English Arts Research Articles

British history at Tate Britain post-Brexit: Rich, white men and space invaders

In 2023, Tate Britain rehung its semi-permanent collections display as a revisionist history of Britain. This major curatorial project makes compelling storytelling. Its critically engaged approach opens British art and history to wider interpretations. At the same time, the display elevates rich, white men. Drawing on a range of theoretical literature from cultural studies, sociology and art history, this article considers how Tate Britain operationalises difference and hierarchy as a British inheritance post-Brexit. I argue that key areas early in the first section of the display, Historic and Early Modern British Art (1550 to 1930), augment a rich, white, male hegemony, against which ‘others’, people of colour, the working classes and (some) white women, are presented as what Nirmal Puwar calls ‘space invaders’. I explore how curatorial revisions and other display strategies – chronology, staging, portraiture and binaries – both disrupt and reinforce the hegemony. The article includes my drawings of key areas of the display, which guide my research.

Chinese Art and British Art Journalism 1870–1920

This article considers British engagement with Chinese art, particularly ceramics, through a survey of the art press between 1870 and 1920. Chinese art objects were prominently discussed across this period and propelled British art discourse in new directions. Analysis of the representation of Chinese art across these publications allows for investigation into the interlocking mechanisms of new art professions, new sites of publication and new sites of exhibition, including museums, private galleries and department stores. The rapid proliferation of available objects and the comparative sparseness of knowledge about them created a stimulating vacuum of expertise that drew in a range of cultural actors. This reveals the enmeshed relationships between the emerging professions of art writers, dealers, curators and scholars, as well as the evolving identities of the art lover, art collector and philanthropist. The close study of Chinese art in British publications gives us an opportunity to trace the hidden-in-plain-sight mechanisms of art history: the actors and networks of individuals, institutions, objects, images and texts that reveal British art history in the making and the formative role played in this process by Chinese art.

Intorno a Carpaccio 2023 John Ruskin, Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice. A Critical Edition, with Other Texts on Carpaccio and Venetian Painting

This article considers briefly the main academic news on Vittore Carpaccio that has appeared in recent years. It then focuses on the recent publication of John Ruskin’s volume, Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice, edited by Paul Tucker (Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2023). The article in particular examines the relationship between Ruskin and Carpaccio, analysing the evolving perspective of the English art historian on this remarkable painter, who was profoundly influenced by his personal experiences.

Archival versos: Unwritten, unread, unreadable, unwritable

A “verso” is the side of a leaf that is to be read second. British conceptual artist Cornelia Parker uses the term in her practice to show the deconstruction of everyday objects, and how “even the most insignificant things can trigger a deeper meaning” (2016). This paper uses a Calvino-inspired creativecritical approach toward archival research to explore potential “versos” in archived text. It explores this from four viewpoints: the unwritten, unread, unreadable and unwritable. This exploration is founded on a claim by Italo Calvino: “We write to give the unwritten world a chance to express itself through us” (1983). From the unwritten, this paper moves to the unread as embodied by “unreadable” programming language as verso in digital writing. The final aspects – “unreadable” and “unwritable” – focus on my attempts to read Georges Perec’s materials at the UQ Fryer Library. In August 1981, Perec was writer-in-residence in the French Department, during which he intended to write a novel in fifty-three days, titled 53 Days. My first attempt to read the materials found them “missing”. When located, the notes on offer were not sufficient to comprehend Perec’s proposed unfinished project. I therefore use “unreadable” programming language to program poetry from Perec’s archival remains to explore digital methodological approaches to contemporary creative writing.

Towards a framework for care-full teacher learning: stories from the British art show professional development programme

ABSTRACT The education system in England can arguably be characterised as care-less. Art teachers, for example, are rarely offered opportunities to acquire subject-specific knowledges. This paper reports on a programme which supported art teachers to engage with the critical, find comfort with/in the indeterminate, and take up the questioning approach espoused in contemporary arts philosophies. We draw on interviews with fourteen teachers and a feminist ethic of care to suggest that the programme’s focus on particularity, politics and purpose recognised the realpolitik of teachers’ work. Unlike the logic of cause and effect, teachers were trusted to direct their own learning and, over time, they changed their practices. We suggest that this ethical care framework could be more widely used to support transformational teacher learning.

Seeing the Anthropocene through Montage

Environmental changes and the age of the Anthropocene demand new ways of seeing. This article contends that montage serves both as form and as argument in representing the modern Western experience of human-nature relations in the supposed Anthropocene. It suggests that montage resists a single narrative of the Anthropocene and allows for modified readings to address race and capital through alternative notions such as the Capitalocene and Black Anthropocenes. Montage in relation to the Anthropocene is exemplified through two works by contemporary British artists that visualize agencies and legacies of human interventions into fluvial geographies, the sea, and whales: the touring film installation Vertigo Sea (2015) by John Akomfrah, and the site-specific intervention BERLINWAL (Berlin Whale) (2018) by Elizabeth Price at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany. Both works, though differing in medium, use montage as a structure to hold different materialities and multiple spatial and temporal scales, affording integration as well as confrontation. Their multifocal perceptions and multiple perspectives challenge ontologies and afford a decentering of the viewer toward de-exceptionalizing the human.

Bookshelf

Abstract: Debra Greschner reviews four recent publications. In The Songs of Clara Schumann , Stephen Rodgers presents analysis of this oeuvre of art songs. Exploring English Lyrics: Selection and Pronunciation of English Art Song Repertoire by Cherie Montgomery and Allen Henderson offers phonetic transcriptions of selected art songs in English. Recorded Solo Concert Spirituals , 1916– 1922, compiled by Randye Jones, catalogues commercially recorded spirituals for solo voice. Joanie Brittingham, in Practicing for Singers: A Guide to Solid Practice Habits , provides advice in creating successful practice routines.

Motivation for pursuing a bachelor of arts in English: A case study of students at Thu Dau Mot University

Motivation for pursuing a bachelor of arts in English: A case study of students at Thu Dau Mot University

Copyist or Creative? The Emergence of the Woman Fashion Artist in Britain, 1880–1920

Abstract The period between 1880 and 1914 was a critical time for the redefinition of high fashion as a form of art, with couture garments displayed at international exhibitions and couturiers like Paul Poiret claiming the legal protection applied to artworks for his fashion designs. At the same time, a massive expansion in illustrated journals and catalogs selling mass-produced garments offered new possibilities for graphic artists, including women trained in the applied arts by public and private colleges. These trends intersected in the figure of the female “fashion artist,” who conceived new designs or presented them to the public—but did not stitch them. In some cases, this person was a designer working for a dressmaking firm or sample house, while others were copyists of existing garments. This article will analyze surviving documents produced by British women fashion artists; examine the life cycle of fashion artists, as revealed in census data; analyze the pathways for training and career development; and consider the ways in which fashion artists were discussed in women’s magazines, both as role models for employment and as fashion mediators.

The Independent Group: Working-class culture and collage

The history and work of the Independent Group, this important collective of creative practitioners which met from 1952 to 1955, has recently attracted unprecedented levels of attention. However, within the fields of architectural, art and design history, the issue of social class is largely absent in recent work and oversimplified in twentieth-century accounts. This is despite the recent increase in class analysis being applied to the British creative and university sectors. Using Potvin and Marchand’s methodology of agency and the work on social class by Bev Skeggs as well as my own background, the article brings more specificity to the question of the working-class avant-garde and the Independent Group, using new research into the backgrounds of its members. Public funding enabled many who would not traditionally have benefitted from tertiary education to undertake full-time study, and this class dynamic made a difference to the post-war cultural landscape in the United Kingdom. The power of working-class agency within and against pre-existing elite structures is a key theme of the article. Working-class culture is a vital, yet hitherto marginalized, component of the Independent Group project. The article asks why references to social class are notably absent from accounts of post-war British art and design.

The Archaeology of Absence in Kamila Shamsie’s <i>A God in Every Stone</i>

Approximately 1.4 million Indians were recruited to the First World War. Despite their role in the war and the high number of deaths, most of the literature in English on the Great War has been narrowed down to British experience. However, in recent years their stories have been emerging through fiction, in academic research and educational projects resulting in a more complete picture of the war and who was involved. A British arts education group engaged students in a project designed to teach and share the stories of forgotten soldiers from World War I. Writing about the project in The Guardian in 2018 Kamila Shamsie claimed the aim was to teach school children about the war and the involvement of non-British recruits whose narratives had up till then been unknown. In academia, respected scholars such as Santanu Das or Claire Buck have undergone thorough research on the representation of Indian recruits through an analysis of literary texts and artefacts states that war memories of the Indian sepoy whose stories were left behind and forgotten on the battle ground. According to Das, the lack of stories by Indian recruits does not mean that history cannot be rectified since it is possible to recover the experience and memory of the recruits. Recently emerging literary representation of the Indian recruit provided historical insight into their experience shedding light on new perspectives of the War. The aim of this article is to analyse the representation of Indian recruits and their experience of World War I in Kamila Shamsie’s 2014 novel <i>A God in Every Stone.</i> I argue that through fiction, it is possible to construct a broader and more inclusive understanding of this historical event as well as to uncover deeper complexities and anxieties on the Indian colonial experience.

The British Art Section of the 1906–1907 New Zealand International Exhibition: Its Complexities and Contributions to New Zealand’s Art History

The British Art Section of the 1906–7 New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch remains the largest exhibition of British art in New Zealand history. However, its cultural impact has been little explored in art history scholarship. This article addresses contrasting interpretations of the section by examining its origins, purchases and legacies, reconsidering and recontextualising previous analysis by art historians Linda Tyler and Warren Feeney. The success of the section neither devastated nor revitalised the work of local artists, but instead reinforced the continued importance of purchasing British art for New Zealand and the pivotal role it played in shaping this country’s nascent art collections.

Gordon Crook: Banners and Wall Hangings

Gordon Crook was a British textile artist who came to live in Wellington in 1972, aged 51. Through contacts at the Dowse Art Museum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Crook was commissioned by the architect Miles Warren to make banners for the New Zealand Chancery in Washington D.C. (1979–80), followed by banners and wall hangings for the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington (1981–83). Crook’s work was suigeneric, idiosyncratic in its imagery and development, a world feeding on itself. Outside any national or current artworld style, Crook extended and enriched New Zealand’s public visual art scene.[i] [i] See my three articles on the work of Gordon Crook: “Gordon Crook: tapestries,” Tuhinga 31 (2020): 70–90; “Gordon Crook: The Pastel Triptychs,” Tuhinga 32 (2021): 120–34; and “Gordon Crook and the Wolf-Man,” Tuhinga 33 (2022): 1–29.

Down, and Under Pressure: The Decline of Local and Non-Anglo Best-Selling Recording Artists in Australia 2000–2023: Submitted to the International Journal of Music Business Research 14.06.24.

Abstract The global consolidation and platformitisation of recorded music have attracted attention to changes in local artist representation in national sales charts and, more broadly, to the diversity of nationalities within recorded music markets. Global platform distribution has been perceived to aid local music economies and the diversity of cultural production. This article quantitatively analyses the annual Australian top 100 single and album charts 2000–2023 to determine Australian artist representation, Indigenous artist representation and diversity of nationality over the period. The data reveals, contrary to propositions of glocalisation and internationalisation, that Australian and non-Anglo artist representation has declined significantly, while North American and British artists have increased their presence in the Australian charts. It also finds that Indigenous chart representation over the period is low, stable and in line with population ratios. The data raises issues for artists, companies, policy makers and consumers in the Australian music industries.

The Art of Diplomacy: British Artists on the Carnegie Institute’s Jury of Award

The Art of Diplomacy: British Artists on the Carnegie Institute’s Jury of Award

Touching the Franks Casket: Global History and the Trojan Past on an Early Medieval English Object

Abstract The contribution examines the Franks Casket, a whale-bone casket probably produced in the northern British kingdom of Northumbria in the eighth century that displays a number of carved images referencing events from different cultural and temporal contexts as well as inscriptions in Roman script and runes, Latin and Old English. We focus on the casket’s lid, which shows a siege scene, with an archer prominently displayed towards the middle, the word ægili carved above him. Traditionally understood as a reference to an unknown story about Weland’s brother Egil, the image has also been read as a depiction of the siege of Troy by a minority of scholars. While we offer evidence that the latter reading is at least somewhat better founded than the former, we argue that the lid’s design does not necessarily invite a straightforward identification with a single cultural context but rather works as a hinge that ties together the various cultural and temporal references on the casket. In allowing the viewer to construct various contexts in which the image might be viewed, the Franks Casket suggests their fundamental compatibility, as if the supposedly distinct historical and legendary materials had always overlapped and permeated each other. Taking into account the object’s material and aesthetic form thus makes it possible to break away from all-too-simple narratives of historical succession and helps us understand the complex temporalities that early medieval English art was capable of generating.

IMAGES OF ARISTOCRATES AND COMMON PEOPLE IN THE TRAGEDIES OF BENJAMIN JOHNSON

The article describes the interpersonal relationships of various states of society of the «post-Shakespearean» era in the artistic work of the outstanding English playwright and actor Benjamin Johnson. Relying on sources and scientific literature, the author of the article tries to recreate the layer of everyday life in London at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, to reveal the problem of the «survival» of actors in the first stationary theater «Globus», their attempts to communicate with aristocrats, the attitude towards famous actors and directors in the English late Middle Ages society The central problem of the research is also the relationship between V. Shaksrip and A. Ferabosko, whose acting troupes shared the «stage» of the «Globus» theater. All these questions are most vividly revealed in Benjamin Johnson’s tragedy «Thrice Crossing the Thames», which was published after his death at the author’s request. The image of English society revealed through the thoughts and worldview of his contemporary is simply amazing. In the author’s opinion, it is also valuable that Benjamin Johnson personally knew V. Shakespeare and A. Ferabosko, the unforgettable young actress Catherine Loster. Research methodology. The content-comparative method, the method of modification of concepts and terms, generalizing and problem-searching methods to reproduce the realities of the era were used to write the article. Conclusion. we see that the place of man and the concept of «humanity» in the English dramaturgy of the «post-Shakespearean» era have changed significantly. In English art, more and more realistic «notes» are felt. Instead of “elevated” and “low” on the pages of books, «street life», «urban slums», relations between new states of society, new social morality come to the English stage. In order to fully feel the depth of these changes, it is worth discovering the realistic human images reproduced by contemporaries of the «post-Neckspearian» era, understanding the criteria of their morality and humanity from the point of view of the author of the dramatic work, who wrote at the crossroads of two great eras.

Memory, Trauma, and Healing in the Works of Sanchita Islam

Following a brief biographical introduction, this essay investigates the pivotal function played by memory in the narratives and artistic works of Sanchita Islam, a British multimedia artist of mixed descent who passed away in 2023. Three distinct phases will be distinguished in the artist’s engagement with memory, each corresponding to a different stage of her journey toward self-awareness.

The Myth of Heterosexuality: Queer Australian Artists, Art Historians and Gallerists in London, 1930–1961

ABSTRACT The 1961 Recent Australian Painting exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London is an important and much-discussed moment in Australian art history. It is when the idea of Australian art as “isolated” and “exotic” first became popularised in both British and Australian cultures. The prominent Australian art historian Bernard Smith criticised the idea, but in many ways his book Australian Painting, published the year after, repeated the assumption. What is overlooked in accounts of the show is that many of its artists were not “isolated”, frequently having spent extended periods in Britain living and studying. But, more than this, what is rarely, if ever, discussed is how many of the artists in the show were queer, as was its curator, the director of the Whitechapel Gallery, Bryan Robertson. In many ways, the social and professional connections between Australian and British artists were forged through their shared homosexuality. It is this that puts Australian artists in connection with the British art scene and, on occasion, explains their influence upon it. Queerness has often connected Australian artists to those around the world—it is also the case for the Australian women artists in Paris before and after World War I.

Rebellion, Resistance, and Resilience: Three Black British Artists and Eco-Feminism

This paper critically discusses the work of three women artists of colour who, in different ways, engaged with environmental catastrophe and called for climate justice during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Leslie Hakim-Dowek, Gurminder Sikand, and Nina Edge each engaged in particular types of thoughtful, practice-led decolonial feminism that addressed the consequences of rampant corporate neo-colonialism and the ways that the global North has treated the global South as a site for material extraction and exploitation. Echoing the non-violent systems of protest of the women-led Chipko environmental movement in northern India, Sikand's delicate and gentle paintings may nonetheless be understood as searing eco-feminist statements; Edge's work from 1991 combines image and poetry to address the on-going consequences of the devastating industrial disaster at Bhopal, India, in 1984; while Hakim-Dowek's 1991 series of paintings titled Endangered Species (1991) presents a memorial to what has already been lost. This paper will argue that despite the curatorial and critical neglect experienced by these artists, their work nonetheless offers entryways into current, globally important, conversations about the ongoing struggle of women in the global South against white neo-colonial capitalism, and the fight for climate justice.