A Mind Weighted with Unpublished Matter
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Fortnum1
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Various, UK
- Brief description of type
- Multi-component output with contextual information
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- 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
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This research resulted in a series of paintings and drawings entitled A Mind Weighted with Unpublished Matter, and a book of the same name in which they are published.
This body of work uses painting as a form of reflection on gendered experience, focusing on depictions of women to develop ideas on women’s interiority, creativity and the gaze. The project was supported by Fortnum’s 2019 election to Visiting Research Fellow in the Creative Arts at Merton College, Oxford, an award ‘intended to attract eminent researchers to Oxford’.
The work emerges from a painting practice working directly from historical sculpture, which for some time has explored the politics of the gaze. A series called Prosopopoeia (a rhetorical term describing a communication via an absent, dead or imagined person) develops from photographs of sculpted heads of women with their eyes averted or closed, exploring the trope of ‘absorption’ (Michael Fried, 1976). The paintings and drawings partially re-animate these historical figures, juxtaposing them with decorative, monochrome panels reminiscent of ‘Rorschach blots’, providing a ‘blank’ space in contrast to the portraits’ intimacy. The works speculate on the ‘intersubjective’ relation that spirals around the gendered ‘ocular power’ (Rosenthal, 1997) and claims new ground for feminist portraiture as critical reflection.
The work is fully documented and contextualised in a publication, commissioned and edited by Andrew Hunt of Slimvolume, with writing by art historian Gemma Blackshaw, an ‘in conversation’ with artist Melissa Gordon and a foreword by Richard McCabe. These works have been exhibited at Merton College; Blyth Gallery, Imperial College; Natalie Barney Gallery, London; 601 Space, New York; and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2017 & 2020). The work was also discussed at Say Something Back, on feminist artistic research and Diversifying the Portrait, both at Oxford, and the Gravity lecture series at Sheffield Hallam.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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