadour-Sampson and Dr Kit Heyam, with performances by artist Anja Olofgors and interventions by GSA students and Christopher Green. Staging Splendid Bodies in Early Modern Scotland and England is a creative brief and an exploration of adornment and fashion, as tools for the expression of love, power and politics. It has been created with The Glasgow School of Art involving more than 150 students and staff.
Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens... more Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens (CEO, TBL International - Titanic Belfast, Titanic Exhibition Centre, SS Nomadic), Dr Stephanie Smith (Executive Director, Archives, Museums & Libraries Nova Scotia), Chris Walker (Founding Director, Bright White), Malcolm Maclean (Arts and Heritage Consultant). Panel descriptor: In this XPO North panel session, we discuss how story telling plays into tourism and cultural heritage. From battlefields to urban landscapes, tragic tales and hidden stories, how do we narrate our heritage – whether that’s orally, visually, or digitally – as effectively, and innovatively, as possible, and how can we communicate this to a variety of audiences?
International Journal of Art and Design Education, Nov 1, 2019
In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am acade... more In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am academic coordinator and which is enacted across six design programmes at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). I unpack Design Domain's context and intentionality as a 'created space', where student learners are exposed to different ways of thinking, making and doing, with an emphasis on working within discipline but pushing boundaries beyond the discipline. Next, I evaluate Design Domain as a 'creative space', unpacking its lineaments and evaluating its positives and challenges. Then, I set out initial reflections on the taxonomy of disciplinarities, arguing that these can be usefully reappraised when applied to a pedagogical framework like Design Domain, which blends predominantly individual learning with particular and specific points of collective commonality of purpose and action. Finally, I describe how I will go onto develop my understanding via an action research informed evaluation of a recent Design Domain project in Communication Design, where students of graphic design, photography and illustration worked together. I frame the type of critical questions I might ask of staff and student respondents in an action research informed evaluation study, and I offer a preliminary conclusion: that it is more appropriate to focus on ways of thinking than prescribing ways of doing, and that this might bring practice and process into a more adaptive theoretical framework.
Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer,... more Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer, School of Design, Glasgow School of Art), Michelle Fisher (Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts), Arwen Fitch: Press and Communications Manager, Tate-St Ives, Chair: Jacob O’Sullivan: Collections and Interpretation Support Manager, Museums Galleries Scotland. Panel descriptor: Any discussion in Scotland about Scottish culture inevitably comes to a discussion of avoiding tartan and heather. Is the image real and what do audiences want to see? Some of Europe's most important museums and galleries discuss how cultural artefacts can be presented and interpreted, who should have a say in how this is done and how they engage audiences with very different demands and expectations.
The relationship between architectural site and ruin is a heavily contested one; while ruination ... more The relationship between architectural site and ruin is a heavily contested one; while ruination can signify entropic process, it can also denote deliberate action. In the run-up to the Commonwealth Games of 2014, Glasgow’s civic authorities undertook a process of presenting the city as the product of dynamic development and evolution for both the internal gaze of its inhabitants and the external gaze of the visitor. Yet it could be argued that this romanticised sensibility of improvement in relation to the built environment came at the expense of a more nuanced reality. In this paper, we examine the case of Dalmarnock in Glasgow’s East End, one of the key sites of urban renewal in relation to the Games, by discussing the narrative of a family who fought a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful battle to avoid the destruction of their own tenement property in favour of the new wave of construction. In the event, the form of this forcibly removed architectural leitmotif had an afterlife in the context of an innovative design project, Scotland Can Make It!, curated by Panel Glasgow and motivated by the desire to revisit the idea of the souvenir in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games. One of the six object types produced, The Golden Tenement – a small die-cast model of the Dalmarnock tenement block – was the product of a collaboration between Neil McGuire and Marianne Anderson, and it refocused the idea of the ruin through an elegaically architectural lens. Through the filter of the dialectograms of Mitch Miller and the work of documentary photographer and filmmaker Chris Leslie, we relate the example of Dalmarnock to other instances of the actual or attempted obliteration of sites that compromised a narrative of Glasgow’s civic positivity such as Red Road. In conclusion, we offer that The Golden Tenement problematises the cultural memory of this troubling moment of abjection, taking us beyond the sublimated notion of the ruin to a still more resonant interpretation.
This invited article examines the ethics of ruin photography through the autoethnographic lens of... more This invited article examines the ethics of ruin photography through the autoethnographic lens of a return to L’Aquila, Italy, a city that was affected by a devastating earthquake in 2009. The discussion draws upon critical theory on ruination, ruin photography, and the abjected gaze
In this study, I examine the 'Trade Reliefs' of the main portal at San Marco and the rela... more In this study, I examine the 'Trade Reliefs' of the main portal at San Marco and the related cycle of the theme of urban work, the Piazzetta column base sculptures, in the light of three chief factors: their possible dating, the issue of their patronage and the conceptual climate that surrounded their production in thirteenth-century Venice. In Chapter One, I establish that the historical and formal context for the 'Trade Reliefs' and the Piazzetta column bases was the ambitious campaign of civic works undertaken at the basilica and in the Insula Sancti Marci in the course of the duecento. In Chapter Two, I consider the problem of the date of the 'Trade Reliefs' in relation to that of the main portal as a whole. In Chapter Three, I outline the regulation to which trade and manufacture were subject in medieval Venice, especially in reference to the statutes of the guilds, in order to establish the worth of the 'arti argument' for the analysis of the &#...
Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens... more Panel members: Chair: Dr Thea Stevens (School of Design, The Glasgow School of Art), Judith Owens (CEO, TBL International - Titanic Belfast, Titanic Exhibition Centre, SS Nomadic), Dr Stephanie Smith (Executive Director, Archives, Museums & Libraries Nova Scotia), Chris Walker (Founding Director, Bright White), Malcolm Maclean (Arts and Heritage Consultant). Panel descriptor: In this XPO North panel session, we discuss how story telling plays into tourism and cultural heritage. From battlefields to urban landscapes, tragic tales and hidden stories, how do we narrate our heritage – whether that’s orally, visually, or digitally – as effectively, and innovatively, as possible, and how can we communicate this to a variety of audiences?
While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using pla... more While by no means unique amongst art and design institutions in terms of possessing and using plaster casts for pedagogical reasons, The Glasgow School of Art’s collection can be viewed through a particularly resonant lens in terms of damage, conservation and reproduction. In 2014, the School’s Mackintosh Building was damaged by fire, and a selection of the plaster casts held there underwent extensive conservation conducted by Graciela Ainsworth, a campaign positioned within a large-scale Recovery Project led by GSA Archives & Collections. In this presentation, we will look at two case studies – the Luca della Robbia Cantoria panels, and the central figure of the Laocoon – examining how, in the academic remit also, their conservation conferred additional layers of meaning, and indeed of value, in terms of aura and patina. In the final part of the presentation, we will discuss the further object biography of the Laocoon cast by introducing the AHRC-funded project led by the School of...
International Journal of Art & Design Education, 2019
In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am acade... more In this article, I describe and explore Design Domain, a large-cohort course for which I am academic coordinator and which is enacted across six design programmes at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). I unpack Design Domain’s context and intentionality as a ‘created space’,where student learners are exposed to different ways of thinking, making and doing, with an emphasis on working within discipline but pushing boundaries beyond the discipline. Next, I evaluate Design Domain as a ‘creative space’, unpacking its lineaments and evaluating its positives and challenges. Then, I set out initial reflections on the taxonomy of disciplinarities, arguing that these can be usefully reappraised when applied to a pedagogical framework like Design Domain, which blends predominantly individual learning with particular and specific points of collective commonality of purpose and action. Finally, I describe how I will go onto develop my understanding via an action research informed evaluation of a rec...
Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer,... more Panel members: Dr Stephanie Vergnaud (Cultural Mediator, Louvre Lens), Dr Thea Stevens (Lecturer, School of Design, Glasgow School of Art), Michelle Fisher (Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts), Arwen Fitch: Press and Communications Manager, Tate-St Ives, Chair: Jacob O’Sullivan: Collections and Interpretation Support Manager, Museums Galleries Scotland. Panel descriptor: Any discussion in Scotland about Scottish culture inevitably comes to a discussion of avoiding tartan and heather. Is the image real and what do audiences want to see? Some of Europe's most important museums and galleries discuss how cultural artefacts can be presented and interpreted, who should have a say in how this is done and how they engage audiences with very different demands and expectations.
This essay was an invited contribution to the catalogue for an exhibition in the Reid Gallery (Th... more This essay was an invited contribution to the catalogue for an exhibition in the Reid Gallery (The Glasgow School of Art) for the project Splendour: Staging Splendid Bodies in Early Modern Scotland and England. The project was a collaboration between The Glasgow School of Art and The Queen’s House, Royal Museums Greenwich, with the core team including Matilda Pye (National Outreach Curator, Royal Museums Greenwich), Silvia Weidenbach (Lecturer, Silversmithing & Jewellery, The Glasgow School of Art) and Anthony Brotheridge (Subject Leader, Fashion, The Glasgow School of Art). Involving more than 150 GSA students and staff from Textiles, Silversmithing & Jewellery and Fashion, the Splendour creative brief was an exploration of adornment, textiles and fashion as tools for the expression of love, power and politics. As well as the exhibition, the project involved a photo-shoot on location in Stirling Castle, and a symposium and performative event at The Queen’s House, Greenwich on 28 Ju...
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