University Collections Advisory Committee Art Collection Acquisitions 2018/2019 financial year Description of paper 1. This paper outlines the artwork acquired for the University Art Collection in the 2018/2019 financial year. 2. The Committee is asked to comment on the paper. Recommendation 3. No recommendations. Background and context 4. Each year the University Art Collection acquires works for use in teaching and research, as well as for display across campus and loan to external institutions. Discussion 5. This document is presented for information. Resource implications 6. The 18/19 acquisitions budget for the Art Collection was £50,000 from ISG capital funds (with an additional £20,000 supplied from the Library materials budget in 18/19). The Art Collection acquired 15 works by 11 artists from this budget. There is no allocation from the Library materials budget for 19/20. Risk Management 7. N/A Equality & Diversity 8. The 18/19 acquisitions include seven works produced by six male artists, and eight works produced by five female artists. Eight of the artists were recent and past graduates of Edinburgh College of Art, with the remaining three originating from Ireland and Sweden. Next steps/implications 9. N/A Consultation 10. The acquisitions were made through discussion with various contacts across the University, including the team at Talbot Rice Gallery (Jesse Jones, Willie Doherty and Cody Lukas all featured in the TRG exhibition programme) as well as academics in the History of Art Department. The artworks acquired from the ECA Degree show were selected by a panel composed of Gordon Brennan (Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Art), Tessa Giblin (Talbot Rice Director), Claire Barclay (artist) and Julie-Ann Delaney (Art Collections Curator). Membership of the panel which selects from the ECA Degree Show changes annually. Further information 11. Author Presenter Art Collections Curator Jacky MacBeath Freedom of Information 12. Open.
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University Collections Advisory Committee Art Collection Acquisitions 2018/2019 financial year
Description of paper 1. This paper outlines the artwork acquired for the University Art Collection in the 2018/2019 financial year. 2. The Committee is asked to comment on the paper. Recommendation 3. No recommendations. Background and context 4. Each year the University Art Collection acquires works for use in teaching and research, as well as for display across campus and loan to external institutions. Discussion 5. This document is presented for information.
Resource implications 6. The 18/19 acquisitions budget for the Art Collection was £50,000 from ISG capital funds (with an additional £20,000 supplied from the Library materials budget in 18/19). The Art Collection acquired 15 works by 11 artists from this budget. There is no allocation from the Library materials budget for 19/20. Risk Management 7. N/A Equality & Diversity 8. The 18/19 acquisitions include seven works produced by six male artists, and eight works produced by five female artists. Eight of the artists were recent and past graduates of Edinburgh College of Art, with the remaining three originating from Ireland and Sweden. Next steps/implications 9. N/A Consultation 10. The acquisitions were made through discussion with various contacts across the University, including the team at Talbot Rice Gallery (Jesse Jones, Willie Doherty and Cody Lukas all featured in the TRG exhibition programme) as well as academics in the History of Art Department. The artworks acquired from the ECA Degree show were selected by a panel composed of Gordon Brennan (Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Art), Tessa Giblin (Talbot Rice Director), Claire Barclay (artist) and Julie-Ann Delaney (Art Collections Curator). Membership of the panel which selects from the ECA Degree Show changes annually. Further information 11. Author Presenter Art Collections Curator Jacky MacBeath Freedom of Information 12. Open.
Art Collection Acquisitions
2018/19
Moyna Flannigan b. 1963, Kirkcaldy, Scotland
Tear no. 33 2017 Collage, ink, gouache 41.5 x 32.8 cm Purchased from A-M-G5 Gallery, Glasgow
Girl With Tear (Blue Painting) 2017 Distemper on canvas 150 x 120 cm
Purchased from A-M-G5 Gallery, Glasgow
Tear No. 36 2018 Collage, ink, gouache 99.5 x 77.5 cm
Purchased from Ingleby Gallery after its display as part of NOW (4) at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
‘The series Tear with its focus on materiality, offers a new perspective on representation of the female form, and a heightened awareness of the relationship of surface, touch, and material to image.
With reference to images of female grace, the body is re-presented as a site of sense-perception and feeling, as a sensory being-in-the-world. A small but specific range of materials is used to create lush surfaces and colour so that the image sits outside of its original context. It is out-of-time.
A taxonomy of body parts is used in the collage but their destiny is directed by a chance-driven working process. In taking on a new life as a collage, the images also refer to the location of forms in space: harmony. In doing so they become like icons which remain untouchable in the memory. They feel as if they have always been there. The accumulation of fragments of drawings are markers by which the work stores time. This process is simultaneous and ongoing: the collage is paradoxically “live”.
The paintings are borne out of a desire to crack open the collage by painting it. Isabelle Graw's assertion of "the material and technical register of the work of art as the site rather than a mere support of meaning” * led me beyond paint which was commercially available to its origins, pigment and binder, to make my own paint
For most of my painting life I have been fascinated by one painting in particular - The Madonna del Parto, 1460, by Piero Francesca, the first feminist representation of an earthly pregnant woman. In this painting you are taken into the image without being aware of the surface of the painting: there is nothing between the image and you. This relates to the notion of the picture plane and space in painting which for a painter is really the mysterious thing about painting. Where is this image which you make?
There came a point last year where I felt the only way to really get at these ideas was to adopt a painting technique more like Piero and I began to make distemper paint. Distemper has its origins in Egyptian painting with its five colour palette - white, black, ultramarine blue, yellow ochre and English red. When pigment is mixed with warm rabbit skin glue it becomes paint. The paint has to be applied warm. It dries quickly, dead flat. It doesn’t not allow for revisions. The paint appears not to exist on the surface at all but it is there on a metaphysical plane. The existence of the image therefore, is to do with matter, materiality.
A work of art can teach you how to see it, it’s a small but vital thing.’
- Moyna Flannigan, September 2018
Flannigan graduated from ECA in 1985, and remains living in Edinburgh. She has a studio in Dunbar, East Lothian. www.moynaflannigan.com
Thou Shalt Not Suffer 2019 Digital print, and four hammers with engraved burnished lettering Purchased directly from the artist
Jesse Jones makes art using a range of forms, including video, sculpture, performance and installation. She often works collaboratively with others, and explores historical and societal issues related to community or political experiences.
Her recent work, including the installation TrembleTremble presented at the Venice Biennale 2017, proposes a rethink in the relationship between law and the body through speculative feminist narratives. She explores the possibilities of counter-discourses about dominant power, past and present, and draws inspiration from archetypes and forgotten myths, including the figure of the witch.
In Thou Shalt Not Suffer, four hammers are positioned on a low round plinth. The engraved inscriptions on them refer to the book Malleus Maleficarum (1487), also known as ‘Hammer of Witches’. Written by monks in the 15th century, it was a manual that explained how to identify, condemn and eliminate women during the historical period of the witchcraft trials. Jones has adapted and inscribed a line from the Malleus onto the hammers, with ‘You will not allow the witches to live’ becoming ‘you will not suffer’ - thus reversing the intent of the text.
When talking about the Malleus in relation to past work, Jones has said it “is often called the most blood-stained book in history, and I was interested in inverting its declarative power and playing with some of the forms of witchcraft and sorcery that the very book accused witches of doing: speaking in tongues and backwards. There is some kind of taboo there, something of the underworld and uncanny.”1
The digital print which forms part of the work depicts a multiple of the Sheela Na Gig; a matriarchal icon of pagan Ireland. The artist transforms this sculpture of a goddess, symbol of a passage to a sacred space, into a totem of fertility endowed with twelve heads. The extraordinary figure of the Sheela Na Gig can be found all over Europe in differing forms, but remains identifiable by characteristics including the bearing of teeth and exposed vulva.
Workers! 2019 Colour video projection, with sound, 40 min Commissioned by Collective Gallery. Purchased directly from the artist
Workers! is a video borne from a three-year collaboration involving Swedish artist/filmmaker Petra Bauer, Collective Gallery, production company HER film, the University of Edinburgh, and SCOT-PEP; a Scottish-based, sex worker-led organisation. It forms part of a larger project connected to the ongoing campaign for workers’ rights within the sex industry.
The video follows a group of sex workers during a one day occupation of the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) building in Glasgow; a space which has a long history of fighting for the rights and political representation of workers. Bauer brings the voices of the sex workers into the spotlight, capturing them as they enact routine communal tasks such as preparing refreshments for the meeting, talking about their shared economic difficulties, as well as cleaning, sewing and ironing a protest banner. In a key scene, three women take down the old, dusty, framed STUC pictures from the wall, replacing them with dynamic temporary posters of historic sex worker protests.
The artist took great lengths to retain the anonymity of the individuals represented, by filming from above and behind, as well as by obscuring faces with creative use of mirrors, doors and umbrellas.
Workers! is inspired by two significant films from 1975: Les Prostituées de Lyon Parlent, a documentary by Carole Roussopoulous/Videìo Out collective and Chantal Akerman’s arthouse classic, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. One film followed 150 women as they occupied a church in Lyon to protest the brutal abuse of sex workers, whilst the other depicted the mundane daily routines of Jeanne – both mother and sex worker - with long, static shots of housework, food preparation and sex work.
Between (Where the Roads Between Derry and Donegal Cross The Border) 2019 Digital pigment prints Purchased from Kerlin Gallery, Dublin following display in Borderlines at Talbot Rice Gallery. Between (Where the Roads Between Derry and Donegal Cross The Border) by Willie Doherty is a portrayal of the twenty points between County Donegal and the City of Derry where roads cross the border separating the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The images, which depict seemingly unremarkable points in the road, document the physical line between two counties but also speak to the ’betweenness’ of the impact of past and future political change.
While there is no physical trace of the infamous militarised border that had been in place along these points before the Good Friday Agreement (1998), the impact of these images is testament to how these spaces hold the memory of this time. On the other hand, these images also point to what might come to these spaces in the future, or more specifically, what might return: a re-instigated hard border following Brexit.
Living in Donegal and working in Derry, Doherty crosses this border on a daily basis. A return of the border would have a direct impact on his life and to lives of many others who inhabit the area. Born out of a ‘Brexit Limbo’ climate, ‘Between’ becomes representative of the long period of uncertainty for Northern Ireland and the border question at the time.
Between is typical of Doherty’s practice; much of which concentrates on photography and video that begin as responses to specific terrains that have a troubled past. Throughout his career, the artist has shared views of post-conflict settings in Northern Ireland, particularly in his native city of Derry.
With previous photo works, Doherty used layered text to draw attention to the complexity of the situation in Ireland. Between is no different but also points to absurdity of the contemporary climate.
In an interview with The Skinny Magazine in 2019, Talbot Rice Gallery Director Tessa Giblin described Doherty’s work as a pivotal part of [the exhibition Borderlines], and the necessity of such work in the current climate. "We all remember this time of conflict in Northern Ireland, we all know it, but it’s amazing how quickly it can drop out of the public consciousness," she says. "This is when visual artists can show us, literally, what this memory really is.”2
Doherty lives and works in Northern Ireland. http://www.kerlingallery.com/artists/willie-doherty
Jacopo Nani 2019 Acrylic paint and string ECA Purchase Prize
Brandon Logan’s works are made by sealing warps of string with layers of acrylic paint, until eventually paint supports string, and string, in turn, supports paint. He then cuts away areas of both, leaving behind patterning which nods to decorative schema as well as systems of information or language.
Logan talks of being interested in ‘paintings which look like things’ as well as the fine line that often exists between object and painting, craft and art. The form of his works, plus their patterning and fibrous surfaces, often evoke woven textiles and tapestries, and Logan acknowledges an admiration for the social aspect and skill of these practices through reference to makers such as Sheila Hicks, Chiyoko Tanaka and Annie Albers.
The inclusion of the string places these works outside the tradition of canvas painting, but Logan is keen that this act be considered a means of invigorating a medium which he is strongly bound to, rather than necessarily an attempt to antagonise or subvert its foundations.
The artist has been using string within his paintings for the past three years; initially making smaller palm-sized pieces before scaling up to works the size of Jacopo Nani and larger. These palm-sized works, as well as drawings, often operate as preparatory studies to explore colour combination and pattern. Logan’s source material is drawn from a mix of visual and non-visual domains, ranging from the landscape in Orkney (where the artist was born and raised) through to contemporary song lyrics and the imagery of other artists.
The title and inspiration for this work is rooted in Italy, and specifically a street in the city of Venice. During 2017 the artist lived on Via Jacopo Nani whilst working as part of the invigilation team on the Scotland + Venice presentation of Rachel McLean’s video work, Spite Your Face (a work also held in the University Art Collection). After later research Logan discovered that the name was in fact a reference to Giacomo Nani, the 17th Century Italian artist who worked in Still Life and Porcelain. Although the resulting work is abstract, Logan’s careful selection of colour, as well as the works rectangular form, do nod to, and conjure up, the very special light and architecture of the city.
Logan graduated from the five-year MA (Hons) in Fine Art from ECA in 2019, and lives and works in Orkney.
Zuzana Ullmannová b. 1996
In the Garden 2019 Acrylic on Polycotton
Cotton Wool Brain 2018 Acrylic and watercolour on Polycotton ECA Purchase Prize
Zuzana Ullmannová’s paintings begin life as drawings in watercolour and crayon; materials selected for their physical properties but also because, as the artist states, they introduce a ‘lack of control… [and] don't allow for total precision’. However, the resulting paintings should not be seen as a scaling up of these preparatory sketches; they do not aspire to be accurate renderings of their original source, instead Ullmannová talks of ‘allowing the painting to take itself somewhere’. Cotton Wool Brain is one of the first works the artist made on Polycotton; a surface chosen specifically because of its thin and absorbent nature. As with many of her recent works acrylic and watercolour paints were applied ‘wet on wet’ meaning Ullmannová had to act quickly to control and manipulate the way colour shifts and pools on the surface. The thin nature of the Polycotton also often renders the support structure of many of her works visible, an unintended but happily accepted accident for the artist.
Produced in a sickly pink, Cotton Wool Brain sits in contrast to much of Ullmannová’s subsequent works, including In the Garden which also joins the collection. These later works all share an undertone of dark brown, the result of then ECA painting tutor Neil Clements gifting the artist some brown scenic paint to experiment with. Many of the larger works also feature a jagged stitched scar running down the length of the painting; an indication of the joining of two pieces of Polycotton because of the artists desire to work beyond the limits of its given sizes.
The titles of Ullmannová’s work range from the literal and descriptive (Where I Lay My Head Down, In the Garden) to the more ambiguous (Cotton Wool Brain, Turnip Boy) which evoke a memory, mood or feeling. The artist is keen that the naming of the work open up possible readings and paths for the viewer, rather than be prescriptive or remove mystery and potential.
Prior to studying at ECA Ullmannová completed a four year course at the Secondary Professional School of Applied Art in Prague. She lives and works in Edinburgh.
Dong Ding b. 1994, Nanjing, China
The Boundary of Balance 2019 Gold plated brass and CZ ECA Purchase Prize The Art Collection acquired one piece from Dong Ding’s sculptural jewellery collection Boundary of Balance; a series of works which explores the relationship and tension between balance and imbalance. Each of the carefully crafted kinetic pieces can be worn in multiple ways - disassembled and re-assembled by the wearer - with interchangeable and detachable details such as rings, tie pins and earrings integrated into the overall composition. The movement of each piece is influenced by these counterbalanced components, as well as by the body and actions of the wearer. Sharing a passing resemblance to historical navigational tools, the works come accompanied with bespoke laser cut instructions identifying the multiple permutations for the wearer. To see the artist demonstrating the variability in the Boundary of Balance works, view here
Ding graduated from the MFA in Jewellery in 2019 and lives and works in Edinburgh.
The Boy That I Love is waiting in the Wings 2019 Black-and-white video, with sound, 15 min., 2 sec. They can break your arm 2019 Indian ink and gouache work on paper ECA Purchase Prize ‘I’m on a frenzied quest to magpie through the remnants of all those centuries and find what shines. I have some idea of what can be relied on to stoke the fire – handsome sailors, Cecil Beaton’s photographs of Princess Margaret, the opening credits of the film Working Girl.’
This statement from artist Alex Hayward gives and insight on his approach to collating and combining source material for his art. Working across painting and video, Hayward mines literature, philosophy, film, popular culture and personal biography to produce works which manage to evoke humour, romance and pathos.
The Boy That I Love is waiting in the Wings and They can break your arm sit within a larger body of work by Hayward which explores an unrequited and intense romantic attachment to a male dancer in the Matthew Bourne version of the ballet Swan Lake. The video – in which Hayward narrates his feelings towards the dancer known only as ‘Ashley’ – combines footage shot by the artist, along with clips taken from the highlights of cinema past and present, including the David Lean classic Brief Encounter (1945) and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996).
Still from The Boy That I Love is waiting in the Wings 2019
Graduating from Design Informatics, Lucy Havens is an ‘information architect’ who combines design methodologies and data analytics to create new access points to, and visualisations of, data and information. Her research and interest focuses on a larger consideration and exploration of the role of physicalizations of metadata for the cultural heritage sector. With her work Havens asks ‘What happens when we encode data in physical objects?’
Havens’ degree show displayed three ‘metadata physicalizations’ made from exploration of museum catalogue data. Specifically, her work was the output of engagement with metadata from the University’s Musical Instrument Collection, housed at St Cecilia’s Hall: Concert Hall and Music Museum. Like many museum and heritage collections, the University Museum and Special Collections have stored information or ‘metadata’ about our art, musical instruments, archives, manuscripts etc. in digital catalogues. These catalogues have a description field for all aspects of an object’s history or physical characteristics.
For the instruments collections metadata includes information and descriptions on physical and material characteristics. For one output of the work, Lucy focused on the 1000 Clarinets in the collection, donated by Sir Nicholas J. Shackleton, and the material information available about them.
Using text mining, Lucy extracted a subset of the data for Clarinets in the collection. Then she used text mining to extract types of materials (mostly woods and metals) that appeared in the description fields. Samples of these materials were then combined together to make a clarinet model.
Havens is interested in the way that each clarinet’s materials give information about how the work was made and its historical context. For instance, material can trace trade routes that may have been used and outline historical access to materials. This information can lead to other wider issues and discussions points around museum collections. For example, certain materials, such as ivory, that were acceptable to use in the past, raise ethical and environmental concerns in today’s society.
The ‘abstract clarinet’ illustrates the material characteristics of the clarinet collection in one physical model. More broadly it considers the relationship between the digital, physical and historical information and in doing so it offers an alternative representation of the clarinets in the University collections. As well as being a visualisation of a clarinet, it is an exploration of materials, art, museums and data and the potential dynamic of their merging.
James Howden’s work highlights political and social tensions in the public domain through the use of humour. In particular, he is interested in making work that ‘identifies and attacks societal issues such as violence and war, childhood and the environment.’
His giant sucker darts, like those installed at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), make a playful yet critical point on our social and cultural relationship with war and violence. Made from cast steel and painted red and yellow, their form references children’s toy gun and bullets.
Their bright colours and scale give them an air of innocence, even silliness. So much so perhaps that we forget that they are simulacra of bullets intended to kill and to end life. This tension points to the double standard of our society; we simultaneously condemn war and violence but also exonerate them through toys, video games, and play.
The darts were created as part of Howden’s Degree Show in 2017. As well as the four darts on the Hunter Building, others were placed around ECA including on one of the windows of the Main Building. Whilst most were removed, those on the Hunter Building remained in situ since the show. In 2019 the darts were purchased from Howden and formally entered the University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
Since graduating in 2017, Howden has exhibited work in Scotland, England and the United States of America. He lives in Edinburgh where he is continuing his practice and working as a casting technician at Powderhall Bronze casting foundry.
Cody Lukas
Newborn April 22nd 2019 72 Rock Samples Purchased from the Talbot Rice Gallery exhibition Trading Zone, with support of Friends of Edinburgh University Visual Arts
Cody Lukas is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is influenced by the dynamics between natural and technological processes and the artist’s research into ‘remediation methodology’. The latter Lukas describes as a method of ‘looking at living systems and processes as old media, and remediating them through modern technology as craft and technique.’ Developed by Lukas in close collaboration with researchers at University of Edinburgh’s Grant Institute for Geological Sciences, Newborn is part of a larger body of work titled A rose by any other name…Consisting of 6 individual elements; Newborn, Eroded, Cell Portrait, Host, Processing and Webster, the series seeks to challenge existing perspectives on how we interact with forms of living processes.
Composed of 72 rocks displayed in grid structure, Newborn is rooted in the concept that an igneous rock is only as old as the last time it has undergone an igneous process. To produce the work, Lukas took 300,000 million year old rocks collected from Arthur’s Seat (an extinct volcano to the East of Edinburgh’s city centre), and melted them using modern methods. The samples were then crushed and mixed with PVA glue and powder. The resulting paste was ‘dropped’ onto a kiln shelf allowing for the peaks and ridges to shape organically, mirroring ‘volcanic bomb formation’ which is when erupted lava from a volcano hardens in the air obtaining a unique shape and composition before it reaches the ground. The samples were fired for 20 minutes at 1,200 degrees Celsius – a high enough temperature to burn off the PVA and fuse the material, but to not melt the powder into glass. For Lukas, this ‘remediation’ of the geological process means that each of these rocks were ‘born’ on April 22nd 2019. The total number of rocks, 72, is significant to the artist as it is the maximum quantity he was able to make in a single day when formed one at a time.
Cody completed the MFA in Art, Space and Nature in 2019. Prior to studying at ECA, he graduated from Aalborg University with a BA Art and Technology in 2017. He lives and works in Denmark.
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