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.
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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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Topology of a Home: A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Nature of DwellingTopology of a Home: A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Nature of Dwelling is a photographic investigation of dwelling and habitation based on my encounter with, and return to, urban and rural locations in the United Kingdom and Thailand. These investigations consider, in phenomenological terms, notions that are related to the ways in which photographs establish how human presence is embodied in space and place. Phenomenology can be comprehended as a description of everyday existence as it shows itself to us. The thesis explores the concept of Being (Dasein) as established by German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s concept of Dasein plays a pivotal role in my thesis leading to an understanding of the relationship between Beings who temporally exist in space, and inhabit a place. In Heideggerian terms, Dasein is understood as the essential rootedness of man. The thesis explores the question: What is the relationship between Being-in-the-world and Dwelling? It also puts forward the important claim that the practice of photography itself —the taking and making of photographs—can be understood as a modality of dwelling. To support this claim, I draw from the work of British anthropologist Tim Ingold. The photographic practice has become my means of dwelling and the six bodies of photographs which comprise this thesis set out to determine this. Many of the themes explored in images, and which are discussed in the thesis, are cyclical. Accordingly, there is a deliberate use of overlapping of ideas across different projects and these are revealed in the six chapters and their corresponding photographic portfolios. Chapters One, Two, and Three describe how the photographic trace manifests a chronology of dwelling in sites located in a Northeast province of Thailand and the United Kingdom. Chapters Four and Five evaluate my response to the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus pandemic and unpack the following scenario: What is the effect of dwelling when a global pandemic suspends movement and isolates individuals? Chapter Six draws everything together highlighting how the photographic practice forefronts my research as a means of dwelling. The themes in this final chapter represent a return to the things themselves, a claim first put forward by Austrian-German philosopher Edmund Husserl when he stated that in order to be able to carry out a phenomenological analysis of the lifeworld that we inhabit: “meanings … are not enough: we must go back to the things themselves [emphasis added]” (2001, p. 168). The thesis and supporting bodies of photographs also explores the claim that the nature of dwelling revolves around the complex relationship between the memories of our lifeworld housed in our mind, and the placement of the significant objects that are “bound up with the structure of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 135), in the sites we chose to dwell in and call home.
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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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Designing Women’s Apparel: Approaches to Constructing Silhouette to Represent EmotionThis study considers visual representations of emotion in the forms of new women's apparel. It employs practice-based research methods, using processes of new apparel design, production and analysis to make hypotheses, design and undertake experiments and demonstrate findings. The research methods utilised within the study bring practice and theory to bear upon one another, two interrogate relationships between form, silhouette and emotion in the design of women’s apparel. Consumer research, colour analysis, historical investigation, prototyping and testing were used to answer research questions. Surveys were employed to gather insights on the extent of emotional recognition in the finished garments in 'Experiment Three: Recognizing Emotion'. Across Section 2, historical references were explored within subcultures to determine the stereotypical connotations associated with shape and form in apparel design. The approach to apparel design included moulage informed by the theory in Section 2 and experiment results. The study contextualises these methods by referring to aspects of existing, related explanations of the experience of emotions and apparel, in other disciplines. Multi-modal metaphor theory, theories of image schemata, and emotive processing provide the related theoretical frames for the study. Embodied cognition is not the topic of the study. However, the study pioneers the use of embodied metaphor within garment design and construction, following a hypothesis by Johnson & Lakoff (2003). The impact of introducing textile semantics within the scope of the study, is an area considered for further study (see Page 330). Finally, the study demonstrates a way in which theories of embodied metaphor and bodily force dynamics can be utilised to explain experiences of emotion in the forms of new women's apparel, as well as suggesting ways in which these can be used in apparel design processes. This was demonstrated in three experiments. The first experiment explored the relationship between connotations, emotion, and silhouette. The second experiment tested social responses. The experiment articulated the bodily force dynamics producing different emotions and the ways in which these dynamics interact with different forms of apparel. For the third experiment I asked a further group of participants to describe their own emotional responses to new garments that I designed to represent specific emotions. The garments designs were derived from analysis of the outcomes of Experiments One and Two. The results from ‘Experiment One: Representing Emotion’ allowed for a greater understanding of how emotion is viewed and constructed, which led to the construction of an experiment response guide code, used as a tool in the design process. Experiment Two: Image Schema and Force Dynamics’ identified the force dynamics on the body that occur in a response to an emotion. Consideration of these as part of a design process aided the visualisation of emotions. The dynamics placed on the body by the garment itself mimics that of the human emotional response. Experiment Three: Recognising Emotion demonstrated that there are key connotations associated with structural features and garments require the accumulation of several to steer between ambiguous keywords denoting emotions. This is reminiscent of the sequence of processes used to ascertain emotions. The methods used in the study can be adopted by any designer, but the outcomes of different subjects adopting the method (for example, practitioners across the gender spectrum), will inevitably be different from the outcomes focused upon women’s apparel undertaken by a woman designer (the author) in this study.
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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.
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Under a Green Light - A Darkroom for the FutureExploring the evironmental impacts of darkroom photography and how the University of Chester's darkroom has been modified toward more sustainable alternatives.
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Revisiting Robert Louis Stevenson in the PacificIn this Archive Case display, artists Simon Grennan and Soloman Enos re-examine the work of nineteenth century author Robert Louis Stevenson through dynamic graphic storytelling. Stevenson travelled to several Pacific islands before settling in Sāmoa in 1890. Referencing this time in Sāmoa, as well as Hawai’i and Europe, related items are brought together from the Museum's Pacific collections and displayed alongside historical publications of Stevenson's Pacific stories, set within new graphic remediations of these stories as comics by British and Hawaiian artists. The illustration-led display explores the journey of ideas across media (remediation) in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, Robert Louis Stevenson’s fascination with ‘the foreign', and post-colonialism in the Pacific, including new poetry focused on Hawaiian, Samoan and European post-colonialism. The display at the Pitt Rivers Museum celebrates work that is part of a wider research project 'Remediating Stevenson', led by a UK research team (Michelle Keown, Shari Sabeti and Alice Kelly, Edinburgh University; and Simon Grennan, Chester University), in partnership with the National University of Sāmoa. The project explores Robert Louise Stevenson's Pacific fiction, travels, and friendship with Indigenous Pacific communities. The Remediating Robert Louis Stevenson project is producing the first ever multilingual graphic adaptation of the three stories from Robert Louis Stevenson's Island Nights' Entertainments (1893). The project is also commissioning new poetry by indigenous Pacific authors, and developing a set of accompanying teaching resources for use in Sāmoa, Hawai’i and Scotland through participatory arts workshops and film-making.
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Beyond the Playground - Exploring the Production of Playfulness as an Embodied Experience through Personal PracticeThe consensus amongst scholars is that playfulness is an attitude whereas play is an activity. This thesis interrogates conceptions of attitude and proposes a fresh definition of playfulness, suggesting it is a bodily attitude and not just an attitude of mind. Using personal practice to test existing and new knowledge, and drawing on embodied cognition theories, this thesis goes on to define a playground as a cognitive and physical arena in which bodies are at play or engaged with playful activities. Therefore, the role of a ‘play’ body is significant in the production of playfulness. Playfulness requires a ‘play’ body and a playground that is either imaginary or physical. Without these elements it cannot fulfil its purpose which is to generate humour, joy, and spontaneous fun. This thesis argues playfulness is an embodied experience and is produced with our bodies as we actively move towards something we perceive will make activity more fun. There can be a motor-intentionality towards playfulness. It starts in a playground designated for playful activities or one the body has produced, but as it continues after the activity has finished, playfulness can extend beyond the playground. Few scholars in the field of art and design have contributed to academic research on playfulness. This thesis, which is embedded with visual work to inspire and test research questions and demonstrate gaps in academic literature, highlights the importance of the ‘play’ body in producing playfulness using a practice-led methodology. The thesis’ argument that playfulness is embodied, encompassing the rules of a playground, is supported by an examination of theories of depiction, in particular Walton’s theory of fictional truth and mandated imagination. This thesis proposes that when a body makes a physical orientation towards playfulness, it is also opened to wonder, serendipity, and Kairos moments which cannot always be anticipated. Extant academic literature suggests we can frame or reframe situations to make them more amusing, but this thesis posits that our bodies, not just our minds, also achieve a spontaneous reframing by moving in such a way to inculcate playfulness. It also suggests that playfulness opens the individual to possibilities not yet considered or felt; it cultivates an environment where wonder and imagination thrive, driving creativity, and instigating humour.
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Comics in the Design Studio. On the use of graphic narrative as a tool to represent, narrate, and rethink architectural spaceThis chapter looks at several works produced by architects and students in order to discuss and illustrate some uses of the comics medium as a tool both to visualise and explain, to develop stories and discourses, and start morphogenetic processes that lead to novel architectural form, or even rethink architectural space.
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Tessier [other name Ross], Isabella Emily Louisa [pseud. Marie Duval, Ambrose Clarke] (1847–1890)Biography of Isabel Emilie de Tessier (Marie Duval and others).
