Fragile Earth: Seeds, Weeds, Plastic Crust
- Submitting institution
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Teesside University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 24800786
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Morgan’s research connects the global exploitation of resources, trade networks and production of waste, with the socio-economic and ecological context of the Tees Valley. The exhibition and public programme were the result of three years of intensive research foregrounding public dialogue between artists and ecology experts. Morgan questioned how a constituent-driven curatorial approach can develop personal agency and connectivity with climate change issues: its context-specific approach, connected local and global discourses.
Morgan’s curatorial examination of colonial infrastructures, discourses in agriculture, botany, archaeology, innovative technologies and ecological conservation, is underpinned by Donna J Haraway, TJ Demos and Kathryn Yusoff. The research interrogated relationships between plants, animals and humans at a time of climate crisis, using theoretical texts, media reports, community consultation, local history collections and artworks as materials.
Morgan’s research into constituent-developed curation is at the forefront of museums practice, transcending audience/expert/institution barriers. Her innovative approach combined community group consultation through Design Thinking workshops, exploratory site visits with artists and research visits to international exhibitions.
The research into interdisciplinary collaboration is exemplified by new work produced between artist Diane Watson and Northumbria Water, to highlight challenges in water filtration. Morgan also brought artist Laura Harrington into dialogue with geographers and publics, resulting in new artwork, public site visits and a monograph introduced by Morgan. Morgan commissioned five works, subsequently exhibited elsewhere. This included innovatively commissioning a 3D hologram and a publication on seven plant species by botany writer Helen Bynum as an alternative exhibition catalogue.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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