New Voices: May 2004
One-day conference
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, May 2004
Pushing the Barriers of the Student Conference
The Leeds New Voices conference in May was a bittersweet experience, personally, as it was the last event I organised — with the invaluable assistance of co-organiser Val Spanswick — for the AAH Student Members’ Group before returning to Canada. However, I could not have asked for a better going away present as it was a wonderful, enriching exchange of ideas. New Voices is an unparalleled opportunity for emerging art historians to get together in an informal environment and share their thoughts, theories and concerns and, as such, the Leeds event was a success. Added to this success was the fact that we finally got our catering right, and the food was absolutely delicious! The kosher pastries were particularly indulgent.
The students were treated to an insightful talk about African masquerade by Dr. Will Rea, Lecturer and Co-ordinator of the MA in Sculpture Studies at Leeds University. He raised issues about the role of the historian as a witness through a discussion of the rich culture of Yoruba masquerade, an ephemeral art if there ever was one. This encouraged the AAH students to examine our own prejudicial definitions of art and the parameters of artistic representation, while introducing us to (or refreshing our memory about) a fascinating and unique form of visual and cultural communication.
The Universities of Sussex and Birmingham were well represented at the conference. Leila McKellar (Sussex) started off the student papers with a discussion of “polyvocality” in Helen Chadwick’s Glossolalia, a sculptural work comprising lamb tongues stitched together and cast in bronze, surrounded by wolf skins. McKellar explains, “Glossolalia followed decades of controversy over the subject of the voice, with criticism coming from feminist and deconstructive quarters over its association with the authoritative speech acts of dominating discourses.” She examined how the piece engages with issues surrounding voice and the reputation of voice for transparency in communication.
Leila’s paper was followed by her fellow Sussex student, Alice Correia, who presented a paper on Yinka Shonibare’s delightful science-fiction-inspired sculptural assemblages. This was a profound and insightful, yet light-hearted look (who can’t be light-hearted when discussing Shonibare?) at Shonibare’s engagement with racial expectations, placing them clearly within a cultural and historical framework of representational stereotypes. As a card-carrying anorak, I was personally delighted to see Star Trek images and mythology in an art history paper and I think Star Trek should be mandatory in all papers by all UK art history students.
Kristen Gresh (EHESS) followed the scrumptious lunch break with a fascinating exploration of the 1955 “Family of Man” international photo exhibition. There were numerous decisions made as to what images would be included and what would be excluded from this purportedly “all-inclusive” and influential exhibition. Kristen highlighted the difficulties of dealing with an enormous archive. What questions must we ask when approaching an archive? How do we place boundaries on our investigation when the archive is so big? This is a daunting task for any art historian.
Caroline Jordan (Leeds) followed with a paper on “Reflections and Repetitions on Ideal Womanhood: E. H. Baily’s Eve at the Fountain.” This paper began what would become a common discussion thread through the rest of the day: namely, the issues surrounding notoriety and popularity in the visual arts, and how works of art and artists are remembered or forgotten. Eve at the Fountain became an iconic image and one of the best known sculptural works in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet today Baily’s reputation has largely been forgotten by modern art historians and even more so by the art-viewing public.
The University of Birmingham’s Amelia Yeates gave a detailed paper on Burne-Jones’s Pygmalion and the Image, examining how the work fitted into the aesthetic theories prevalent in the late nineteenth century. Yeates highlighted a very interesting aspect of the series of paintings, namely the somewhat dubious masculinity common in Burne-Jones’s work and highlighted through representation of the Pygmalion myth. Again, the issue was raised of what questions we should bring to a work of art or archive, and how the imagery within the work (in this case, Burne-Jones’s effeminate make figures) determines the nature of those questions.
The final paper was my own examination of The Go-A-Head Journal, a product of the steam age, which embraced the turning wheels of modernity to a greater extent than any other cultural product of the mid-nineteenth century. Most importantly, this journal has been completely forgotten and omitted from our archive of nineteenth-century visual documents for the simple reason that they were all thrown out. Continuing the thread begun by Caroline’s paper, I looked at the question of archive and how our perceptions of a given era are determined not by what people of that era were exposed to visually but by what they chose to preserve.
All in all it was a wonderful day, topped off with an informal introduction to the Henry Moore Institute exhibition, With Hidden Noise: Sculpture, Video and Ventriloquism. None of it would have been possible, however, without the hard work and dedication from everyone at the HMI and specifically from Martina Droth.
Martina worked tirelessly to ensure not only that everything ran smoothly on the day, but that the HMI had a direct involvement in the selection of papers, the promotion of the event, and the provision of travel grants. Martina and everyone at the HMI have upped the ante for the New Voices conferences. In the past, hosting institutions took a more passive role in the organisation of these events. The HMI have proved that, by getting involved more deeply in planning and running New Voices, the result is a much stronger and richer conference. I hope that future hosting institutions will follow their bold example.
Jason Shron
The Leeds New Voices conference in May was a bittersweet experience, personally, as it was the last event I organised — with the invaluable assistance of co-organiser Val Spanswick — for the AAH Student Members’ Group before returning to Canada. However, I could not have asked for a better going away present as it was a wonderful, enriching exchange of ideas. New Voices is an unparalleled opportunity for emerging art historians to get together in an informal environment and share their thoughts, theories and concerns and, as such, the Leeds event was a success. Added to this success was the fact that we finally got our catering right, and the food was absolutely delicious! The kosher pastries were particularly indulgent.
The students were treated to an insightful talk about African masquerade by Dr. Will Rea, Lecturer and Co-ordinator of the MA in Sculpture Studies at Leeds University. He raised issues about the role of the historian as a witness through a discussion of the rich culture of Yoruba masquerade, an ephemeral art if there ever was one. This encouraged the AAH students to examine our own prejudicial definitions of art and the parameters of artistic representation, while introducing us to (or refreshing our memory about) a fascinating and unique form of visual and cultural communication.
The Universities of Sussex and Birmingham were well represented at the conference. Leila McKellar (Sussex) started off the student papers with a discussion of “polyvocality” in Helen Chadwick’s Glossolalia, a sculptural work comprising lamb tongues stitched together and cast in bronze, surrounded by wolf skins. McKellar explains, “Glossolalia followed decades of controversy over the subject of the voice, with criticism coming from feminist and deconstructive quarters over its association with the authoritative speech acts of dominating discourses.” She examined how the piece engages with issues surrounding voice and the reputation of voice for transparency in communication.
Leila’s paper was followed by her fellow Sussex student, Alice Correia, who presented a paper on Yinka Shonibare’s delightful science-fiction-inspired sculptural assemblages. This was a profound and insightful, yet light-hearted look (who can’t be light-hearted when discussing Shonibare?) at Shonibare’s engagement with racial expectations, placing them clearly within a cultural and historical framework of representational stereotypes. As a card-carrying anorak, I was personally delighted to see Star Trek images and mythology in an art history paper and I think Star Trek should be mandatory in all papers by all UK art history students.
Kristen Gresh (EHESS) followed the scrumptious lunch break with a fascinating exploration of the 1955 “Family of Man” international photo exhibition. There were numerous decisions made as to what images would be included and what would be excluded from this purportedly “all-inclusive” and influential exhibition. Kristen highlighted the difficulties of dealing with an enormous archive. What questions must we ask when approaching an archive? How do we place boundaries on our investigation when the archive is so big? This is a daunting task for any art historian.
Caroline Jordan (Leeds) followed with a paper on “Reflections and Repetitions on Ideal Womanhood: E. H. Baily’s Eve at the Fountain.” This paper began what would become a common discussion thread through the rest of the day: namely, the issues surrounding notoriety and popularity in the visual arts, and how works of art and artists are remembered or forgotten. Eve at the Fountain became an iconic image and one of the best known sculptural works in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet today Baily’s reputation has largely been forgotten by modern art historians and even more so by the art-viewing public.
The University of Birmingham’s Amelia Yeates gave a detailed paper on Burne-Jones’s Pygmalion and the Image, examining how the work fitted into the aesthetic theories prevalent in the late nineteenth century. Yeates highlighted a very interesting aspect of the series of paintings, namely the somewhat dubious masculinity common in Burne-Jones’s work and highlighted through representation of the Pygmalion myth. Again, the issue was raised of what questions we should bring to a work of art or archive, and how the imagery within the work (in this case, Burne-Jones’s effeminate make figures) determines the nature of those questions.
The final paper was my own examination of The Go-A-Head Journal, a product of the steam age, which embraced the turning wheels of modernity to a greater extent than any other cultural product of the mid-nineteenth century. Most importantly, this journal has been completely forgotten and omitted from our archive of nineteenth-century visual documents for the simple reason that they were all thrown out. Continuing the thread begun by Caroline’s paper, I looked at the question of archive and how our perceptions of a given era are determined not by what people of that era were exposed to visually but by what they chose to preserve.
All in all it was a wonderful day, topped off with an informal introduction to the Henry Moore Institute exhibition, With Hidden Noise: Sculpture, Video and Ventriloquism. None of it would have been possible, however, without the hard work and dedication from everyone at the HMI and specifically from Martina Droth.
Martina worked tirelessly to ensure not only that everything ran smoothly on the day, but that the HMI had a direct involvement in the selection of papers, the promotion of the event, and the provision of travel grants. Martina and everyone at the HMI have upped the ante for the New Voices conferences. In the past, hosting institutions took a more passive role in the organisation of these events. The HMI have proved that, by getting involved more deeply in planning and running New Voices, the result is a much stronger and richer conference. I hope that future hosting institutions will follow their bold example.
Jason Shron