No Show
(2024)
author(s): Steinunn Knúts Önnudóttir
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition contains six letters about the work No-Show that was performed in Reykjavík in 2020. The performance is a part of the artistic PhD research "How Little is Enough?" Sustainable Methods of Performance for Transformative Encounters in Malmö Theatre Academy at Lund University. The letters address different aspects of my artistic practice and research such as motivation, method, affect, ethics and the findings.
No Show is a series of five immersive participatory performances, solitary experiences performed in five private homes in different neighbourhoods of Reykjavík in June – August 2020.
The Signifigance of a Waterfall Divided in Two
(2024)
author(s): Eric Maltz
published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
In January of 2022, I traveled with my family to Catarata Gocta, a two-tiered waterfall in the high rainforest, just outside of Cocachimba in Peru’s northeast. I seized this opportunity to conduct an artistic research experiment combining field recording, mystical participation, dream work, philosophy, and psychology. I incite and analyze dreams, peel back the perverse layers of my capitalist induced fantasies, exhaust liquid metaphors, engage in forms of mystical participation, discuss whether it’s even possible to record a place at all and draw connections and conclusions whose coherence is, well, maybe not so coherent. This essay touches on Sonic Journalism, the psychologies of Jung, the art criticism of Sontag and Berger and the art of Cage, Duchamp, and Hunter S. Thompson. The field recordings and images presented here are shreds of evidence supporting my own twisted brand of Gonzo Journalism. It is a tight rope walk across microphone cables and book spines, fueled by coffee, internet databases, and obsessive listening. The gravitational current pulling the waters of Catarata Gocta earthward is the dense center around which this essay orbits. Stretching across its horizon, I feel myself emptied, my thoughts laid bare and made available for self-examination.
Seanergy - Digital Underwater Art Gallery
(2024)
author(s): Michal Lovecky
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
Seanergy Underwater Art Gallery is a digital space that integrates ocean-themed art with technology. It focuses on the co-design of digital experiences with raw nature to foster a genuine connection with the marine environment. This research is my starting point for exploring strategies for incorporating nature into the design process of digital experiences, aiming to enhance engagement and promote environmental stewardship.
Co-poiesis: redefining our relationship with the world through filmmaking
(2024)
author(s): Yasmin Henra van Dorp
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
The research question that motivates this study is: what insights can be drawn from collaborative filmmaking that can illuminate new pathways for interacting with the world around us?
Against the backdrop of contemporary societal and environmental divisions, this artistic research explores ways for redefining relationships, both human and nonhuman, through the lens of the philosophical framework of co-poiesis. Using a practice-led research methodology based on the collaborative process of the short documentary "The Spectacle" this study explores how collaborative practice and sensory engagement can serve as a reflective tool, illuminating our relational dynamics and perceptual interactions with each other and our environment.
Magic and sorcery as creative methodology
(2024)
author(s): Carolina Albuquerque
published in: Research Catalogue
Studies in art production using sorcery, magic and rituals to access the unconsciousness and engage art production and performances. As part of the PhD research and as result of the class of Actual Thought in Arts, this publication aims to demonstrate the possibilities of utilizing ancestral practices to contribute to the creative process. To achieve this, themes such as the unconscious, magic and sorcery, mythology, and decolonialism are intricately connected to the development of art and performance in this context. There is no way to disconnect one area from the other. When discussing magic, it is essential to understand the reasons for its marginalization. Magic has been utilized in numerous rituals, and rituals can be viewed as performances of artistic actions that permeate our unconscious.
Personal and Academic Blurred Spaces Hinged on Synchronous Gravities in Nature: Conceptual Musings from Events of (Re-)configurations during COVID-19 Pandemic
(2023)
author(s): Haris Adhikari
published in: Research Catalogue
This paper inquires into a two-fold issue: (i) blurred personal and academic spaces during the pandemic and their impact, and (ii) nature’s role in them. As a transformative arts-based research (TABR) within an experimental framework deploying concepts of liminality, Derrida’s ‘teleiopoiesis’, and an adapted outlook of experiential interconnectedness or consciousness of Advaita Vedanta, the paper forwards pedagogically useful findings and implications as these: (i) blurred spaces as bizarre or third space entities that were both stressful and productive, (ii) increased exposures to nature and eco-spirituality, followed by heightened realizations of nature’s place in life, learning and being during the pandemic, (iii) heterotopic university as a space or place that effectuated a surge in self-internalization of learning via intense involvement, (iv) compassionate/ empathic living as a door to self-improvement and joy, (v) formations of new habits and routines as coping strategies in the difficult times, and (v) newly formed wholesome habits and synchronous gravities in nature as great contributors to increased reflective or creative productivity during the pandemic. Additionally, yet more importantly, it highlights the instrumentality of human senses as lower rungs in realizing the interconnectedness or consciousness that experiential Advaita proffers, and this it does by communicating the need for individually unique, radically nonlinear, and adventurously inter-/ trans-disciplinary celebrations of the phenomenon. Besides, it celebrates interrelated questions and curiosities throughout.
Ex-voto
(2023)
author(s): Anne-Marie Dehon
published in: Research Catalogue
A few months ago, I suddenly understood that my craft was a votive practice: a wishfull practice for a world without technology.
An ex-voto is an object that we offer to the divinity to thank the god for a gift or to prevent something from happening in the future.
In a way, my entire ceramic work is an ex-voto that carry the wish of a world with much less technology.
By defining it as an ex-voto I am questioning my practice: to make a wish does not mean that it will happen, neither that it has any impact on the reality. Is that not when the situation is desperate that we refer to a divinity? Is making ceramics a desperate whisper to protect an idealized nature? What is the meaning today to idealize nature while we destroy it by our way of life?
This reflects on my own practice of craft regarding to the destruction of nature by technology. The ceramic objects are the votive object, the wish carried by the craft. The picture represents the nature as it is (cf. Trolhättan project) or as we desire it to be (cf. Fragonard project). The project as a whole question the idealization of nature, the idealization of craft and his meaning today in a context of global warming.
Naturfilm
(2021)
author(s): Elisa Rossholm, Anna Sofia Rossholm
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
’Naturfilm’ (nature film) consist of three image based essays that reflect on the relation between mankind and nature in Swedish classical nature documentaries, and also on modernity’s negotiation of the separation of nature and human culture by large. The essays include reflections on landscape, natural resources, species and gender relations, indigenous cultures and media materiality. The essays combine images and voice-over, more specifically a series of drawings of still images from existing film footage combined with fragmentary reflections on the images as media inscription and representation.
The essays are media transformations of existing Swedish documentary films from the peak of the classical era, namely from the late 1930s until the early 1950s. In an ecological context, this period represents what is labeled ‘the great acceleration’, an increased exploitation of natural resources, and to some extent an intensified separation of nature and human activities.
Sensory excursion as a site of encounter
(2020)
author(s): mari martin
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
In this exposition I discuss a human’s relationship with the environment, in terms of sensation and encounter. I describe my artistic practice implemented with the artist group Ajauksia, as a member of it. We, as a group, explore various sensory encounters with the environment through sensory exercises and, to that end, organize sensory excursions in different urban environments.
We participated in the Research Pavilion # 3 (RP #3), coordinated by the University of the Arts Helsinki in the context of the Venice Biennale. Here I describe the work of Ajauksia within the project, from my perspective. I join in the theme of this Ruukku publication, ecologies of practice, by describing how we developed sustainable modes of artistic research in and through processes of collaborating, performing and discussing. Now, after the project, I reflect on the ideas, experiences and opportunities for interaction with different parties. I focus in particular on the two very different environments where we worked, the Kontula suburb of Helsinki and the island of Giudecca, Venice, where Research Pavilion #3 was located.
Can I Paint It? Exploring the 'Art-tool' Method in Anthropology
(2019)
author(s): Paola Tine
published in: Research Catalogue
This essay is divided in two sections: a theoretical reflection on the premises and advantages of painting in anthropological research, and a practical experiment. The first section offers a proposal for the use of painting within anthropological outcomes as an important tool for representing the feelings of the researcher and of the people observed, as well as mediating between their perspectives. Additionally, the proposed visual essay, entitled ‘City and Nature’ is a visual exploration of human life within the modern globalised world, focusing on nature and consumerism through dark surreal images. The exploration of the possibilities of expression offered by artistic practice can be a great way to explore the sphere of perception and interpretation, that deeper world of meanings and understandings, that is the real heart of anthropology.
Walking As Practice WAP23
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): WAP
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
WALKING AS PRACTICE
WAP23 was a process-based residency during September-November 2023, where artists using walking as a method delved into each others’ knowledges and things they encountered together at BKN, the Northern Stockholm Archipelago in Sweden. Fieldworks, share sessions and seminars were created jointly to locate and entangle structures, narratives and themes for walking. The residency formed a transformative, dynamic space for art that engaged with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surroundings: the forest, lakes, sea and people living in the rural area. Processing how walking is interlocked in our artistic practices, this exposition represents a gathering of texts, visuals and audio from the walking art residency.
The selected artists contributed with interdisciplinary practices, primarily drawing, photography, video, performance and dance. They worked both individually, in spontaneous constellations and in group sessions. The dissemination of the program took place in share sessions upon arrival of new artists - including dinners, open studios, walks, workshops etc. In addition, as the program unfolded, each artist developed their own exposition.
All that glitters and NO black holes
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Design, 1995-96, 2023. Design, 1996-97. Photography, 2010, 2011. Essay, 2015. Collage Text, 2022.
The exposition serves as commentary and guide on the place of art, in a gradually environmentally and technologically challenged world. I further make a commentary on outgrown conceptions of the foreign, in terms of the so-called "exotic', and the non-foreign,within the context of contemporary globalisation. This, to raise open questions on the impact of the aforementioned on global politics.
The re-design proposal, inspired by De Stijl, illustrates the modernist historical view that art appears to be regressive, rather than progressive: as soon as a movement or a school becomes established, reaching its culmination, it starts declining.
Finally, I have included a graduate school architectural design project in the archaeological site of Eleusis accompanied by new commentary.
With essay about experimental film making in the British avant-garde, published in "Architecture and Culture" journal, 2015, which is about the environmental challenges of the urban environment. The reference to the TV show "Alone", a competitive prize show of sole or two-person players, is a reminder that humans can live in the natural environment developing survival tactics already applied by their ancestors.
About how to navigate this exposition:
Scroll from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, then scroll to the top right, then scroll to the bottom right.
For Luke.
My nature
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Kate
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
My nature
Nature is my source of inspiration – like many artists before me. My working process could be like that of a scientific process, but as an examination through an artistic approach.
I work with a kind of system that contain several single formats put together to form a larger drawing. The drawings contains a large number of copies of the same photograpic image which is interpreted through drawing. The modules are a photographic image taken from a tree – in one of the system – is the bark, in other it is the roots and the third thing is forms that grows out of the surface. The photograpic image is transfered via a risograph onto a surface that is suitable for drawing. The visual intrepretation happens in the organic structure, in the space between, in the rythms and in the lines. The drawing process is like drawing in pixels – while each module is a A3 format. Throughout the prosess the drawings are composisioned, arranged and rearranged, with the intention to form a new image still unknown and unseen - while some of the underlying and known image is still visible like fragments and fractals of the wholeness. In all the drawings is used soft pencils B – B9, all the works are from 2018. The size of 2 of the images are 164 x 236cm and 195 x 162cm. The third one has a looser composition where the empty space also play a role.
CCFT
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Johan Sandborg, Duncan Higgins, Bente Irminger, Linda H. Lien, andy lock, Ana Souto Galvan, Susan Brind, Shauna McMullan, Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Jim Harold, DÁNIEL PÉTER BIRÓ
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
As we move towards the first quarter of the third millennium, the impermanent and shifting influence of globalisation, economic division, migratory encounters, social media, historic narrative and tourism is having a major impact in our understanding of the making, belonging and occupying of place. It is widely documented that these conditions are contributing to a growing sense of displacement and alienation in what constitutes as place making, occupying, and belonging.
CCFT is asking how interdisciplinary artistic research practices contribute and share new critical understandings to aid this evolving understanding of place making, belonging and occupying?
Mosses Again a Source of Wonder, Room 18
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Jessica Emsley
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This marks the first of an anticipated sequence of iterative sharing of work within my PhD project, the methodology of which explores barefoot walking , analogue recording techniques, and a curation of indexical documents generated throughout.
In search of...
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Ekaterina Butorina
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
A platform for speculation, mapping, and spatial thinking comprises ongoing research projects that concentrate on practices acknowledging the constant flux at the intersection of body, world, and technology. I experiment and explore how cartography and its connections influence the perception of space, encompassing its visual and sonic trails.
Textile Awareness
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): HANNA felting
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
To create positive Textile Awareness I will be researching the relationship and interaction of consumers with clothing and textiles.
With the intention to encourage people to recycle clothing and shop less.
Inspire people to think critically about their purchases and create awareness about the consequences of clothing choices for the environment.
I want to make a joint impact so that clothing and textiles are no longer treated as waste products. More than half of old textiles in the Netherlands are not recycled but thrown out with the garbage. And thus into the incinerator.
Global warming is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. What can the consumer change in his behavior towards clothing and textiles? That is the question that concerns me.
Take picture with me!
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Plhák Vojtěch
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
I grew up in a family full of hunters. I used to go on hunting hunts and was generally pretty in touch with the death of animals. So I'm interested in everything surrounding this topic. At the same time, we are in an era where we share and photograph everything. I question why hunters take pictures with their kill. I also want to point out that these often distasteful photos, they share on Facebook, and or websites where they pat each other on the back. I'm exploring the connection between the camera and the gun.
The Invisible Women & the myth of the photographic truth
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Henriëtte Maria Giovanna Siemons
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023-BA Photography
This is the search for what is left of the myth of the Witte Wieven, in the landscapes of the Netherlands.
Historically there are theories about who the witte wieven were, and still are. One of them is that they once were wise female herbalists and healers. It was said they had the gift for looking into the future. Another theory is that they stem from forest spirits and goddesses, something our neighbouring countries still believe. In the Netherlands the collective memory of the women is based on the image of scary ghosts, witches or mist figures. History tells us something different.
I use the folktales as a guide and travel to the places mentioned. Strongly intertwined with the history of the Dutch landscapes, ancient nature and the east of the Netherlands, the witte wieven show the magical side of this ‘rational’ country. As the search continues, some themes keep recurring: the memory of the landscapes, the importance of female voices in storytelling and their structural silencing throughout history.
Clues, maps and the original folktales guide me to fairy tale- like encounters and push me to reflect on fact, fiction and the space in between. Using the camera to document the remnants of this myth, another world is created where the borders of what is ‘real’ fade. A new narrative where they are being remembered in a way they still have their magic. To keep the witte wieven close, I started to collect materials from the places where the witte wieven live: pebbles, twigs and water. Trying to conserve and protect the memories they have in them.
The spirits of the women are still there to be found in flowers, trees and rocks. It is important for us to remember, for the women and their story will not fade away over time.
Hinterlands - Between Worlds exhibition
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Jim Harold, Susan Brind
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
'Hinterlands' for the exhibition 'Between Worlds'
Renmin University of China, Beijing, 2015
The installation, ‘Hinterlands’, comprises two related elements: a wall painting with vinyl text; and four unframed photographic digital prints arranged on adjacent walls.
The wall texts are taken from a mixture of diary notes and descriptions of photographic images made by the artists, Brind & Harold, over a number of years whilst on research journeys. The texts are not chronologically ordered but, instead, are intended to be read as a series of text-images. Through typographic layout and proximity, the texts become interrelated whilst not being the direct traces of a linear journey or journeys. Rather, they tell of the small moments of travel and experience (un-photographable in some cases) that act as the truer registers of a journey; whether that journey is outwardly bound or inwardly focused. As a result the work seeks to allow these events and the phrases used to account for them to become liminal spaces - thresholds or hinterlands - through which the viewer's own imagination may engage with the artists’.
The photographs of desert space, details of the desert floor taken in the Egyptian a Desert, are similarly intended as the traces of real events and locations, while providing ambiguous spaces of reading and meaning.
Mobilis in mobil, rörlig i ett föränderligt medium
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Kristina Frank
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
An animator in awe of nature builds a submarine library and travels eons to a world of pre-culture nature.
Her research interests point in three directions:
Constructing a state of amazement by nature.
Investigating, designing and building an underwater library.
Using animation to create spatiality and interactivity.
NOISE
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): ARNAU MILLÀ BENSENY
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
NOISE
A SONIC CHOREOGRAPHY WITH LIVE COMPOSING
Series of performance pieces. Each one is the result of a site-specific creation and research laboratory. The creation laboratories are focused on a specific city or location and on its inhabitants.
The first version of NOISE was created and executed in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture, Japan.
VOL.1 NOISE - KITAKYUSHU
NOISE is an approach and a perception of a city, neighbourhood, town or area through the sounds that the space itself and its inhabitants generate.
From this sound material, movement and body perceptions are generated. They will later be developed to create the choreographic piece.
The composition in real time is organised through the language of Soundpainting. The entire soundpainting encoding is used to extract, analyse, dissect and sort all the sound and visual material that can be found in the apparent chaos of metropolitan and natural spaces.
Curious Arts – No. 5
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Jim Harold, Susan Brind
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
'Curious Arts – No. 5'
CCA, Glasgow, 2011
Sculptural and sound installation
In December 2011 the CCA dedicated its major gallery spaces to a two-week programme that developed its support for writing and publishing within contemporary art practice: "This programme will review the progress of 2HB in the form of an exhibition, ... an events programme and place this activity in the broader context of an international book fair where we can consider how books travel and how we travel through books. ... It has felt like the quality and diversity of artistic practice in Glasgow has been accelerated by art writing and journal publishing, as if the intelligence and sensibility of artistic practice in the city has been harnessed to a new force. ... So, we are wondering: what kind of cultural motor is independent publishing in Glasgow, and how does writing act as a motor within the artist's own practice?"
Quoted from CCA, Glasgow - "2HB: What we make with words. Writing and publishing as motors within contemporary art practice", October 2011 (undated). Exhibition curators: Sarah Tripp and Jamie Kenyon.
Exhibiting Artists: Susan Brind & Jim Harold, Ruth Buchanan, Alex Impey, Paul Elliman, Kathryn Elkin, Hannah Ellul, Kate Morrell, Charlotte Prodger, Thom Walker, and Rebecca Wilcox.
Drawing upon research undertaken in the library at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath (an historic house on the east coast of Scotland), and by means of a sculptural sound installation, 'Curious Arts – No. 5 took the viewer on a journey from the private world of the writing desk to the landscape and a place of images, texts and the history of ideas.
Curious Arts – No. 5
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Susan Brind, Jim Harold
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
'Curious Arts – No. 5'
CCA, Glasgow, 2011
Sculptural and sound installation
In December 2011 the CCA dedicated its major gallery spaces to a two-week programme that developed its support for writing and publishing within contemporary art practice: "This programme will review the progress of 2HB in the form of an exhibition, ... an events programme and place this activity in the broader context of an international book fair where we can consider how books travel and how we travel through books. ... It has felt like the quality and diversity of artistic practice in Glasgow has been accelerated by art writing and journal publishing, as if the intelligence and sensibility of artistic practice in the city has been harnessed to a new force. ... So, we are wondering: what kind of cultural motor is independent publishing in Glasgow, and how does writing act as a motor within the artist's own practice?"
Quoted from CCA, Glasgow - "2HB: What we make with words. Writing and publishing as motors within contemporary art practice", October 2011 (undated). Exhibition curators: Sarah Tripp and Jamie Kenyon.
Exhibiting Artists: Susan Brind & Jim Harold, Ruth Buchanan, Alex Impey, Paul Elliman, Kathryn Elkin, Hannah Ellul, Kate Morrell, Charlotte Prodger, Thom Walker, and Rebecca Wilcox.
Drawing upon research undertaken in the library at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath (an historic house on the east coast of Scotland), and by means of a sculptural sound installation, 'Curious Arts – No. 5 took the viewer on a journey from the private world of the writing desk to the landscape and a place of images, texts and the history of ideas.
'Curious Arts No. 6'
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Jim Harold, Susan Brind
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
'Curious Arts No. 6' (a collaborative artist book work) Published by CCA, Glasgow, 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-9576732-1-2
The book work, 'Curious Arts – No. 6', results from a period of residency and research in the private library at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath on the North-East coast of Scotland. The original owners of the house, Patrick and Elizabeth Allan-Fraser, were both dedicated to the ideals of art and nature and, following their deaths in the late nineteenth century, the House has been run as a trust dedicated to developments in the visual arts, literature and music in Scotland and internationally.
Given the owners’ original ideals, the House, its library and the ensuing years of residencies hosted by the Trust, have secured Hospitalfield as a part of Scotland and the UK’s cultural heritage: it is a hidden gem. Brind & Harold engaged with the House and its collections over a 6-year period. While the intention of this book is, in part, focused by the ethos of the Allan-Fraser’s, the House, its library and collections, 'Curious Arts – No. 6' is a visual and textual analysis of the qualities of the place, particularly those of the eclectic holdings of the library, that focuses on the ideals associated with nature and landscape. The archive comes alive as soon as one asks the question: how might this historical knowledge inform our contemporary understandings of the natural world? To help answer this Brind & Harold commissioned a human geographer, Dr. Nina Morris (Edinburgh University), and the academic and curator, Dr. Francis McKee (CCA, Glasgow) to join their researches into the House and its holdings. The resulting 52 page publication includes their responses as texts, as well as a visual essay by the artists, and includes an introduction by Lucy Byatt, Director of Hospitalfield House.
Published by CCA, Glasgow, 'Curious Arts No. 6' has been produced with substantial financial support from The Royal Society of Edinburgh, along with funding from the Glasgow School of Art’s Research Development Fund, with the intention that it be freely gifted to Scottish public libraries and libraries within institutions of higher education in the UK, and selected art libraries internationally. Whilst we live in an age where the internet is proliferating as one means of knowledge storage and dissemination, private and public libraries remain invaluable as models of knowledge-gathering systems and as archives vital to our deeper understanding of the world. By gifting copies of 'Curious Arts No. 6' to libraries, Brind & Harold hope to symbolically connect the knowledge held in a small private library in Arbroath with libraries and readers elsewhere.
Curious Arts – No. 6
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Susan Brind, Jim Harold
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
'Curious Arts No. 6' (a collaborative artist book work) Published by CCA, Glasgow, 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-9576732-1-2
The book work, 'Curious Arts – No. 6', results from a period of residency and research in the private library at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath on the North-East coast of Scotland. The original owners of the house, Patrick and Elizabeth Allan-Fraser, were both dedicated to the ideals of art and nature and, following their deaths in the late nineteenth century, the House has been run as a trust dedicated to developments in the visual arts, literature and music in Scotland and internationally.
Given the owners’ original ideals, the House, its library and the ensuing years of residencies hosted by the Trust, have secured Hospitalfield as a part of Scotland and the UK’s cultural heritage: it is a hidden gem. Brind & Harold engaged with the House and its collections over a 6-year period. While the intention of this book is, in part, focused by the ethos of the Allan-Fraser’s, the House, its library and collections, 'Curious Arts – No. 6' is a visual and textual analysis of the qualities of the place, particularly those of the eclectic holdings of the library, that focuses on the ideals associated with nature and landscape. The archive comes alive as soon as one asks the question: how might this historical knowledge inform our contemporary understandings of the natural world? To help answer this Brind & Harold commissioned a human geographer, Dr. Nina Morris (Edinburgh University), and the academic and curator, Dr. Francis McKee (CCA, Glasgow) to join their researches into the House and its holdings. The resulting 52 page publication includes their responses as texts, as well as a visual essay by the artists, and includes an introduction by Lucy Byatt, Director of Hospitalfield House.
Published by CCA, Glasgow, 'Curious Arts No. 6' has been produced with substantial financial support from The Royal Society of Edinburgh, along with funding from the Glasgow School of Art’s Research Development Fund, with the intention that it be freely gifted to Scottish public libraries and libraries within institutions of higher education in the UK, and selected art libraries internationally. Whilst we live in an age where the internet is proliferating as one means of knowledge storage and dissemination, private and public libraries remain invaluable as models of knowledge-gathering systems and as archives vital to our deeper understanding of the world. By gifting copies of 'Curious Arts No. 6' to libraries, Brind & Harold hope to symbolically connect the knowledge held in a small private library in Arbroath with libraries and readers elsewhere.