Stitching for Material Sensitivity: From Traditional to Activist Embroidery
(2023)
author(s): Fabiola Hernandez Cervantes, Maria Huhmarniemi
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Cochineal is an insect that has been used for textile dyeing since pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico. This exposition discusses the use of the cochineal insect as a natural dye for wool and the bridge between ancient indigenous knowledge and contemporary artistic research. A transatlantic connection is created between the Mexican plateau and the Arctic region, merging traditional knowledge, contemporary art, crafting and conceptualisation through an artistic embroidery initiative involving researchers, craft artists and human rights activists living in the province of Lapland in Finland. Documentary photos of artistic practice and research diaries enhance discussion on sustainability, tradition, craftivism, decolonisation and indigenous knowledge. This exposition embraces collaborative craftivism through a group initiative called Embroidered Stances, discussions about material interconnectedness in a web-of-life conceptual structure that includes sheep wool, cactus, cochineal and ancestral knowledge. The endorsement of material sensitivity is narrated into embroideries by the first author Cervantes and discussed, acknowledging complexities within issues of cultural and ecological sustainability.
Like A Rolling Stone
(2022)
author(s): Stephen Edward Bottomley
published in: Research Catalogue
Like a Rolling Stone was an international workshop and exhibition exploring the themes of relocation, transplantation, camouflage, identity and materiality through mixed media art jewellery. Geology and geophysics were examined as an analogy for the theme of population displacement.
In 2016 the Italian Cultural Institute (ICI) approached the department of Jewellery and Silversmithing, Edinburgh College of Art /The University of Edinburgh with a view to organising a series of events focusing on and celebrating gemmology and contemporary jewellery.
Stephen Bottomley + Susan Cross invited three Italian Jewellery artists: Maria Rosa Franzin, Gigi Mariani and Gabi Viet alongside seven UK based artists, Jessamy Kelly, Rhona McCallum, Jo Pudelko, Jessica Turrell and Cristina Zani, to undertake field work in North Berwick, an area frequently visited by the Geologist James Hutton, as a backdrop to the political themes surrounding population displacement.
Over the year following the Edinburgh workshop the project was developed in the artists home countries and exhibited in Munich and Edinburgh over 2018 with support from the School of Jewellery, Birmingham City University.
The exhibition is intended to tour later in 2021.
FERROcity: Iron in the city
(2022)
author(s): Stephen Edward Bottomley
published in: Research Catalogue
Jewellery and objects by twenty-two contemporary makers displayed alongside gemmological samples and photography that explores the interpretation and influence of Iron as catalyst, material and fundamental element of life. The exhibition was co-curated by Professor Stephen Bottomley, Head of School and Elizabeth Turrell visiting Professor at School of Jewellery, Birmingham City University.
This 2019 international touring exhibition brought together fascinating artistic responses to the theme of iron by twenty-two contemporary makers, including works by academic staff from Birmingham’s eminent School of Jewellery and invited international artists.
It explored iron is a material that has become synonymous with human life and civilisation and as such has become embedded in both our language and understanding of the world
FERROcity showcased a breadth of approaches to this fascinating but familiar material. Ideas explore the interpretation and influence of Iron as catalyst, material, and fundamental element of life, culminating in contemporary metalwork and jewellery ranging from steel vessels to recycled iron nail jewellery. Alongside this gemmological samples and photography taken on specialist microscopes was commissioned from the Gemmology department at the School of Jewellery which captured the transformative effect iron has on the colouration of gemstones.
The show opened in Germany at the Museum Reich der Kristalle, Mineralogical State Collection, Munich and ran in tandem with the city’s international jewellery fair ‘Inhorgenta’ in February 2019 and ‘International Jewellery Week’ and ‘Schmuck’ exhibitions over February and March 2019. The exhibition then moved to the Vittoria Street Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom, April 2019 and was invited to China as a special exhibition at the 4th International Art Jewellery Exhibition at the Beijing Institute of Fashion and Textiles October 2019 before moving to the Academy of International Visual Arts, Shanghai November 2019 until it closed in December 2019.
Exhibitors
School of Jewellery:
Dauvit Alexander, Jivan Astfalck, Stephen Bottomley, Jeremy Hobbins, Bridie Lander, Anna Lorenz,
Sarah O’Hana, Drew Markou, Toni Mayner, Jo Pond, Rebecca Steiner, Elizabeth Turrell.
Invited artists:
Marianne Anderson, Tim Carson, Rachael Colley, Bettina Dittlmann, Christine Graf, Kirsten Haydon, Michael Jank, Joohee Han, Simone Nolden Jo Pudelko.
Exhibition Dates:
Germany, Munich | 21st February to 17th March 2019
United Kingdom, Birmingham| 1st April to 18th April 2019
China, Beijing |18th October to 28th October 2019
China, Shanghai| 31st October to 30th November 2019
Raising the Voice: Sculptural and Spoken Narratives from the Flat Sheet
(2021)
author(s): Hannah Clarkson
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition explores ideas of narrative and storytelling through sculptures and texts raised from a flat sheet, a kind of visual and spoken poetry which is both particular and multiple.
In this paper, the key area of investigation will be the relationship between sculptural and spoken narratives in my practice. This is engaged with in four main areas:
• The flat sheet and the fold as sites for storytelling
• Multiplicities inherent to storytelling
• Architecturality and the space between bodies and buildings
• Words, text and the voice, and their relationship to sculpture
I explore the role of the architectural in the space between sculptural and spoken narratives, both of which are forms that begin with a flat sheet. The research also looks at how one might write about art in order to expand understanding but not reduce it to one meaning, writing around or through objects so as to leave gaps for the imagination and other narratives. The importance of the voice in the telling of these narratives is investigated, as well as the relationship between bodies and buildings.
Meaning Containers
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Stefania Castelblanco Perez
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The meaning containers project explores manifestations of social and cultural resistance in craft practices. The Meaning Containers are artisanal bags inspired by raffia palm objects from the Democratic Republic of Congo preserved in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. They are mainly inspired by a beanie initiation hat and amulet bags made with raffia palm. The meaning containers bags were part of a group exhibition called “Renegotiating Material Culture”, the result of a yearlong partnership between the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm and Research Lab at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. One of the main objectives of the research project consisted in exploring how the museum and its collection can inspire our contemporary craft and also how craft can explore the museum.
Resorting to the traditional Congolese Raffia palm weaving and beadwork techniques, these bags combine raffia palm with polypropylene and plastic bags used to store and transport cobalt and other precious minerals in the contemporary DRC. As a bag designer, I wanted to create bags using materiality and shape as communicative interfaces. Objects can be containers of social and cultural meaning and can tell the relationship that exists between communities and makers with their natural environment and social context. This presentation consists of a long abstract and photo diary of my research work.
Adorned Afterlife Network
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Stephen Edward Bottomley
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The Adorned Afterlife network was established by Bottomley in 2015 with a University of Edinburgh’s Challenge Investment Award. Bottomley brought together a network of international researchers from Design, Archaeology, Forensic Anthropology, History and Museology to examine hidden objects of adornment and share discourse and analysis through high-quality speculative multidisciplinary research.
Museums contain many intangible artefacts from our past that relate to the body as adornment. These objects may be represented in paintings and carvings, or literally buried in sarcophaguses or beneath layers of funereal wrappings. The interdisciplinary nature of the network enabled the examination of these items through each others specialist expert lens, leading to the insight that although we saw the same item, we used different terms and language to describe it’s attributed use and meaning. Collectively we speculated on their purpose (why were they made), significance (both then and now) and how they were made (and by whom).
The methodology followed practice-based research, comparing craft makers primary knowledge with curators secondary and tertiary sources via filmed interviews and presentations through each other’s lens of enquiry, to “learn by active experience and reflection on that experience” ( Gray & Malins, 2004).
The network’s 2016 symposium co-ordinated by the researcher explored existing precedents and new technologies for the non-invasive examining of artefacts and paintings in museums by computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning. A focus was the funereal adornments, carefully sited personal objects, placed beneath the wrapped and sealed bandages of Rhind Mummy at the Granton archives, the National Museum of Scotland.
The findings of the research were further presented in the paper ‘The Quick and the Dead: the Changing Meaning and Significance of Jewellery Beyond the Grave’ (Bottomley) at the Canadian Craft Biennale (2017) and published as a ‘Visual-Textual Paper’in the Journal for Jewellery Research (2018).