Gallery London Research Articles

Guiding the Nation's Taste: Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and the Construction of the National Gallery in London, 1824–1842

Guiding the Nation's Taste: Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and the Construction of the National Gallery in London, 1824–1842

A Dutch connection: Re-identifying a sitter at the National Portrait Gallery in London

A Dutch connection: Re-identifying a sitter at the National Portrait Gallery in London

Guiding the Nation's Taste: Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and the Construction of the National Gallery in London, 1824–1842

Scholars of nineteenth-century British literature have become increasingly interested in the period's visual culture and its impact on print culture. This, alongside scholarly works on the period's periodical press, has led to a more nuanced understanding of the intersections between visual and verbal print culture. However, few literary scholars have examined the ways in which contemporary periodicals reacted to the formation of the National Gallery. Partly this is due to the fact that, while the National Gallery was founded in 1824, it was not until 1831 that funds were secured to create an adequate space to house the collection, and it would take another seven years, more or less the entire reign of William IV, before the building in Trafalgar Square was opened to the public. This neglect reflects the tendency of scholars of both the Romantic and Victorian periods to gloss over the 1830s, something this essay seeks to redress. The gap between the founding of the National Gallery and the laying of the first foundation stone coincides with an important era of both art appreciation and the periodical press's influence on public taste and national identity. By examining the treatment of the National Gallery in a range of periodicals from the 1820s and 1830s, we can better understand the ways in which the National Gallery functioned in the public imagination and how periodicals helped readers claim ownership of artworks that had originated largely on foreign soil. As this essay demonstrates, the National Gallery as a conceptual space was created in and between the pages of the magazines before the physical building was constructed, and they continued to guide their reader-viewers long after the doors had finally opened.

Artists and the Rite of Passage North to the Temperate Zone

For an aspiring Australian artist, a sojourn north to the world’s large cultural centres has become a rite of passage and to some extent a requirement to achieve recognition both abroad and at home. Many of Australia’s most recognised artists have spent some or a considerable amount of time abroad, such as musician Peter Sculthorpe, painter Arthur Streeton and contemporary indigenous photographer Tracy Moffatt. Despite the frequency of this rite of passage, Australian art continues to struggle to achieve significant international recognition. This article considers the influence of this rite of passage for Australian artists in the context of a rapidly changing global art world, which is increasingly subject to changing production and consumption patterns. It does so in the context of what Bourdieu describes as a cultural field and which involves a complex arrangement of horizontal and vertical power relationships. The paper also considers the extent to which this rite of passage is relevant in the second decade of the 21st century and for a nation which, although having strong historical ties to Britain in particular, is geographically closer to Asia and in a time of the Asian century.

Comment on ‘A visual literacy course for dermatology trainees’

We would like to congratulate Griffin and colleagues on their report of an innovative training programme in visual literacy for dermatology registrars (residents).1 Our experience of visual literacy training for registrars in South London resonates with that of the Manchester group, and we would like to add to this by describing our observation of some additional qualitative benefits which may be derived from such training. Training similar to that described by the Griffin et al was delivered to 10 dermatology registrars at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, England from September 2016 – January 2017 in 5 one hour sessions. Baseline and post-course assessments, scored on the unique accurate observations method described by Huang et al,2 were carried out and demonstrated an increase in the number of unique accurate observations per image following the course compared to pre-course assessment. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Critical adult education and the art gallery museum

Although burdened by legacies of elitism, exclusion and paternalism, some public museums are attempting to respond to the socio-environmental problems currently facing our planet by developing critical non-formal educational activities to foster consciousness and change. This article explores one such response; a six-week non-formal course entitled Art and Slow Violence hosted at Tate Modern and Tate Britain galleries in London. The course was centred around a variety of artworks and multimedia representations aimed to stimulate dialogue, reflections and meaning making about the social and ecological impacts of the aftermaths of climate change, war and conflict. As a participant researcher, I gathered data through observations, journaling, and interviews. Findings show tensions between learning and education, expert-teacher and novice-learner, audience wants and knowledge assumptions, instructor and organisations expectations and challenges vis-à-vis self-direction around the artworks. Yet the course was powerful, particularly the informal gatherings following each class and the stories the artworks told and represented. Together, these served as means to question critically, reflect, debate and comprehend differently, the complex, contentious, but often ‘invisible’ socio-environmental challenges of our time.

Meanderings Here and There in Poe's “Balloon Hoax”

Meanderings Here and There in Poe's “Balloon Hoax”

Editorial

Abstract

Guernica Remakings: Action, Collaboration and Thread

Reworkings of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica include versions in textile that have been produced or exhibited in recent years. Amongst these is Remaking of Picasso’s Guernica as a Protest Banner, an initiative in which the author herself was involved. Focusing on the ideas and concerns that underpinned the production of this banner, the author explains the significance of its deployment in public sewing events held in 2013 and 2014. Comparison is also drawn between the banner and two other reworkings of the Picasso painting in textile—a 1955 version that was included in an exhibition by Goshka Macuga called The Nature of the Beast that was held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London between 2009 and 2010, and the Keiskamma Guernica, a work made in South Africa that was completed in mid-2010.It is suggested that these various reworkings point to the amenability of the Guernica to be adapted to convey a statement of opposition to those in power who prioritize their own agendas to the detriment of civilians. But whereas Picasso produced his work solitarily, its reworking or reinterpretation in textile has enabled it to be made by collectives and/or to serve as a forum for group activism.

Kurt Schwitters and 27 Senses: Resonances in Norway, England, and Time

In the 1990s, Hal Foster observed that ethnographic or politicized art practices were diverging from a neo-avant-gardiste precedent: an investment in the remobilization of historic experimentations such as those performed by the members of Dada. I argue in this article that, more recently, the artists Kenneth Goldsmith, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Karl Holmqvist, Jutta Koether and Eline McGeorge were testing Foster’s assessment of the ‘ethnographic turn’ and also what he refers to as the ‘archival impulse’ by reintroducing, from a curatorial standpoint, the potential of postmodernist breaks with linear thinking. Specifically, the collective considered the years Kurt Schwitters spent in exile as an inhabitable site and not an art historical narrative in need of retelling. Rather than seeking to explain paradigmatic shifts in the formal qualities of Dadaist assemblages through distanced reproduction, they embarked on an artists’ residency that would allow them to critically engage with the concept of Merz in idiosyncratic and ephemeral ways. I suggest that this allowed them to successfully arrive at what Foster calls a ‘productive tension’, evidenced in the subsequent installation of their group exhibition 27 Senses at Chisenhale Gallery in London, 2010.

Not just seeing, but also feeling art: Mid-air haptic experiences integrated in a multisensory art exhibition

Abstract The use of the senses of vision and audition as interactive means has dominated the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for decades, even though nature has provided us with many more senses for perceiving and interacting with the world around us. That said, it has become attractive for HCI researchers and designers to harness touch, taste, and smell in interactive tasks and experience design. In this paper, we present research and design insights gained throughout an interdisciplinary collaboration on a six-week multisensory display – Tate Sensorium – exhibited at the Tate Britain art gallery in London, UK. This is a unique and first time case study on how to design art experiences whilst considering all the senses (i.e., vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste), in particular touch, which we exploited by capitalizing on a novel haptic technology, namely, mid-air haptics. We first describe the overall set up of Tate Sensorium and then move on to describing in detail the design process of the mid-air haptic feedback and its integration with sound for the Full Stop painting by John Latham (1961). This was the first time that mid-air haptic technology was used in a museum context over a prolonged period of time and integrated with sound to enhance the experience of visual art. As part of an interdisciplinary team of curators, sensory designers, sound artists, we selected a total of three variations of the mid-air haptic experience (i.e., haptic patterns), which were alternated at dedicated times throughout the six-week exhibition. We collected questionnaire-based feedback from 2500 visitors and conducted 50 interviews to gain quantitative and qualitative insights on visitors’ experiences and emotional reactions. Whilst the questionnaire results are generally very positive with only a small variation of the visitors’ arousal ratings across the three tactile experiences designed for the Full Stop painting, the interview data shed light on the differences in the visitors’ subjective experiences. Our findings suggest multisensory designers and art curators can ensure a balance between surprising experiences versus the possibility of free exploration for visitors. In addition, participants expressed that experiencing art with the combination of mid-air haptic and sound was immersive and provided an up-lifting experience of touching without touch. We are convinced that the insights gained from this large-scale and real-world field exploration of multisensory experience design exploiting a new and emerging technology provide a solid starting point for the HCI community, creative industries, and art curators to think beyond conventional art experiences. Specifically, our work demonstrates how novel mid-air technology can make art more emotionally engaging and stimulating, especially abstract art that is often open to interpretation.

Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell takes centre stage at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Somewhat shockingly, this is Bell’s first major monographic exhibition and it sets out to present her as a pioneer and progressive. We encounter her work at its most radical and exciting, predominantly in the period of intensified experimentation during the 1910s. She emerges at the vital centre of Bloomsbury’s artistic network, her scope and range demonstrated across different genre and media. Bell’s experiment in pur...

Libraries and the geography of use: how does geography and asset “attractiveness” influence the local dimensions of cultural participation?

ABSTRACTThe project “Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values” (2012–2018) explores the ways in which the “situatedness” of participation is an important factor in understanding the socio-political dynamics of cultural participation [Miles, A., & Gibson, L. (2016). Everyday participation and cultural value. Cultural Trends, 25(3), 151–157]. This paper on the geography of library use is an early presentation of ongoing research which seeks to understand the impact of geography and asset “attractiveness” on particular kinds of cultural participation. Many studies have focused on traditional “push” factors to participation, understanding attendance and participation in their various forms through individual- and household-level demographic and socio-economic characteristics [e.g. Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo, M., & Wright, D. (2009). Culture, class, distinction. London: Routledge]. However, a number of recent studies have also revealed the significant effects of supply and proximity on participation [Brook, O. (2013). Reframing models of arts attendance: Understanding the role of access to a venue. The case of opera in London. Cultural Trends, 22(2), 97–107; Brook, O. (2016). Spatial equity and cultural participation: How access influences attendance at museums and galleries in London. 25(1), 12–34; Widdop, P., & Cutts, D. (2012). Impact of place on museum participation. Cultural Trends, 21(1), 47–66; Hooper-Greenhill, E., Phillips, M., & Woodham, A. (2009). Museums, schools and geographies of cultural value. Cultural Trends, 18(2), 149–183]. In this paper, our approach to the geography of cultural participation focuses on the role of what we are terming “pull factors” to participation at specific locales over others. Many forms of participation in socio-cultural activities involve a level of spatial decision-making, weighing up factors relating to the destination(s), and the time and effort of getting there. How much do these “pull factors” impact on participation, and are they quantifiable? In order to understand if these spatial considerations are an explanatory factor in explaining the socio-demography of library use, we have applied the urban planning concept of trip-chaining and a geographically defined categorisation of asset attractiveness [O’Reilly, N., Berger, I. E., Hernandez, T., Parent, M. M., & Seguin, B. (2015). Urban sportscapes: An environmental deterministic perspective on the management of youth sport participation. Sport Management Review, 18, 291–307.; Thill, J.-C., & Thomas, I. (1987). Toward conceptualizing trip-chaining behavior: A review. Geographical Analysis, 19, 1–17] to reveal the extent to which a library visit is linked to other everyday activities. This paper introduces the preliminary findings of this study which aims to assess the impact of geospatial variables on cultural participation.

Performances, Acknowledgments, and Dinner: Closing of the 40th Anniversary Celebration

Performances, Acknowledgments, and DinnerClosing of the 40th Anniversary Celebration Dagmawi Woubshet (bio), Charles Henry Rowell, Rizvana Bradley (bio), Nathaniel Mackey (bio), Joshua Bennett (bio), Howard Dodson (bio), and Ben Okri (bio) The closing of the 40th Anniversary Celebration included the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Awards, closing remarks by Howard Dodson and Ben Okri, and musical performances by Carole Strong Thompson, Robert Reid, Hermine Pinson, and Harris Simon. WOUBSHET: I conducted an interview with Dr. Rowell at the Goethe-Institut in Addis Abba back in 2009, a year before the Callaloo Conference in Addis in 2010. I asked him, foolishly, “Dr. Rowell, how do you keep up with the literary trends of the day so that the journal keeps current?” Without skipping a beat, he replied, “We don’t have to keep up since we set the trend.” [Laughter] Foolish question, wise answer. Callaloo has been setting the standard for the past forty years, and in the process has forever changed the American and English literary canon. It has done so by prizing rigor, experimentation, what Greg Pardlo calls “radical individuality,” and also our collective ideals of justice, of freedom, and of beauty. Dr. Rowell, we treasure you, we love you, and we thank you for being our standard-bearer. Please, I was going to say “raise your glass” but raise your hand to Charles Rowell. I’d like to invite to the podium the Editor of Callaloo, Dr. Charles Henry Rowell. [Applause] ROWELL: We also honor the people who have been setting trends in various forms of art in literature, in literary criticism, in fiction writing, and in visual art. That’s what we’re going to do tonight. First, we will honor Frank Bowling for his lifetime achievement in visual art. Rizvana will not only speak about him, but she will accept his award. He is not able to be with us this evening. BRADLEY: Thank you so much, Dr. Rowell. It is a great honor to speak about Frank Bowling’s work, as I’ve also had the honor of teaching his work in many of my courses in art history and visual studies. Frank Bowling’s paintings have been exhibited widely and internationally. His selected solo shows have included the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Serpentine Gallery in London, and a touring retrospective in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. It’s worth noting as well that in 2017 the Haus der Kunst in Munich will present Frank Bowling: Mappa Mundi, a comprehensive survey of large-scale paintings. Frank Bowling, Order of the British Empire, was born in 1936 in Guiana and moved to London in 1953, where his artistic career began shortly after his arrival at the Royal College of Art. He started his career as a figurative painter and then moved to abstraction and became involved in the British pop movement in the 1950s and [End Page 197] 1960s. His first solo exhibition, Image in Revolt, was hosted the year Bowling graduated at the Grabowski Gallery in London, and he decided to move to New York in 1966, as Stuart Hall noted in a very well-known essay about Black British artists published in the 1980s. He was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967. Bowling’s paintings began to turn to abstraction, the field in which his contributions were to be most significant, and he was frequently visited by the art critic, Clement Greenberg. His series of quasi-abstract color fields, overlaid with stenciled images of maps of Australia, South America, and Africa, are his best known works, in which he experimented with the possibilities of paint. It has been noted that Bowling’s legacy concerns his innovations with new process within his paintings. It should also be noted that he developed a special mechanical apparatus, which tilted the canvas so he could pour paint on it, and that allowed him to create what we now know as his famous and iconic poured paintings. I’m very happy today to be able to speak about his work very briefly and his contribution to contemporary art, and I’m honored to accept this award on his...

About the Artist: Lisa Reihana

About the Artist:Lisa Reihana Moana Nepia Through a pioneering practice combining photography, video, and installation, Lisa Reihana has achieved what most artists only ever dream about: she makes a full-time living from her art. Of Māori Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tū, and Ngāti Hine descent, she has had her work exhibited in museums, art galleries, and art festivals around the world, including the Auckland Art Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland, October Gallery in London, Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia, and Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Moana Nepia In 2017, Reihana represents Aotearoa/New Zealand at the Venice Biennale with Emissaries, which includes in Pursuit of Venus [infected], a 32-minute and 23-meter-long video projection inspired by Josef Dufour’s 1804 French scenic wallpaper Les Sauvages De La Mer Pacifique (http://www.inpursuitofvenus.com) Utilizing green-screen technology to superimpose performers against a back-drop based on Dufour’s whimsical Tahitian landscape, Reihana’s vignettes explore meetings between Polynesian ancestors and early European explorers. Historic characters such as Captain James Cook present glimpses into some of the darker “infected” moments of those encounters and also into the scientific motives for European expeditions alluded to in the title. Monumental in scale, this work follows similarly striking presentations in Venice by other Māori artists such as Michael Parekowhai, Rachael Rakena, and Brett Graham. Stills from in Pursuit of Venus [infected] appear in this issue along with images from Reihana’s earlier video and photographic work. Her philosophy is “making” rather than “taking,” with a long-standing emphasis on portraiture photographs and historical and ancestral narratives. The collaborative nature of Reihana’s practice is made possible with the help of her family, numerous friends, and fellow artists. [End Page VII] Click for larger view View full resolution in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (detail 1), by Lisa Reihana, 2015. hd video, color, sound, 32 min. Vignettes in iPOVi, including the tattooing of a European sailor, reconstruct actual and imaginary encounters between indigenous Pacific Islanders and early European explorers. As Anne Salmond has suggested, such meetings were “sometimes explosive and destructive (‘infected’), sometimes genial and creative . . . world-shifting encounters” (quoted in the exhibition catalog Lisa Reihana: In Pursuit of Venus, edited by Rhana Devenport and Clare McIntosh [2015, 3]). [End Page VIII] Click for larger view View full resolution Diva, by Lisa Reihana, 2007. Photographic print on aluminum, 2000 x 1200 mm, from Digital Marae. Diva features among a collection of photographic representations of atua (ancestral deities) and contemporary icons in Reihana’s ongoing Digital Marae installation, which transforms gallery spaces to resemble wharenui (meeting houses) using digital imagery in place of wooden carvings and woven panels. [End Page IX] Click for larger view View full resolution Dandy, by Lisa Reihana, 2007. Photographic print on aluminum, 2000 x 1200 mm, from Digital Marae. Countering stereotypical depictions of Māori masculinity, strength, and prowess that focus on physical accomplishments on the battlefield or rugby playgrounds, Reihana’s Dandy, with full-face moko (tattoo) and Victorian attire, asserts a quietly confident sense of elegance and poise. [End Page X] Click for larger view View full resolution Hinepukohurangi, by Lisa Reihana, 2001. Photographic print on aluminum, 2000 x 1000 mm, from Digital Marae. Described as “Children of the Mist,” Ngāi Tūhoe people from Aotearoa trace their ancestry from Hinepukohurangi, the mist that surrounds their mountains and cloaks their valleys. [End Page XI] Click for larger view View full resolution Maui, by Lisa Reihana, 2007. Photographic print on aluminum, 2000 x 1200 mm. From Digital Marae. The ancestral demigod Maui features in creation stories across the Pacific as a creative innovator, trickster, and instigator of change. Having hauled new lands up from the ocean floor, slowed down the sun, and sourced the secret of fire, he is depicted in Digital Marae as surfing a wave toward us. Maui role model for the power of transformative thinking. [End Page XII] Click for larger view View full resolution Mahuika, by Lisa Reihana, 2001. Photographic print on aluminum...

Art, Geopolitics and Metapolitics at Tate Galleries London

ABSTRACTArt galleries and museums have often been considered as sites at which the international and the political are both enacted and reworked. But how exactly does art ‘do’ geopolitics? Taking existing work on art and geopolitics in the gallery and museum as its departure point, this article advances a specific conceptual argument for how art does geopolitics that connects thinking in this area with broader debates in aesthetics and politics. Building on Jacques Rancière’s account of art as a dispositif, it explores the aesthetic politics – or metapolitics – through which artistic interventions have raised questions of oil within the Tate Galleries in London. Drawing out its ambiguities as well as potential critical implications, the article illustrates distinct ways in which the metapolitics of art may be activated via a discussion of The Robinson Institute, 2012, and of a series of interventions conducted since 2010 by the group Liberate Tate. In conclusion, the article draws out connections between the metapolitics of art and questions of governmentality.

Mode in Flux, Roca London Gallery, London, 1 July–27 August 2016

Abstract

‘New Man’: Liu Ding in conversation with Edward Sanderson (trans. Carol Yinghua Lu)

Abstract Liu Ding is an artist living and working in Beijing. Liu’s solo exhibition, titled ‘New Man’, was staged at MOT International gallery in London, United Kingdom from the 10 April to 27 June 2015. The following conversation took place near Liu’s home in Beijing on 12 May 2015. In this conversation Liu describes works included in ‘New Man’, and their significances as a related group of works within the context of the exhibition’s installation. He links aspects of these works to his continuing research (in collaboration with Carol Yinghua Lu) into the introduction and development of Soviet-inflected Socialist Realism in China, the accommodations that artists made with the ideologically driven aesthetic norms related to this, and the aesthetic and ideological legacy of this style for artists in China. At the same time, Liu places the experience and knowledge gained from his research in parallel with his practice as an artist and curator, all of which informs the exhibition ‘New Man’.

Place

Place

Review: Electronic Superhighway (2016–1966)

Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) WHITECHAPEL GALLERY LONDON JANUARY 29-MAY 15, 2016 There is no escaping the gargantuan pair of women's buttocks greeting the visitor entering Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966). With a series of speech bubbles emerging from deep within, Olaf Breuning's wall-scale photograph Text Butt (2015) places onto the naked female body a fragmented smartphone conversation made up of unrelated questions and nonsensical replies, in which she is quite literally speaking out of her ass. Introducing the theme of the body's changing relationship to technology that curator Omar Kholeif described as the starting point of the show's exploration of art and the internet, this is just one of the (exclusively) female bodies chosen to map this connection. To the left sits Katja Novitskova's Innate Disposition 2 (2012), a large cutout print of a small furry animal, nestled in a pair of manicured women's hands. To the right, in James Bridle's Homo Sacer (2014), a projected holographic image of a smiling woman hovers behind a wooden desk. Reminiscent of the kind of hologram appearing in bureaucratic spaces such as airports and government buildings to provide depersonalized instructions, she is a virtual receptionist who flickers into life as each gallery-goer walks through the door. Quoting decontextualized extracts from various nations' citizenship legislation, her singsong intonation welcomes us in, at the same time drawing our attention to the ways in which our sense of belonging is fragile and might be revoked. It is not clear whether the gendered nature of this opening display was intentional or an unthinking coincidence, but it places the image of woman in interesting relation to the technology at the heart of the exhibition--as naked, sexualized body parts to be penetrated and overcome, or as a kind of gatekeeper, a guardian of the secrets that follow in all their noisy, brazen, and in places, trashy glory. Including over one hundred works by seventy artists, Electronic Superhighway takes us back through time, posing the question: How has the internet changed art? Broad in scope, the curated response encompasses a variety of media and approaches, from the latest social media platforms, net.art, and computer-generated drawing, to traditional oil painting, photography, sculpture, film, and video. It covers many thematic bases: appropriation and remediation, authenticity and digital manipulation, technology and identity, the deconstruction of modernist paradigms and traditions, surveillance, and resistant forms of political agency. It was perhaps unavoidable that many are treated with a light touch, and in the crowded spaces of the large ground floor galleries of contemporary work, the flashing colors and glaring screens create an experience that at times feels like a rapid frog-march through its various themes. There is a lot to see. Covering the ever-evolving platforms in which we engage with the internet today, all the way back to the pre-internet era in which the earliest digital stirrings presented an exciting prospect to artists of the 1960s, there is no shared artistic approach. But the fluctuating and often uncomfortable relationship that emerges as the human body adopts, incorporates, and at times resists technology is an enduring theme throughout. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's about the internet, so there's a lot of sex. As part of his examination of its role in the negotiation of contemporary masculinity, Egyptian artist Mahmoud Khaled's series Do You Have Work Tomorrow? (2012) stages a Grindr conversation between two men. Presenting a fictional narrative as a series of thirty-two prints of iPhone screen shots, the banality of the dialogue draws attention to technology's everyday mediation of sexuality, despite the background turmoil of the Arab Spring suggested by the conversation's date. A similar relationship between social media and sexuality is explored in Celia Hempton's portraits of men encountered in chat rooms--albeit in a wholly different format. …