The Caravan Press: Making Visible The Archive of Gwyneth Alban Davis
- Submitting institution
-
University of Central Lancashire
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 19324
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- Florence Art Centre, Cumbria
- Brief description of type
- Multi-component output consisting of a book and pdf of the work
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- "This research output comprises a new archive of original prints, a highly limited run of artists books, three exhibitions and a symposium, generated in equal collaboration with artist Lukas Hornby. These outputs were generated by practice-based research which aimed to make visible the highly significant and previously unseen archive and work of the late Gwyneth Alban Davis. Davis was a printmaker and contemporary of Kurt Schwitters, who worked alongside him at Cylinders Farm in the Lake District during the development of his internationally significant site-specific artwork, The Merz Barn (1947-48). Until 2018, her archive was stored at the Merz Barn site and was in a state of disrepair. Her printing press was unusable and exposed to the elements; her prints unseen and her story untold.
The objective of this output was to make visible and accessible her work and story to contemporary audiences and researchers alike, with the aim of contributing to local history and to scholarship concerning Kurt Schwitters’ time in the Lake District. The methodology challenged curatorial and archival practices by employing practice based methods to catalogue and re-print sixty of Davis’ original printing blocks, exhibited at Florence Art Centre (Cumbria), The Hatton Gallery (Newcastle) and placed in specific archives (The Hatton Gallery, Artlab, Preston). A hardback artists book reproduced all sixty prints to 1:1 scale and provided writings on her life and work. This was disseminated nationally and internationally at specific reference libraries and archives. These included: The British Library (London), The Sprengel Museum (Hanover), The Glasgow Women’s Library, The Armitt Museum (Ambleside), St Bride’s Print Library (London), The Hatton Gallery, and Artlab. This was supported by the Print Symposium, Harris Museum, Preston (2018). The output is embedded with an original curatorial-arts practice and brought previously unknown knowledge to the field of printmaking and the public realm."
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -