We Put the World Before You and Unhappy Valley
- Submitting institution
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University of Newcastle upon Tyne
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 249451-193545-1285
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Middlesbrough
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- As an extended research project with two separate but linked outputs.
• It is a long-form creative work with multiple components demonstrating sustained research effort over one year. The project involved creating two large-scale artworks and exhibiting these in two venues in England (MIMA and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
• It involved undertaking a complex, extended and multi-layered process of creative investigation. Jane and Louise Wilson work collaboratively as an artist duo. The project examined its topic from multiple perspectives and involved many collaborators in its co-production, including artists, scientists, archivists, a production team and museum staff.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This project comprises the video installation We Put The World Before You and sculpture and video installation Uncanny Valley in which the artists explore the enduring impact of WW1. In looking at how the conflict continues to shape our contemporary experience the works are a development from – and have been exhibited alongside – the artists’ earlier installation Undead Sun (2014). In We Put The World Before You, manipulated archive images showing the facial disfigurement of combatants are knitted together with digital facial reconstructions, and a recurring scene of actors depicting a TV- hypnotist’s performance. In Uncanny Valley, footage of a plastic surgery procedure on an injured soldier is projected through a 3D-printed sculpture of the artists’ heads which sits inside a tank-like structure.
The works revolve around composite, reconstructed, and summoned images – referring simultaneously to the processes of plastic surgery, image manipulation, and hypnosis. The artists invite the audience to reflect on how we cope with violence and injury, and with loss and remembrance.
The project was underpinned by – and made use of materials from – archival research at the Wellcome Collection, BFI Library and Imperial War Museum; further developed through consultations with an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and collaboration with forensic pathologists.
The artworks navigate unexplored links between early medical photography and modern digital imaging, and the role both play in relation to concepts of resemblance and facial recognition and reconstruction.
We Put The World Before You was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella in partnership with Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, supported by the Wellcome Trust and ACE. The outputs were disseminated through exhibitions at Middlesbrough Wolverhampton, and a screening and panel discussion at Regent Street Cinema, London.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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