Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  Kipper and the corpse (2020) author(s): Stuart Whipps published in: Research Catalogue, Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
  ‘The Kipper and the Corpse’ (TK&C) borrows its title from an episode (March 1979) of the sit-com Fawlty Towers. Whipps’s TK&C research draws attention to both the social changes wrought by Thatcherism and prevailing media attitudes of the time. 1979 was pivotal for UK manufacturing as the then conservative government sought to undermine labour unions. Against this historical backdrop, the project raises questions about how the living memory of the pre-neoliberal world can be accessed and re-engaged with to bring about a collaborative understanding of present-day discourses around the politics and economics of labour. TK&C also offers a novel approach for paticipative creative activity, inverting the more normal artist-led working method. TK&C is a unique community-based art project that included the restoration of a 1275GT Mini made in Longbridge in 1979. Through the process of restoring the car, Whipps worked with several Longbridge ex-employees with car production and engineering expertise, social historians, sociologists, and anthropologists. These participants brought specialist knowledge and vocational skills to bear, positioning the artist/researcher, Whipps, as the novice. This reversal of roles destabilised the standard researcher - participant relationship allowing for the emergence of more participative forms of knowledge production and transfer. This form of collaboration encouraged multiple audiences, from beyond the art world, to engage with the underlying context used by the project. The practical outcomes of TK&C were augmented by information gathered from records at Warwick University, British Motor Museum archives, oral histories, media representations of British Leyland (sitcoms, political cartoons, tabloid newspapers) and photographic documentation. The project has been supported by Longbridge Public Art Project (LPAP) and featured in contemporary art exhibitions, including touring venues such as the British Art Show 8 (2015-2017), the IKON Gallery (2019), and internationally at Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona (2020).
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  Tick Tack Tick Tack Tick (2020) author(s): Stuart Whipps published in: Research Catalogue, Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
  TTTTT research by Whipps focuses on the persistent dichotomy between art and science with the aim of disrupting it. He has opened up his art practice to inputs from the disciplines of geology, horticulture and dance, combining them in contemporary art settings to create nuanced readings. The resulting productions (artefacts, exhibitions and publications) allow for the emergence of a new sort of puzzle, which materialises through poesis in these different and often unrelated fields. Whipps developed a co-working methodology that drew on expertise from Dr Andrew Rees (geology), University of Birmingham, Tom Brown, Head Gardener, West Dean Gardens and William Bracewell, First Soloist, Royal Ballet. This methodology was applied referencing a series of seemingly disconnected artistic nodal points, including: photographs taken at a surrealist sculpture garden in Mexico, archival material of the Scottish oil industry, stories of stolen flowers from a garden in North Wales. Using these nodes, plus others, Whipps elicited responses from the experts to inform his findings, which in turn were utilised in the production and presentation of new projections, prints and structural installation. They provided an accessible and common ground between these fields of knowledge, inviting visitors to meditate on the relationships that those fields can create when they collide in the new ways afforded by Whipps’s work. This research has been enacted through a series of national solo art exhibitions at Spike Island, Bristol, DCA, Dundee; plus international group shows: CAPC, France, and the Irish Architecture Association, Ireland. Whipps’s research has also been disseminated in monograph publications: ‘Feeling With Fingers That See’ and ‘White Ashes Fell’ as well as in a group publication, ‘Le Musée Se Met Au Vert!’ published by Musée Des Beaux-Arts Bordeaux. The research has been supported through two Arts Council England project grants and the Henry Moore Institute.
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  Necessary Amendments (2020) author(s): Stuart Whipps published in: Research Catalogue, Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
  During the passing of the New Towns bill in 1946 the minister for Town and Country planning invoked Moore’s Utopia only to be dismissed, ridiculed and lampooned by opposition politicians in the UK parliament. Whipps’ artistic research takes this moment's crude dichotomy as a starting point to investigate the places that were built and the people who live in them 70 years later. The outcomes (films, exhibitions and publication) allow for the different reading of historical materials from the perspective of memory and community. Whipps’ creates a change to the way we remember and think of ‘new towns’ today by both; representing the stories of people who lived and live in those ‘new’ places and by reflecting upon what happens when idealism and optimism is confronted by bureaucracy and the status quo. This research utilises historical and archival materials from Milton Keynes City Discover Centre and vintage educational videos from The Open University that were presented alongside newly created photographs, films and personal testimonies. Whipps developed a new body of work that centres around a series of films ‘Necessary Amendments’ (2014 - 2020) supported by community engagement events (e.g “Cycle Tour” around Milton Keynes public art displays, 2018), new photographic and film material from the sculpture garden created by a Harlow New Town architect Sir Fredrick Gibberd, and commissioned writing by Dr Honor Gavin (The University of Manchester). His findings in a form of films, contemporary art exhibitions, public talks and publications were supported by MK Gallery, The Open University and the University of Hertfordshire. The project was exhibited nationally in MK Gallery, and internationally in CURRENT Athens. “Necessary Amendments: Homes for the People” film was commissioned and exhibited as part of New Geographies (funded by ACE). Whipps published a peer-reviewed paper in ‘Art & the Public Sphere’ journal (2017).
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