Items where Year is 2013

Taking as its starting point the planting of a number of dead trees in the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, Staffordshire, this article examines the iconic, pictorial and metaphorical value of trees - living, dying and dead - in garden and arboreta settings. Arguing that the image of inert nature strikes at the very principle of seasonal recovery and annual cycles of regeneration, the article explores the representation of danger, devastation and recuperation in the work of two contemporary British painters who each have a keen understanding of the totemic monumentality of trees, both within and outside garden and arboreta settings. Drawing upon political contexts in Northern Ireland and Iraq, and on environmental challenges along the east coast of England, both painters reference the work of the British painter Paul Nash. His understanding of decay and regeneration, and the cyclic depiction of death and life through nature, provides a connective tissue that links the major themes of remembrance, iconography and design that are at the heart of the National Memorial project at Alrewas.

Seemingly random acts of violence are occasionally acted upon monuments, memorials, and public icons of commemoration. On occasion, however, the rhetorical topography of cities arouses dialogue and interaction, especially at times of national or global crisis. Drawing on the theoretical work of Boyer and Matsuda, we explore the contested dialogues of commemoration as acts that go beyond evaluation, judgment, and of utterance, to become dia- logic, interventionist, and (in extremis) auto-destructive. This article uses as a case study the creation of an artwork masquerading as a temporary memorial, which was constructed by an artist as a work about commemoration rather than as a commemoration in itself. However, due to the particular circum- stances of its timing, coinciding as it did with the bombing of Afghanistan by America and its allies following the Twin Towers terrorist act in New York on 11 September 2001, it took on an unanticipated function. During the course of the show the Faux Cenotaph was written on, added to, subtracted from, and eventually dismantled by unknown hands. It became a locus for numerous expressions of protest with a sequence of interventions by a largely seen set of players, becoming a temporary version of what the Germans call a ‘Denkmal’: a monument that stands as a warning, causing us to meditate on the mistakes of the past, and hopefully to mend our ways. This paper sets out a number of arguments to suggest that following this sequence of unscheduled, and very radical, interventions the piece became a ‘guerilla-memorial’: a rejoinder to both the object and the genre of the monumental memorial itself.

Abstract
In this article, the author reports on her early research into understanding dyslexia, observing its characteristics and affect on some acting students in their work, and discusses ideas for supporting dyslexic acting students in their performance of Shakespeare. Three Acting degree students assessed as dyslexic are presented as case studies in their observed behaviour and the author shares ideas for further action research. The author reports on the students’ strengths and difficulties arising from dyslexia in their reading, understanding and speaking of Shakespeare’s text towards performance. Disclosing challenges the students have met in engaging with the text, and challenges the author faced as their teacher in endeavouring to assist them, the article incudes descriptions of teaching methods that have succeeded or failed in this task.
Having shared the students’ work with six specialist who possess various aspects of expertise involved in dyslexia, the experts comment on the student case studies and their particular challenges. Their expertise is in neurology, dyslexia research, linguistics, speech therapy, the acting of Shakespeare and educational psychology. Several explanations are given in regard to how dyslexia manifests itself in the individuals’ work and processes, and ideas for teaching are offered in supporting acting students with dyslexia. Finally, the author shares her ideas for future investigations and testing specific teaching strategies during her PhD research.

This exhibition investigates the properties of forest memory through text, archive, and “xylarium”, or wood collection. Between the French horticultural term “forest trauma” and Robert Pogue Harrison’s “forests of nostalgia”, a whole discipline around history, witnessing, and the memorial qualities of woodland opens up. Art works examining the cultural expression of time and history in the forest are placed here alongside archival photographs, small press texts, artefacts, and museum objects, in an old, low-lit belfry designed by Sir John Soane.

The use of trees and woodland to invoke the past is all around us, from local tree registers and writings (with titles like Legacy Trees, Our Living Memorials, Heritage Trees of Ireland, and Silent Witness: Diary of a Historic Tree), to the Forestry Commission’s 2005 policy for ancient and native woodland entitled “Keepers of Time”. This idea of “Keepers of Time”, of trees being stewards for human memory and the human story, catches the imagination of the government and the media; but it is also the subject of a number of works by artists, writers, and researchers. Relics, by Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson, uses the linguistic record to chart eleven lost tree genera, identified by pollen grain analysis in the 1960s. Edmund Hardy’s A Forest Set fragmentarily re-quotes Rachael Holtom’s Echoes of Epping Forest: Oral history of the 20th Century Forest, drawing attention to the logic by which historical experience is ‘accessed’ in the forest, and by which different voices become federated in a single account of social memory.

Paul Gough’s Upas Tree drawings take inspiration from Paul Nash’s wartime paintings, which link corpses to shattered or blasted trees, but also from the enigmatic fable of the dreaded Upas Tree, based in turn on the tale of the poisonous anchar tree, first revealed by 18th century botanist Erasmus Darwin. The French term “forest trauma”, used for post-war ecological devastation, is echoed by the linking of man and tree in the commonly used phrase ‘veteran tree’.

Bodyworks
This was a solo exhibition shown at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, which selects and showcases the work of contemporary and emerging new artists. The images were shown as part of The Format International Photography Festival, Derby (2013); a print was also selected for the Royal Photographic Society’s annual print exhibition (2013)

Research Imperatives
Initial research explored technological advances in the manufacture of prosthetic limbs over a seventy year period from the 1940s to the present day and included devices made for the victims of war, accident and disease.

Despite the huge advances that have been made, particularly in the last ten years, the research found that there was still demand for prosthetic limbs made to designs dating back to the 1940s; these were primarily for people who had been issued with such limbs many years ago but did not wish to update. Craftsmen manufacture these traditional limbs from wood, metal and leather, exactly as they were made to supply the seriously injured survivors of the Second World War.
The research focused on one such prosthetic limb manufacturer that continues to produce both traditionally made and modern limbs. Wenham-Clarke explored every corner of the factory which allowed him to locate significant objects that conveyed a narrative of both the patients and the workers. Many of the objects found and recorded had been stored out of sight for decades.

The images exhibited in Bodyworks high-lighted the craftsmanship and the many tools used to manufacture the limbs. They record images of a dwindling work force, the last of their kind as no new workers are being trained, operating within a factory that was originally built for a staff team fifteen times bigger than the present day. They also reflect public interest in morbidity and its fascination with the artificial.

Sacrifice the Bird Song
This was a solo exhibition of 19 photographs shown at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, which selects and showcases the work of contemporary artists and emerging new artists.

Research Questions
Sacrifice the Bird Song explores the plight of British wildlife as it struggles to survive in an environment dominated by the automobile. The work highlights the changing balance of our ecosystem in response to large numbers of road-kill. The work builds upon a previous project by Wenham-Clarke entitled When lives Collide (2006) which focused on those unfortunate people affected by road traffic accidents.

Research Imperatives
Through the use of photography Sacrifice the Bird Song questions our attitude to our own environment and focuses on the direct impact of road-kill on our ecosystem.

The underpinning research was both qualitative and quantitative. Wenham-Clarke researched by making direct contact with wildlife rescue centres that deal on a daily basis with animals injured on the roads. He also made links with conservationists and even taxidermists who collect road kill. The research revealed an apparent serious imbalance in the natural ecosystem. There are very high death rates for some species, but others that rely on carrion are experiencing significant growth in number. The research also highlighted that for some animals such as deer, their top predator is now the car.

The images themselves are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to contrast against the public’s normal preconceived view of road-kill. This is a very deliberate attempt to draw in the viewer and allow them time to absorb the significance of the image and so the issue. Referencing ‘Memento Mori’, ‘Veritas’ and also modern advertising imagery the work explores our own relationship with our environment. With this work Wenham-Clarke asks the fundamental question, “In this modern era in which we give a price to everything, what value do we place upon our own ecosystem?”

Westway
This was a solo exhibition of 55 photographs shown at St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ Gallery, London. A print from the exhibition was shortlisted for the World Photography Organisation’s 2013 Awards; selected for the Royal Photographic Society’s annual print exhibition; and short listed for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize for 2013, exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

Research Questions
The research explored contemporary society’s reliance and infatuation with the automobile. It examined how individuals and small communities are affected by intense urbanisation; whether living in such an environment had short or long term influences on life opportunities, including education and/or employment; and how a community copes with being dissected by a major structure that has little purpose for them. The research questions broadened during the course of the research to examine the influence of urban redevelopment along the route of the A40 encouraged through changing land values as land that was once worth nothing, became worth millions.

Research Imperatives
The research was primarily sociological, documenting the lives of those living beneath and in the shadow of the A40 flyover in west London which bulldozed through the heart of North Kensington in the 1960s taking with it 600 homes and forcing 1,000 people to leave the area. It also employed methodologies of oral history, using selected quotations from interviewees to accompany the images, developed during a previous project Hard Times (2011).
The research involved working to win the confidence of the subjects Wenham-Clarke intended to photograph and gaining their consent; this included a Gypsy community where outsiders were not normally welcomed.
This project provided unprecedented insights into the homes, businesses, sports facilities and educational centres of those living under the Westway; it also highlighted the multi-cultural aspects of the area and revealed some very positive aspects of living in a modern, ethnically diverse Britain.