RSS 1.0Art and Design
The Department of Art and Design is based at Kingsway Buildings, Chester and offers Single Honours undergraduate programmes in Graphic Design, Fine Art and Photography. You can also study Photography, Graphic Design and Fine Art as part of a Combined Honours course. We also offer postgraduate programmes in Design and Fine Art.
This collection is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. The collection may be reproduced for non-commerical use and without modification, providing that copyright is acknowledged.
Recent Submissions
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Correction to: Introduction (Key Terms in Comics Studies)The original version of this chapter has been revised and an updated bibliography has been incorporated in the chapter.
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Soliata LafoaiThe research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. This is a wordless graphic adaptation of Stevenson’s novella The Beach of Falesā, included as a chapter in an anthology of adaptations and creative responses to Stevenson’s Pacific writing by artists, scholar and artists/scholars Solomon Enos, Simon Grennan, Keao Nesmith, Lalovai Pesetā, Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard and Selina Tusitala Marsh.
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Introduction (Island Tales: New Creative Interpretations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pacific Writing)The research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. This is a written Introduction to an anthology of adaptations and creative responses to Stevenson’s Pacific writing by artists, scholar and artists/scholars Solomon Enos, Simon Grennan, Keao Nesmith, Lalovai Pesetā, Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard and Selina Tusitala Marsh.
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Drawing and installation on the British Peak District: Self, environment and a mobile working kitThis text reports about my practice-based doctoral research project exploring the question ‘How can the relationships between self and the outdoor environment of Bakestonedale Moor manifest in a creative arts practice from drawing and installation?’. I have developed a drawing and installation practice as the bearer and expression of my relationship with the outdoor places of the British Peak District in the vicinity of Pott Shrigley. This led to the development of the ‘mobile working kit’, a collection of modules fashioned from paper, string, wood and fabric, which I use to make drawings and mark the land with sculptural additions. My outdoor art-making events may only last a few hours but I later exhibit its artefacts as indoor art displays complemented by photographs and videos from the outdoor sites. I provide descriptions of two drawing activities outdoors, first, using a three-dimensional fence-like paper sculpture as a drawing surface and, second, drawing on a ground-based paper platform. These examples of art-making are then contextualized in reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity where material changes in the world are understood to occur in co-constitutional negotiation of all active components. I use this concept and Barad’s understanding of performativity to describe process in art-making and in geological, meteorological and biological changes outdoors. I then relate these positions to current performance drawing in reference to the role of the artist and how the arts practice determines her connection to the outdoor environment.
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Practice-based Research and Creative Arts Practice: Intra-action, Self and the Other; Drawing and Installation in the British Peak DistrictThis research uses a creative arts practice emerging from the processes of drawing and installation to create and explore the relationships between the artist and the outdoor spaces of the British Peak District. A mobile working kit made from paper, fabric and wood is used to make temporary installations outdoors in response to wind, weather and topography. The mobile working kit modules are then returned to the studio and later installed in art exhibition spaces, their display indexing the connection between self, other and the outdoors. The multitude of processes in outdoor environments and their relationships to landscape and its inhabitants’ actions is used as a methodological template to frame change. Based on the dichotomy of mobility and inscription, artmaking actions and the research process are described through the conceptual lenses of ‘gesture’, ‘practice’ and an expanded understanding of drawing. Following this, a taxonomy is suggested that categorises the embodiment of artmaking events from the tensions between their experienced particularities and the artist’s perceived material practice frameworks.
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Casting ShadowsThis research output is a resource for teachers and students in Scottish schools working at 4th Level in English, Media and Social Studies. It is made with the Scottish development Education Centre (ScotDec), which delivers professional learning in Global Citizenship, Learning for Sustainability and Rights-based learning for teachers and youth workers across all sectors. The research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. Research Questions: 1. What legacies has Stevenson’s Pacific writing, and his residency in Hawai ‘i and Sāmoa, left for contemporary Pacific communities? 2. In what ways can an engagement with RLS’s Pacific fiction inform the creative practices of our project poets and workshop participants? 3. In an era in which educators around the world are seeking to ‘decolonise the curriculum’, what does it mean, within the structures of our project, to ‘decolonise’ Stevenson’s work, given his keen observations on the consequences of western colonial incursion into the Pacific? As methods, it utilises narrative drawing, creative writing, movie, literary criticism, community-based participation and pedagogy in English, Hawaiian and Samoan languages.
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Medium (un)specificity as material agency – the productive indeterminacy of matter/material (Russian Translation)In this article, I consider some of the debates brought to the fore by the proliferation of recent textile focused exhibitions; namely the tension between a continued allegiance to medium specific conventions and the richness, hybridity and heterogeneity afforded by the post-medium condition of contemporary art. Through a new body of sculptural and installational practice I propose a constellatory opening up of textile in which the medium specific can be (re)mapped in a fluid and fragmentary way. Drawing particular reference from Adorno’s conception of the constellation and mimetic comportment, this model of practice involves a mode of behaviour that actively opens up to alterity and returns authority to the affective indeterminacy of the sensuously bound experiential encounter. This is manifest through a range of practice strategies - “thingness”, “staged (dis)contiguity”, and the play between “sensuous immediacy and corporeal containment” - which mobilise a precarious relationship between processes of attachment and detachment. Acknowledging the critical currency afforded to textile through feminist and poststructuralist critique, the work moves away from “a rhetoric of negative opposition” and predetermined discursive frameworks, returning authority to the aesthetic impulse, privileging the ambiguous resonances of an abstract sculptural language over more overt strategies of representation.
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Too Good To Hide: Tony HayesThe article ‘Too Good To Hide: Tony Hayes’ was written in relation to the exhibition of the same name at the Rainbow Tea Rooms in Chester (July - October 2024). The exhibition was curated by Stephen Clarke, and was the fourth curatorial project for Clarke at the café’s exhibition space in Chester city centre. Tony Hayes is a photographer based in Widnes who has undertaken an AA2A (Artist Access to Art Colleges) residency at the University of Chester. In the article Clarke considers how the camera operates as a series of lenses and mirrors to view a subject. Clarke refers to the catalogue essay by John Szarkowski for the exhibition ‘Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960’ at the Museum of Modern Art New York in 1978. Szarkowski describes how a photographer uses a camera either as an objective ‘window’ to view the world or a subjective ‘mirror’ that reflects the photographer’s own sensibility. Clarke applies this discussion to the work of Tony Hayes who has made a series of photographs looking into shop windows that record both the view through the glass pane and the reflection of the photographer. Stephen Clarke and Tony Hayes were interviewed by Sean Styles on BBC Merseyside in Liverpool at 1.30pm on Sunday 6th October 2024.
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Stephen Clarke: Stars, Stripes and SteamThe photographs of New York city in this exhibition were taken by Stephen Clarke during two visits to New York in the mid-1990s. Paul Sampson, curator at Oriel Colwyn, organised the exhibition to coincide with the 2024 Presidential Election in the United States of America. The closing night of the exhibition was the final polling day for presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The starting point for this exhibition was a number of photographs of the US Flag – the Stars and Stripes – along with images of steam rising from the underground heating systems in New York city centre which gave the show its title – Stars, Stripes and Steam. This is a humorous comment on the nature of political discourse that mixes patriotism and heated debates. Stephen Clarke (photographer) and the Paul Sampson (curator) wanted the audience to reflect on the historical perspective of New York city while considering the future of the new presidency and the USA. This was Stephen Clarke’s second solo exhibition at Oriel Colwyn; his first was ‘Shifting Sands’ (22/12/12 – 15/03/13). Some of the photographs in Stars, Stripes and Steam were previously published by the independent photobook publisher Out Of Place Books (2020) in the photobook ‘NYC-19XX’ by Stephen Clarke.
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Blackpool 1980s – 1990sBlackpool 1980s - 1990s was published by Café Royal Books in an edition of 250 in February 2023. It was edited by Craig Atkinson, founder of Café Royal Books. Clarke photographed Blackpool seafront and Pleasure Beach fairground throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This extensive collection of images is part of his larger archive of photographs of the British seaside. The CRB photobook includes a number of key leisure features of Blackpool Pleasure Beach including the roller coaster rides ‘The Grand National’ and The Big One’. Also pictured in this CRB publication is the now defunct monorail that was a ride at the Pleasure Beach.
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Because it's thereThis exhibition text is part of a long-standing relationship between the artist Richard Crooks and writer Stephen Clarke. Clarke has written about Crooks' work in magazines (online and print) as well as texts for exhibition catalogues and introduction panels. A significant feature of Crooks' practice as an artist is the experience of undertaking an artist residency. During the residency, Crooks explores the landscape and the culture of the host residency. This direct experience informs the artwork Crooks produces for exhibition. In this introduction text, Clarke links Crooks’ practice to the physical act of exploration by drawing comparison to the British mountaineers George Herbert Leigh-Mallory and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine.
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Retracing Footsteps - The Changing Landscape Yr Wyddfa / SnowdonRetracing Footsteps - The Changing Landscape of Yr Wyddfa / Snowdon is the working title of a long-term, interdisciplinary research project by artist Cian Quayle (Art and Design) and cultural geographer Daniel Bos (Geography and the Environment) at the University of Chester. The first iteration of their collaborative research, which also involved the participation of two BA Photography graduates Jane Evans and Emma Petruzzelli, was exhibited at CASC in Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester. The exhibition also formed part of Chester Contemporary [Fringe] (September 22 - December 1, 2023). The project emerged as a result of Bos' study of 19th c. Snowdon summit hotels, visitor books, in which tourists recorded their experience of ascending the mountain. The visitor books are housed at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, and Bangor University. Yr Wyddfa / Snowdon is an iconic mountain, a signifier of Welsh identity and a place rooted in history, myth, folklore and legend. The mountain attracts over 600,000 visitors a year and the project sets out to respond to the mountain and surrounding landscape as it is walked, and experienced today, at the same time as considering the threat and impacts on the ecology, environment and local communities. From May 2023 the team undertook fieldwork based on a series of ascents to photograph and video record their experience and encounter of the mountain. An edit and selection of photographs was made towards the end of summer 2023. The exhibition, which manifest initial practice and research completed up to this point was conceived and curated by Quayle, and Bos selected a collection of extracts from the visitors books, which were juxtaposed with a final selection of images, which the project team edited and selected from a larger body of work. The visitor book extracts were typeset in Albertus by Darren Prior, and an exhibition brochure was designed by Dr Alan Summers.
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Tusitala: Pacific Perspectives on Robert Louis StevensonIn collaboration with the University of Edinburgh's Remediating Stevenson project, the public exhibition 'Tusitala: Pacific Perspectives on Robert Louis Stevenson' reflects on his Pacific legacy then and now. The display features new creative works, inspired by Stevenson and his Pacific stories, produced by Sāmoan, Hawaiian and British artists, poets, and filmmakers. These appear alongside original items from the Library's archives, conveying new perspectives on Stevenson and his work.
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Key Terms in Comics StudiesKey Terms in Comics Studies is a glossary of over 300 terms and critical concepts currently used in the Anglophone academic study of comics, including those from other languages that are currently adopted and used in English.
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Thinking about drawing as cause and consequence: Practical approaches in timeThis paper, a conversation between Simon Grennan, Carol Wild, Miranda Matthews and Claire Penketh, explores drawing as cause and consequence, applying Grennan’s thinking to three drawings as a means of exploring and exemplifying ideas discussed in his keynote at the iJADE Conference: Time in 2023. Following an initial introduction to key ideas that were raised for that audience, the paper explores the ways that three particular drawings operate, with temporality offering one of a number of ways that they may be explored. The paper centres on three questions: (i) What might students learn are the different purposes of drawing? (ii) How might students adjudicate the status of drawn traces? (iii) How might students adjudicate the value of drawing activities?
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South Wales Housing Estate 1986The photographs for South Wales Housing Estate 1986 were taken during the third year of Clarke’s undergraduate course in Fine Art at Newport College of Art. These pictures were taken in response to Clarke’s first visit to San Diego, Southern California, in 1985. The suburbs of San Diego had made an impression on Clarke; spread across the landscape these were man-made environments of houses, gardens, and parked cars. To some extent, British housing estates mirror the aspirational developments in the US suburbs but on a less ambitious level. Clarke had been made aware of the work of the New Topographics photographers – in particular Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams and Joe Deal – who had documented the housing developments in the American Southwest. Clarke’s photographs of the British housing estate prefigure his work in San Diego that has since been reproduced in publications and exhibitions. South Wales Housing Estate 1986 was published by Café Royal Books in an edition of 250. It was edited by Craig Atkinson, founder of Café Royal Books.
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The Power of ManyOpening statement on activist photography and feminist activism for Isuse 6 of We See magazine.
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Lost, Found, Given - Stored, Shown, Seen: Artists’ Responses to the West Cheshire Museums’ CollectionsHumifusus is the Latin botanical term used to describe plants that spread out across the ground. These images were made by pressing photographic paper face down into verges and meadows, allowing plants, soil (and the occasional insect) to imprint their trace. As part of my response to Eliza Potts' Herbarium, this process offered a richly spontaneous and chaotic way to record plants within their environment. The use of video to reimagine and revivify connects me to Potts as another woman touching, and touched by, familiar landscapes, experiencing the pleasure of a haptic connection to place and plant. The sensorial overrides the pictorial, nature subsumes and entangles the human element as both merge playfully and chaotically to become one.
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Quick, quick, slow: Making time for sustainable photography practices in contemporary higher educationAs environmental awareness grows, so do questions about the environmental impact of photography, in particular traditional film development and processing, which includes the use of plastics, gelatine and other environmentally harmful chemicals notwithstanding water usage and waste. Pioneering practice and research into sustainable alternatives to conventional processes has quickly established, supported by organisations such as The Sustainable Darkroom (n.d.). Students in Higher Education are environmentally aware and prepared to take action to mitigate their impacts where possible (Blake et al 2013). As such, there is a coalescence of perceptions within and beyond the classroom which asks to be addressed in the curriculum. This paper draws upon the research project Under a Green Light: a darkroom for the future which investigated how university darkroom practices can pivot toward more environmentally friendly methods. The paper describes the learning environment of the darkroom as a space of slowness, immersion and experimentation and the pedagogic value of this for photography students. The paper argues that incorporating environmental awareness into day-to-day teaching through systemic changes to process and practice, rather than through short term curriculum interventions, contributes to transformative learning experiences and promotes positive long-term change.
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Quick, Quick, Slow: Making Time for Sustainable Photography Practices in Contemporary HEAs environmental awareness grows, so do questions about the environmental impact of photography, in particular traditional film development and processing, the use of plastics, gelatine and other environmentally harmful chemicals notwithstanding water usage and waste. Pioneering practice and research into sustainable alternative to conventional processes has quickly established, supported by organisations such as the London Sustainable Darkroom. Students in Higher Education are environmentally aware and prepared to take action to mitigate their impacts where possible. As such, there is a coalescence of perceptions within and beyond the classroom which asks to be addressed in the curriculum. Sustainable and alternative processes are often more time consuming than established methods and rely on having sufficient time for the gathering and processing of unconventional materials. This is problematic in a contemporary HE environment where a shortened teaching year and modularisation break up the learning experience and desiccate the attention required by durational activities. This paper will draw upon the current research project Under a Green Light: a darkroom for the future (PI Tabitha Jussa) which is exploring ways to pivot the undergraduate darkroom toward sustainable methods and will reflect on the potential and possibilities of sustainable photography in HE.
