• A fascinating new essay by Victoria Carruthers on Tanning and the Gothic in Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, 5: 1 (2011).

• The art critic Waldemar Januszczak on Tanning’s painting Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943) in ‘The Art of the Night,’ BBC4 (21 Dec, 2011).

Dream Rocket Textile

Monday 23 January 2012

Outside: Activating Cloth to Enhance the Way We Live is a forthcoming international conference and forum for practicing artists, craftspeople, activists, curators, students and volunteers who are excited by the potential of cloth to enhance the way we live in contemporary society today. Venue: Creative Arts Building (CAB), University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3D

Programme
9:30am CAB Atrium: coffee and registration

10:00am CAG 07/08: Welcome to Outside: conference convenors Penny Macbeth and Claire Barber

10:20am Keynote Speaker: Professor Jennifer Marsh: ‘Connect, Debate, and Influence the Vision of Inclusion and Access to the Visual Arts’

11:25am Keynote Speaker: Professor Lesley Millar: ‘The Read Thread: A Lifeline? A Bloodline?’

11:55am Refreshments

12:10noon Keynote Speaker: June Hill: ‘Heartlands’

12:40pm Lunch and CAB exhibition

1:40pm Charlotte Cullen: ‘The Sleeping Bags Project’

2pm Jan Bowman: ‘Cloth to Engender Health and Well Being: Can a heightened sense of “well-being” be achieved in healthcare environments through the integration of textile artwork, which references nature’s rhythms?’

2:20pm Dr. Karen Dennis: ‘Fashion Cloth: Shaping Lives’

2:40pm Philippa Lawrence: ‘“Bound,” The Use of Cloth as Interface: Exploring Boundaries and Concepts in Relation to Site and Place’’

3pm Hilary Hollingworth: ‘Choli and Kanjari:  An Analysis of Items From a Small Textile Collection’

3:20pm Dr. Robert Clarke: ‘Nishida’s cloth:  two moments in a single unfolding’

3:40 pm Tea and Cake with Betsy: Informal Keynote: Craft Activist Betsy Greer

5pm Close of conference

Cost: £80 (Reduced fee for students and unaffiliated practitioners £40). Click here to book a place. For more details please contact myself (c.f.mcara@hud.ac.uk) or Claire Barber (Lecturer in Textile Craft): c.l.barber@hud.ac.uk

Castles of Illusion

Laurence Figgis

Brin Frost

Zoe Williams
Saturday 3 December – Saturday 17 December 2011
12:00pm – 6:00pm: FREE

An exhibition of new work by Laurence Figgis, Brin Frost and Zoe Williams. The artists have in-common an interest in the creation of internalised worlds, drawing on aspects of the surreal, the uncanny, the precious and the abject, and mobilising a diverse range of mediums to explore these themes including ornamental sculpture, collage and film. The objects and two-dimensional works on show in this exhibition appear on first glance to be drawn from a rich concoction of soap-opera, luxury commodity and primal myth. However on closer inspection, these isolated signifiers, divorced from their original context, often reveal darker, more disturbing undertones.

Intermedia Gallery, The CCA:, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD

Postgraduate Research Forum

Alice Culture: The Endurance of Wonderland

Saturday 19 November 2011, 10.00-13.00, Tate Liverpool

“But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle! - Alice

To coincide with the Alice in Wonderland exhibition, Tate Liverpool will be hosting a Postgraduate Research Forum. This event will give current postgraduates students, and those who have recently graduated, the opportunity to share and consider all things Alice.

The presentations and discussions will be chaired by Catriona McAra, Research Assistant, University of Huddersfield.

Jacqueline Butler and Sonya Robinson

The ‘Afterlife’ of Photography: Lewis Carroll, Alice and the Reverie of Childhood

Dani Abulhawa

Following and Falling: Intuition, Alice and Public Urban Transactions

Leon Coward (collaboration with Taliesin, Imogen and Ann Coward)

The Music of Wonderland

Neil Coombs

Adapting Alice: Film and Television Adaptations of the Alice Stories

Tickets £5, and are available at Tate Liverpool

This Research Forum coincides with the symposium The Wonder of Alice: Images, Myths and Realities, on Friday 18 November 2011 at Tate Liverpool. For more information visit www.tate.org.uk

Alice in Wonderland is showing at Tate Liverpool from 4 November 2011– 29 January 2012

Madness and Revolt

University of Edinburgh

9.30 – 9.50  REGISTRATION

9.50 – 10.00 Organisers’ Introduction Jenny Gypaki (University of Edinburgh)

Session I. Madness as Knowledge

Chair: Mary Jane Boland (University of Nottingham)

10.00 – 10.20 Katy Barrett (Ph.D Candidate, University of Cambridge and National Maritime Museum) ‘This Iridescent Bubble of Knowledge’: Hogarth’s Longitude Lunatic Between Madness and Revolt’

10.20 – 10.40 Ben Zweig (Ph.D Candidate, Boston University) ‘Madness and Knowledge: The Hermeneutics of Suicide in Medieval Art’

10.40 – 11.00 Q&A

11.00 – 11.30 COFFEE

Session II. The Faces of Madness & Criminality

Chair: Jenny Gypaki (University of Edinburgh)

11.30 – 11.50 Hazel Murray (MA Student, National University of Ireland) ‘Through the Looking Glass: The work of Cesare Lombroso, considered through the wider lens of Italian psychiatry during the nineteenth century’

11.50 – 12.10 Agata Gomolka (MA Student, University of Warwick) ‘The Faces of Madness: Disease and Revolt in Architectural Sculpture’

12.10 – 12.30 Alexandra Tommasini (Ph.D Candidate, Courtauld Institute of Art) ‘Morire di Classe: The Role of the Photobook in Changing Perceptions of Mental Illness’

12.30 – 13.00 Q&A

13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH

Session III. Revisiting Surrealist Irrationalities

Chair: Catriona McAra (University of Huddersfield)

14.00 – 14.20 Lucy Form (MLitt Candidate, University of Glasgow) ‘You Don’t Have to Be a Medium But it Helps: Mouvement Flou or Mouvement Fou?’

14.20 – 14.40 Allison O’Sullivan (Ph.D Candidate, University of New South Wales) ‘Les Belles Dames Sans Raison: Claude Cahun, Lise Deharme and ‘Hysterical’ Objects’

14.40 – 15.00 Q&A

15.00 – 15.30 COFFEE

Session IV. Body Politics in Revolt

Chair: Mary Jane Boland (University of Nottingham)

15.30 – 15.50 Amy Robson (MRes Candidate, Plymouth University), ‘The Dog Days: Canine Class Contagions and Political Parodies in Victorian Visual Culture’

15.50 – 16.10 Monika Winiarczyk (Ph.D Candidate, University of Glasgow), ‘Jewish Melancholia: An Examination of the Interrelationship Between Medieval Notions of Melancholy and the Jewish Body’

16.10 – 16.30 Q&A

16.30 – 17.30 Keynote: Dr Sabine Wieber (University of Glasgow) ‘Gendered Practices of Everyday Life in central European Asylums circa 1900′

17.30 – 18.55 DRINKS RECEPTION

19.00 DINNER (optional*)

*Optional conference dinner at Spoon Café Bistro – payment for the dinner will be collected on the day from those wishing to attend.

For more details and to register for this exciting event please visit the Association of Art Historians

'David Milne: Hermit Point' From the series Menie: a portrait of a North East community in conflict © Alicia Bruce

Aberdeen-born photographer Alicia Bruce is showing her ubiquitous photographs of the residents of Menie at Moray Art Centre (15 October – 26 November 2011). The exhibition consists of  photographic portraits compositionally based on well-known paintings such as Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930). It offers an urgent artistic response to the proposed compulsory purchase orders brought about by American entrepreneur Donald Trump’s controversial golf course in the Aberdeenshire area. Over the last few years the residents of Menie have stood firmly over their rights and Bruce’s exhibition has helped put their voices on the map. Two of her portraits, Mike and Shelia Forbes: Mill of Menie and Molly Forbes: Paradise, were recently acquired for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh which will reopen in December after refurbishment. An interpretation text by yours truly accompanies the exhibition.

Untitled (Flogging) by Robert Powell 2011

The deadlines for proposals for two research forums I am currently helping to organise are fast approaching:

1. ‘Alice Culture’ research forum at TATE Liverpool

2. ‘Madness and Revolt,’ New Voices symposium at the University of Edinburgh for the Association of Art Historians

I look forward to hearing from you!