Research

See also WACCA

PRIMARY RESEARCH:     Liverpool Tate    Nottingham   Cresswell Crags

  • Depictions of midwife Salome at birth of Christ   Journal article
  • Depictions of Mary Art UK 
  • Linking patriarchy, female role, witchcraft
  • The witch - Ronald Hutton 
    • Slowly making my way through this book. Explores the "fear of the witch" as a global concept and taps into how witches were recognised, disempowered and punished across the globe. 
    • The concept of the witch is that humans cannot accept that things can just happen for no reason; someone has to be to blame, giving way to "the evil eye" 
    • Witches generally have always had to be someone familiar in a community - rare globally for witches to be suspected from other villages or social classes that don't mix. Generally a witch would have had a trait that we'd understand as a neurotypical trait or disability now.
    • How christianity sometimes merged with indigenous beliefs to create a hybrid belief system.
    • How overall, a fear of deviant individuals and how to address them publicly has "intended" over centuries to have positive impacts on social groups -  by enforcing conformity with shared moral codes, but also how it has been amplified and abused to forming patriarchal control structures. 
    • I'm interested in the erasure of a culture based in nature. - This is helping me to understand it.
  • Interview with Phyllida Barlow. Watched this 28.10.22 - references domesticity, craft and female associated creation like knitting and sewing not being allowed in her Fine Art Education.  I'd touched on this in a tutorial when I was working on this - I wasn't sure if the modroc on canvas board made it too "crafty". This is something I need to shake off.
    Phyllida also talks about working with what is idiosyncratic for the student - thinking about aspirations, what's in your head and working with processes. 
  • This is a push to be genuine - "creative art is a deeply private experience" She asks if Art is unseen or unexhibited does it cease to be art.   Made me think about how personal I'm happy to push the creativity in my own practice.

    1.11.22 Getting to grips with fairy tales and how they're identified / classified. I particularly like this adjective description  from Collins:
    A fairy tale place or situation is so wonderful that you can hardly believe that it is real.

    For me the traditional divine depiction of the mother and how females should behave falls into this but it feels satirical to use the term fairytale to call it out. Looking at Cindy Shermans Fairytale series, she's done exactly this; Taken what is easily adopted as a general consensus of what a woman should be and called it out with ugly and fake depictions. 

    Feminist art and the Maternal - Andrea Liss- went back to reading this. Eleanor from libraries suggested requesting the book as it's expensive to purchase outright but since getting a Kindle copy, and struggling to read it on my phone, I've got an iPad which makes it a bit easier to read digitally. 

    The book of English Magic - Philip Carr-Gomm & Richard Heygate. (Loan from Lauren in studio) 
    references early magic as born in darkness .....with the first magic being " green shoots out of the dark soil, sun moon, babies emerging from the womb ..., fire"  The magic that we now understand as science but from which fear, and a human instinct to protect or control emerged. 
    Cresswell Crags is referenced in this book.  The victorians damaged large sections of the caverns at Cresswell by using dynamite to find what they considered to be archeological, they changed the floor levels of the caverns, filled sections with concrete and created a lake where there used to be a river; so much of what is potentially there is lost.  Exposure to elements has also played a part and The legless Ladies of the Crags are an example of this. I considered adding the images of the cave art featuring women ( the legless ladies are elongated female figures which have also been interpreted as birds and there are also images depicting vulvas which appear upside down as if the artist was lying in a small space carving them) I feel this demonstrates a primal way of using art to try and understand the female and ability to rebirth. After the WACCA discussion on 2 Nov, I think the timeline is too separate (cave art -jumping straight to 20th century onwards)  so will instead use the 2 images of the Madonna that I referenced in my last essay to give historical context to the exhibition.  
     
    Went back to Kuhne Beveridge for WACCA exhibition: I want to display this photograph of the muse Ray Beveridge (Nazi propaganda shot re "Die Schwarze Schmach" ; the black shame"  next the the Veiled Venus sculpture.  Reference research article



    28.11.22 - Watched documentary "The gruesome trial of the Pendle Hill witches" (Lancashire) explains how influential James 1 bible, his book demonology (mandate for Britain to basically hunt witches and kill them) and legal guidance (Daltons Country Justice) that leant on the documents of the trial, was in the Salem witch trials and in the colonies of America.
    Teenage girl was convinced that she was a witch - after cursing a man after he didn't give her anything whilst begging (accounts reflect that he actually had a stroke - but she was so scared that she had done bad to him that the account grew attention from people looking for James 1 favour.
    Child account given credibility in the case. A 9 year old girl (Jennet Device) led to conviction of 12 people including her own mother, grandmother, sister and brother.   Children had been considered unreliable but they were also considered to be pure witnesses of the truth. Only witness accounts of 14+ children were considered until Daltons Country Justice.
    Convictions only starting to be questioned when a boy* confessed to lying about a story he'd created after hearing the story of the pendle hill feast. Science started to be introduced and physical evidence required- raised the standard of evidence in the trial.
    Documentary also draws on why James 1 was so paranoid about witches and that he actually led to convictions being reassessed after speaking to the boy.  
    It was possible to be aquitted of witchcraft - most convictions resulted in hanging - it was more widespread in Europe than england to be burnt.

    Side note: Church of England still performs exorcists.

    Mulkin Tower - "Mulkin" reference to slut
    Cunning women referenced as positive healers and cottage traders - (social worker/mediator/ midwife) opposite to witches who would steal your stuff and kill you.

    Historical context - time of movement towards private landowners away from communities cycling fields for different uses. Yeomen became landowners. Poor laws introduced.  

    29.11.22 - Watched Fanny Lye Deliver'd 2016.  I'd not really given much thought to films as research before but they do help you to get into the psyche of how people would have been and illustrate the bigger historical picture. (Resistance against puritans/ Cromwell in wake of civil war and loss of the King / power struggles/ Introduction of Quaker movement) 

    Looked at Career and motherhood in the art world; online video discussion around artists experience, issues, and obstacles.

    30.11.22 Idea for another film to watch Haxan

    Found an exhibition to look at -Hong Kong Witchcraft themed- magic in modern world v contemporary problems.

    http://www.enemiesofgoodart.org seems to have gone quiet after 2011 but featured talks and community artist activities centred around artist mothers,

    02.12.22 my copy of Mother Tongue landed with an interview with Catherine Opie and loads of articles around the mother experience. Going to read each feature one at a time to absorb!




    Watched History of our Time - see notes from 5 December. 
    carried on watching this into 6 December - Can't believe how little I know about people that have inspired change,

    7.12.22
    Now that I'm reading Rebecca Solnits hope in the dark, I can see the power of people in everyday news. This is an article about the covid restrictions in China after an apartment fire where several people including a child died. People reacted and rioted because they saw themselves in the same position - China has had to change their approach on the back of the peoples protests.  

    8.12.22
    Guardian article about grandparents plugging the childcare gap ; The idea of women being at home looking after the kids is slowly being replaced with the expectation that they have to work and still look after the kids because its impossible for many to live in a one income household, but it's also impossible to contribute because child care costs are so high. Theres a huge sway to grandparents helping - which I find interesting because society isn't addressing the complexity of family/ roles  and income - but we're being forced to take advantage of grandparents; often grandmothers.
    The older women that were considered redundant are now propping up the system.  But there's still little acknowledgement of unpaid labour.

    Made me think about the poem "Warning;When I am an old woman I shall wear purple"  Jenny Joseph.
    I love this for the complete 2 finger salute to social conformity - I may make a grandmother in purple clothing painting / a purple witch with the children.  Seems ironic that we've gone from images of witches eating children to an idea about a witch in purple thats now socially responsible for children - and society is good with that. I think it demonstrates where we are now.

    11.12.22
    Watched History of Now - Simon Schama - 3 episodes exploring how art is powerful enough to threaten society. See blog post. I finished this series last night and feel everything is beginning to connect.  
    I had thought about "man" (I use this term as a concept -mankind - rather than all people of one gender) ...fearing what he can't control; what was understood to be magic for example. MSB had made me consider that we're just completely out of touch with nature and removed from the real world...In the last episode  "The price of plenty" there was a section on Charlie Chaplin and how his films were viewed to criticise capitalism - to the degree that the FBI wanted him gone -He had a completely polar approach to that of Ayn Rand; who's film the Fountainhead idealises individualism - and capitalism -  In a world where -post war- everything was about production, going faster, further, taller (sky scrapers) nature was there to be conquered. 
    This led me to Margaret attwood and The handmaids tale - which I now need to watch - and to the writing of Rachel Carson "Silent Spring" 

    I watched Simon Schama meets Margaret Attwood - which includes some of the same footage but also contains a more specific conversation about Margaret remembering conversations with her scientist father as a teenager - she jokes that she was bored and wanted to do other things when he said "there's going to be nothing left but dandelions and cockroaches"
    In this episode they also reference Hitlers ideas about family (Kinder / Kitchen and Church) and the Romanian orphanages that happened as a result of a government policy that families had to have 5 children, Found an article that gives more detail about Ceausecu  and Decree 770. 

    I'd not acknowledged how many political interventions there were on reproduction;  Chinas 1 child policy, Row v Wade, Decree 770 and the cross of honour hitler policy for mothers.  It gives my practice more contextual scope but also - I feel I'm pin pointing what it is that I'm interested in conveying in my art practice.


Comments

Post a Comment