Lay of the Land (and other such myths)
- Submitting institution
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University of Central Lancashire
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 18349
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Airspace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- 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
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This research output is the result of a three-year project in which a series of solo exhibitions, a conference paper and a book essay have been produced and disseminated. Drawing upon fieldwork, interviews, photographs, creative writing, video, sculptural forms and contemporary arts practice, the work reclaims female subjectivity in the context of heterotopian nonsite. Furthered by feminist theory, Hollywood Cinema and gendered desert references, the work challenges the narratives and stereotypes attributed to women in place. The work brings together notions of Smithson's site / nonsite and Foucault’s heterotopia to reclaim, using the artists presence to reimagine subjectivity in place.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Feminist theorists cite humanism, colonialism and capitalism as patriarchal systems that continue to frame, narrate, and exclude women in place. Lay of the Land (and other such myths) reveals how visual language offers opportunities for the reclamation of female agency and power, using landscape as a trope to locate a feminist position beyond the patriarchal frame. Referring to Smithson’s Site / Nonsite series and Foucault’s heterotopia as methodologies, the work draws from the Californian desert landscapes used in Hollywood cinema as a way to critique specific cultural representation beyond masculinist signification. The reclamation of landscape and related female narratives are tested through methods of making, materiality and representation. Landscapes are encountered by the artist, deconstructed in the studio and then reconstituted in a gallery context. This multifaceted research output offers new knowledge in the field of contemporary art and feminist discourse.
This output comprises a touring exhibition of artworks, a conference paper and a small publication, initiated whilst on Sabbatical leave in California, USA and developed over a two year period. The body of artworks, developed in response to a physical encounter with the desert, were exhibited as part of a solo show with Chiara Williams Contemporary Art at the London Art Fair 2017, after winning the SOLO Award in 2016. The work then toured as a solo exhibition to HOME, Manchester, and Airspace, Stoke-on-Trent. Artworks from this research output have subsequently been curated in to group exhibitions with SITE Gallery in Sheffield, Swap Editions in London, Elephant in Los Angeles and The Front in New Orleans. I presented my paper Islands, Micro-nations and Sanctuaries: Escapism, Subversion and Liberation at the Overwhelming Imaginations Conference at Si Shang Art Museum in Beijing, China in 2016. Elements from this research also feature in two publications and a variety of articles and reviews.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -