Mapping as a tool for imagining change landscapes in transition
- Submitting institution
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Middlesex University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1619
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- June
- Year of production
- 2019
- URL
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http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/31586/
- 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
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Large scale drawings of the terrain of the Deben Estuary, Three Rivers Estuary, Kyson Point and Waldringfield (Deben River), disseminated between 2019 and 2020, embody a research methodology that Simon Read has developed since 1999. These drawings represent the artist’s contribution to a number of infrastructure and academic research projects in cultural geography, flood hazard and coastal management, but also artworks in their own terms.
Read’s works are bespoke large-scale maps of coastal and estuarine sites using diverse graphic media and processes to explore the flow and porosity of wet landscapes. Both the media and the surface of the drawings resonate with the values of each site in microcosm and reclaim the sense of the map as a primary means of grasping the experience of a place.
Read’s drawings summarise the artist’s research developed from on-site analysis and specialist and local knowledge to apply a wide variety of relevant data sources. He has become an expert in identifying a highly specialised arena of fluvial, estuarine and coastal dynamics and has become sensitive to the question of what a visual artist can bring to interdisciplinary research projects. Read uses 17th/18th century cartographic resources to explore how pictorial principles can be exploited to allow scope for an imaginative grasp of information. The works are a synthesis of wide-ranging discussions on the problems and uses of each site and establish visually a level of authority and credibility that often serves as an essential grounding for planning, development and knowledge about place. Mapping a fluid and dynamic geography, these works integrate all manner of transferable information with an eye for detail and accuracy. In the making of these maps, Read is concerned to reconcile distinct disciplinary procedures, and combine them with precise measurement and complex data.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -