Research Degree Student Profiles
Maxine Bristow
Material Austerity: Negotiating boundaries between aesthetic autonomy and referentiality
This practice led research is concerned with textile references negotiated within a fine art context. It draws on a body of practice established over a ten-year period, which frames language systems intrinsic to textiles within the formal autonomy of modernist abstraction.
With its history rooted in material culture and corresponding lack of detachment, textile practices have been marginalised from discourses of fine art, notably modernist abstraction, which have been predicated on notions of disinterestedness and the autonomy of the artwork. However, with the advent of a post-medium sensibility, peripheral textile practices have arguably gained currency; as the autonomy of the artwork has been undermined a critical space has been opened up which acknowledges textile conventions.
Paul Cope
Can You Tidy Up Now Please? Researching the impact of an art practice in the classroom
This is an empirical research project that investigates the dual professional practice of the artist-teacher, carried out by an art teacher in a 9 to 13 middle school art classroom. The research sets out to examine what happens when an art teacher also practises as an artist, and what the impact of such a dual practice might be on teaching and learning in the classroom.
With the introduction of new national curriculum strategies emphasising localised, personalised and more creative curricula, there is a change of emphasis in education legislation. Ofsted recently recommended that art teachers should be encouraged to further their own art work as a means to develop knowledge of contemporary art in the classroom. This research project presents a fine-grained view of what happens when these recommendations are carried out.
Catherine Dormor
Mind The Gap: Haptic, scopic and textile interstices as fine art practice
This research project seeks to mind the gap between haptic (pertaining to or evoking the sense of touch) and scopic (pertaining to or evoking the sense of sight) modes of perceiving as vital and potent ground between two potential absolutes, a space of or for becoming. In its ubiquity textile is often seen to be fine art, craft and industrial product, a model which does not allow for the plasticity, even elasticity, of textile as language, metaphor, signifier, maker of meaning and matter. Textile holds in tension an ambiguity, being simultaneously concept and stuff.
In this project text, textile and textile production could be said to enter together into a process of cathexis which potentially transforms them in active participation, with each other and artist / author. My current work, both practice-based and text-based, considers the interactions, interweavings or interrelationships evident within and between the elements that make up woven cloth, taking Deleuze and Guattari's technological model of weaving as striated as a point for departure. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, 524).
Katherine Hewlett
The impact of dyslexia on the process of creativity in the visual arts.
Numerous post 16 arts courses have been developed with a flexibility to enable individualised learning and to recognise dyslexic learner approaches to study. My research aims to explore how these learning approaches impact on creative processes and bring value to learning and teaching in mainstream post 16 education.
The research investigates dyslexic creative artists' approaches to thinking and learning in the process of their practice and ways in which artists work to their strengths to navigate mainstream education. Central to the research is an investigation of the intelligences that dyslexic practitioners develop as part of their creative process.
Dyslexics are thought to be particularly expert at developing learning strategies that complement their learning styles. They deal with the overview, the broader picture, the whole before focusing on the parts (B. Steffert, 1999 Visual Spatial Ability and Dyslexia). They absorb information from many reference points at the same time, and often in a random order, sometimes leading to highly innovative thinking. This research will explore how typical these qualities are of creative artists who are dyslexic, exploring the elements of Art and Design education that might unlock individual potential.
Mary MacMaster
Growing Old for Real: Women, image and identity
The combination of staged, imaginary and conceptual photographic images inspired by issues arising from face-to-face conversations with twenty women aged between 55 and 88 years forms the basis of my discourse that creative photography can provide an additional perspective on the effects of image on ageing femininity.
My research draws on a wide range of multi-disciplinary theory to inform themes for conversation, which provide issues for my photographic portfolio, which in turn test theory, forming a distinctively integrated context for critical research.
The portfolio, the practice element of my research consists of three projects - 'Performing Mrs Whistler'; 'Self and Image' and 'Strangers to Ourselves' - which reflect the lived reality of ageing women in a world where media images are constantly presenting new pressures and 'choices' to maintain a youthful appearance.
Britta Pollmuller
Animation and Creativity in Education: What are teens learning from animation and machinima production?
My research focuses on how animation and machinima can be used to teach young people about creativity and media literacy. The research also explores how teenage culture can be understood through the process of meaning making through animation and machinima production.
The study explores pedagogies and modes of learning that have originated from both art and media education. It describes what happens when teenagers produce animation and teases out some of the different claims made regarding creativity, literacy and culture.
The research aims to establish much-needed frameworks for learning about animated films and filmmaking in secondary schools. It will highlight examples of best practice in 'camera-less' animation, drawn animation, model animation and machinima work.
Jo Rolfe
(Im)Permanence: Re-Inventions from vernacular textile-related crafts to contemporary studio textile and site-specific practices
My research investigates relationships between, and reasons for, current changes in vernacular craft practices, use of materials and processes in specific locations in East Anglia. I aim to document and analyse these changes, with reference to the local topography and environment, and to investigate them through the development of my visual practice. Three strands of the research will investigate:
- the impact of the elements (weathering) on textile-related materials and techniques with reference to contemporary visual practice
- the impact of technological, social and environmental changes on vernacular textile-related crafts in East Anglia
- practical and theoretical differences and continuities between vernacular and studio craft practices
Nicola Simpson
frogpondplop: the appearance and disappearance of the concrete in the work of Dom Sylvester Houédard.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a tiny cell at Prinknash Abbey rebounded continuously with the sound of an Olivetti Lettera 22, as the Benedictine monk and concrete poet Dom Sylvester Houédard,(1924-1992) wrote the letters, constructed Typestracts and initiated much of the critical thinking around the British Concrete Poetry Movement.
Prolific, prominent and pivotal in a web of correspondence and collaboration between the Beats, the Gloster Ode Construction Company, DIAS and Fluxus, Houédard has subsequently been largely neglected by both the poetic and artistic worlds. With little critical work on Houédard beyond the few small press articles written by his contemporaries and none that take Houédard's own wider ecumenical and metaphysical interests as a starting point, my research aims to begin this process of artistic and theological reassessment.
Joanna Sperryn Jones
Breaking as Making: In what ways can making sculpture contribute to understanding perceptions and experiences of breaking?
Through the process of making and breaking sculpture I explore experiences and perceptions surrounding fragility and breaking, and their affect on identity and subjectivity. ‘Breaking' is the main theme running through my work but it arises in many different contexts and I deal with it on different levels.
My research, for example, simultaneously explores and draws parallels between personal experiences in life, such as breaking bones with those of making / breaking sculpture, Derrida's concept of the break, breaking from traditions in making sculpture, and the break created between making and writing.
While visiting Japan with a broken collarbone I became interested in crutched trees. The crutches, both supporting the trees and causing warping, made me think of the trees as fragile. Pursuing this further, and attracted by its qualities of breaking, I have been using bone china to cast twigs from trees to create sculptures, installations and participatory work.
Jodie Wick
The Infrastructure of the Animation Industry in the East of England
This research is based on the need for accurate data to inform the development of effective policy for the subsector of animation in the East of England, inclusive of local clusters. The work is in effect a case study intended to produce two main outcomes, which it is hoped will serve as much needed evidence to derive recommendations on how to better support the animation industry in the East of England. The two main outcomes will be:
- A new data collection methodology based on the definition, conception and measurement of a subsector industry at regional and sub regional levels.
- A case study example based on animation in the East of England.
The Eastern region, and Norwich in particular, has been pinpointed as a notable cluster for audiovisual and animation related activities (DTZ et al 2002; BOP 2003; Cox 2004 Skillset 2004, 2005).
Mark Wilsher
Negotiation Theory as Model for Dialogical or Relational Art Practice in the Public Realm
This research takes as its context the 'social turn' in contemporary art of the last twenty years, which has placed a new emphasis on participation and relationality. Four exhibition projects demonstrate an alternative theorisation based on the concept of negotiation.
Participation is often related to notions of the public realm, where dialogical art is increasingly superseding the autonomous sculpture as the favoured form of public art. Community art projects also draw support from neo-liberal political concepts such as social exclusion and inclusion, and as a consequence are increasingly instrumentalised.
Examples of Completed Research Degrees
Dr Sophie Richard - PhD by thesis, awarded 2007
International Network of Conceptual Artists: Dealer Galleris, Temporary Exhibitions and Museum Collections (1967-1977)
Dr Rob Hillier - PhD by graphic design practice and thesis, awarded 2007
A Typeface for the Adult Dyslexic Reader
Dr Michael Baldry - PhD by thesis, awarded 2005
The Aesthetics of Austerity and Old Labour, British Visual Art and Socialism 1945 to 1951
Dr Hannah Johnston - PhD by thesis, awarded 2004
New Generation Witches - The Teenage Witch as Cultural Icon and Lived Identity
Dr Mathew Fuller - PhD by media practice and thesis, awarded 2004
Media Ecologies, Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture
Dr George Szirtes - PhD by Publication, awarded 2003
Creative writing
Catherine Mosely - MPhil by curated exhibition, catalogue and thesis, awarded 2002
Conception. Conceptual Documents 1968 to 1972
Suzie Hanna - MPhil by animation practice and thesis, awarded 2001
Independent Mixed-Media Animation: A case study
Dr Barbara Howey - PhD by fine art practice, exhibition and thesis, awarded 2000
Self/Painting Practice/Social Practice
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