In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement

In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

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First published in 2014 by NCAD – National College of Art and Design Coláiste Náisiúta Ealáinte is Deartha (NCAD) is a recognised college of University College Dublin (UCD) © February 2014. All rights reserved NCAD, the artists, authors and publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Publication Coordinators: Professor Desmond Bell, Head of Academic Affairs and Research Margaret Phelan, Administrator, Research and Postgraduate Development, NCAD Design: Conor & David Print: Hudson Killeen, Dublin Edition of 800

Contents

07 Foreword  08 Introduction 10

Research Resources at NCAD

24 Research and Public Engagement

from the Faculties 26 Design 34 Education 44 Fine Art 54 Visual Culture

62 PhD Research 64 Recently Completed 72 In Progress 84

Derry-Londonderry City of Culture NCAD contributions

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Conferences and Symposia

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Foreword

NCAD moved from a four year to a three year under­ graduate degree in 2013 and to what is termed the 3+2 (+3) ‘Bologna’ structure. The College is building a momentum towards postgraduate learning and an enhanced research culture. This is critical in the current climate characterised not so much by recession but by a resetting of socio-economic and cultural expectations.

For NCAD, the postgraduate and research space is where relations with the ‘real world’ can be fully articulated.

Research at NCAD means engagement and connectedness rather than separation from the economy, society and culture.

This is where art and design practice in negotiation with a given situation, and underpinned by a critical consciousness also resonating with the demand of the present can take whatever form it has to.

And it is this dynamic which underpins the proposed In Situ: Programme for Engaged Learning, which has brought together, in partnership, a range of educational, statutory and non-statutory bodies – UCD School of Architecture, Ballyfermot College of Further Education, the Digital Hub, Fatima Groups United, Create Collaborative Arts Agency and arts and health practitioners – to develop an inclusive learning and programming model which is ‘situated’ in the specific social setting of Thomas Street and Dublin 8. The intention is to create a long term viable and reciprocal model of the ‘street’ coming into the academy and the academy going into the ‘street’.

This commitment to engage with the world has always been present in NCAD. However, the current period of intense change in education in general and in art and design education in particular, demands a fuller and more dynamic understanding of research and its potential application.

The consolidation of a research culture within NCAD is also intended to impact on the quality of undergraduate learning and is key to the development of the College. It

Foreword Prof. Declan McGonagle Director

is also key to the sectoral re-positioning of art and design within the Irish educational landscape and to the creative disciplines being fully valued within Irish society.

There is certainly ground to be made up by the visual arts in this respect, and not just in Ireland. We must position research strategically within the College setting. In general, the ‘visual’ is marginalised in the intellectual culture of these islands. Part of the reason for this has been a slowness to engage with a research agenda within the Art academy.

At NCAD we are setting out to change that, but it still feels like a new necessity for art and design.

This publication attempts to capture and articulate key aspects of the research and public engagement activity that takes place at NCAD and to plot that new necessity.

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

The Business of Research Desmond Bell Head of Research and Academic Affairs

The notion that research might be central to the mission of an art college is a fairly recent one and reflects the integration of art education into the mainstream of higher education. Today a university’s international reputation largely rest on its research performance. Income from its research activity plays a significant role in balancing the institution’s books – political economy triumphs over public service. Traditionally art colleges have been places which give priority to teaching and ‘making work’ rather than to the processes of scholarly research. Research income has been minimal in the art colleges. However, with the emergence of practice based modes of research within art and design and with a new emphasis within the academy in public engagement and in promoting knowledge exchange, this is now changing.

The range of research activity to be found at NCAD is extensive. It ranges from scholarly work in the history of art and design, through critical consideration of contemporary art, to a range of public engagements of art with distinctive audiences, communities and critical problematics. It also encompasses work in the field of design concerned with developing particular products and more generally with the challenge of sustainable design. All of these elements are represented in this publication. All of them are playing their part in helping us build NCAD as a centre of excellence for research in contemporary art and design, enabling the College to provide academic and creative leadership for the visual arts in Ireland. Much of the work reported here, whether by individuals or by researchers working in teams, is of an interdisciplinary character. Much of it involves engagement with communities, public bodies and commercial companies outside College. That is its distinctive strength.

And this is why we have changed the title of this annual research publication to reflect this central commitment to public engagement within our educational mission.

In a university institution, research, scholarship and teaching are closely linked. Increasingly we deliver research led teaching. We introduce our advanced students to the latest research in their field and develop their capacities as researchers and independent learners so they can actively contribute to their discipline. Indeed, even if there was no commercial import to our research and if it achieved little

Introduction

social impact, this linkage would justify our commitment to developing the research base here at NCAD. However our researchers are successful in attracting external support for their work. Projects and products are being taken up by outside bodies and in some cases commercially exploited.

Our research is achieving real impact and making a distinct­ ive contribution to Irish society.

But there is another reason for privileging the place of research within art education. And this is primary – a crisis in creativity. Accompanying the triumph of neo-liberalism within economy and society has been a certain cultural exhaustion. This is most manifest in popular culture – the endless recycling and repetition in film and television drama in the search for the certain hit, the stasis within pop and rock music as subcultural grit and generational voice gives way to commercial calculation, the cult of celebrity and banalization of everyday life in print, tv and the net.

However, the exhaustion is also present in ‘high culture’.

It is manifest in the greying of the audience in the concert hall, cultural cinema and art gallery and in the aversion to risk on the part of the commissioners, funders and gatekeepers of cultural production, whether public or private.

The visual and plastic arts are not immune to this dynamic of cultural exhaustion in the wake of the current social and generational crisis. This year’s Turner prize shortlist contains a work by Tino Sehgal devoid of content or frame.

Visitors to the ‘art space’ are offered financial reward in return for expressing their views on the market economy, taking relational art to a reductio ad absurdum. The winning artist, Laure Prouvost, in her installation piece Wantee shamelessly rehashes strategies of playful obfuscation long established by avant garde film-makers.

Ireland once again is no country for young men (or women).

Nor is Europe. The young are all but excluded from cultural participation. Gone is the traditional commitment to innovate, question and project an alternative through one’s cultural expression. In this context the art school has a particular responsibility and not only that of the essentially conservative task of preserving cultural value through educational transmission, nor the opportunistic one of donning the utilitarian blinkers of the men from the ministry and delivering ‘more for less’. Rather, the task is one of cultural and creative renewal. This is not a piety. As universities shrink from their public cultural obligations, the art colleges directly confront the issue of where the impulse to creativity will come from in our denuded culture. This renewal must begin from an acceptance that the public world of culture and the intellect we have known is, in Victor Serge’s words, ‘being torn and up and crushed by the hurricane’.¹ Serge writes from a dark place, an exile assessing the impact of Fascism and Stalinism on mid-twentieth century European culture but his analysis may have import for our current malaise. A different hurricane rages. One of our own making, though most of us find ourselves paying for the hubris of the few. Science, the academy and culture finds themselves indentured to capital. Education becomes the whipping boy of the failed politicians who led us to this impasse. We will not rediscover the creative heartbeat in our culture by a retreat into esotericism as some approaches to art and cultural theory have attempted, but only by flinging ourselves as intellectuals and artists into the heart and soul of this hurricane – not in a gesture of abandon but in one of political engagement. We continue to look to art to not only give vent to our anger but also to express, ‘our desire to see better times, or at least the beginning of better times’.

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1. Victor Serge, Mexican Notebooks 1940–1947, in New Left Review 82 July/Aug 2013

Research Resources at NCAD

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

The NCAD Research Institute The Art and Design Research Institute at NCAD was established in 2011 to provide support and focus for research activity within the college and to facilitate collaborative projects with external bodies, including international links. It seeks to provide a lively forum for the exchange of ideas and best practice and to assist its fellows and associates in developing, conducting and disseminating their research. The Research Institute is currently housed alongside GradCam on the top floor of the College’s John Street West building in the shadow of St. Augustine’s church on historic Thomas Street. The Institute is within easy walking distance of the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives of Ireland, The National Gallery, Trinity College Library (copyright library) and the Museum of Modern Art. For enquiries regarding the Research Institute at NCAD please contact Margaret Phelan t. 00 353 1 636 4362 e. phelanm@ncad.ie Research Institute NCAD, 100 Thomas Street Dublin 8, Ireland

Activities The Institute incorporates a number of strands of activity: • Scholarly research (including practice and studio based research) conducted by individual fellows and teams of researchers.

• Art & Design Consultancy and research cluster activity with external partners, involving external commissions and funding.

• Promoting links, nationally and internationally with other universities and research bodies in the visual arts area and welcoming Visiting Research Fellows and Research Associates to College.

• Lecture series, seminar programmes and workshops.

• Publications, including an annual yearbook detailing activity by researchers in the College.

In the session 2013–2014 the focus of the Institute Seminar will be ‘Interdisciplinary Adventures’ in which we explore a range of cross disciplinary encounters that the visual arts are forging with science, education, history, film, philosophy and music.

Members At the core of the Institute is a group of Fellows elected from the academic staff of NCAD and working on approved individual or group research programmes.

Fellows make public presentations/exhibitions of their work. In addition a Research Associate scheme provides opportunities for professional artists and researchers to spend a period of time in the Institute working on their research/creative practice with support from NCAD. A Visiting Research Fellow Scheme provides opportunities for overseas scholars and artists to spend a period of time (semester or year) working on a research project with support from NCAD. All Visiting Fellows have access to an office during their period of residency.

Research Fellow Members of staff are elected to the fellowship of the research institute on the basis of their research achievement and active status. This is judged on the basis of the research quality of their work in the previous 5 years, the recognition their research has achieved (including funding), and the cogency of their envisaged research for the duration of membership.

Research Associate (external) Applications for membership of the Institute as a Research Associate is on the basis of a specific project, or research collaboration and a candidate is asked to identify a specific reason for the research relationship with NCAD (with a view to furthering the individual’s research interests and NCAD’s research agenda).

Visiting Research Fellows Application are invited from senior researchers from outside Ireland who wish to spend a period of leave at NCAD in its Research Institute. Priority is given to those who have established a research relationship with a Fellow of the Institute. Fellows have access to the facilities of the College and may be attached to a specific faculty in addition to their membership of the Research Institute. They will be offered office space where possible and expected to participate as fully as possible in the life of the College. A Visiting Fellowship can be for a semester or a year (and on occasions for a shorter period).

Research Resources at NCAD

On the Road a Collector’s Tale Edward Murphy Librarian at NCAD 1978–2013

For many years, I have been involved in the development of a centre for the documentation of Irish art and design since 1900. From the genesis of a modest project, this resource has grown to be of international significance, holding enormous quantities of material, available to researchers directly or, increasingly, through remote access.

Part of the main College Library, this collection is known as the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL), and it is jointly funded by the College and the Arts Council.

While larger catalogues, monographs, survey works, illustrated books and periodicals play an important role, ephemera such as small catalogues, invitations, press releases and price lists are a vital source of information. This material is often overlooked and usually only available at the time of exhibition. Recognising this, NIVAL makes very strenuous efforts to gather such information, employing collectors in various locations throughout Ireland.

Some years ago, I decided to visit Irish artists on a nationwide basis. My aims were to collect as much of this type of material as possible from the artists themselves, and to advertise NIVAL and its importance for the study of Irish art and design. On these visits, along with a decent bottle of wine, I bring with me the material NIVAL already holds on these artists.

Generally, these ‘calling-cards’ have great impact. All artists I have visited have been dumbstruck by the amount of

material already held and by the fact that somebody is bothering to collect it in the first place. In many cases, NIVAL has considerably more material than the artists possess themselves! But there are often exhibitions that we have not come across especially if they were very local or held abroad. There are other artists who live abroad whose practice is focussed where they live. I have visited some of these too, even carrying the relevant material with me.

I have never met an unhelpful artist. All recognise the value of what is being achieved, and they are also flattered by the interest and attention. And, of course, I have enjoyed my encounters with so many inspirational people. I have always been welcomed, often fed and entertained. All over Ireland, I have travelled down country lanes, often lost, guided to the spot through many mobile calls.

I am in contact with a large number of other artists who, in the future I hope, will welcome me. Time and distance are limitations, but it won’t be long before I’m again negotiating country roads or taking to the skies, always seeking new additions to our collections.

Above (from left to right): Bourke, Ballagh, LeBrocquy.

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Library Resources for the Visual Arts and NIVAL The Edward Murphy Library For research into modern and contemporary art and design the Edward Murphy Library in NCAD is the best art library in Ireland. It has a collection of over 93,000 books and exhibition catalogues with emphasis placed on 19th, 20th and 21st century art and design. The library subscribes to about 300 journals and specialist magazines offering an international view of the subjects taught in the college.

Researchers also have access to a number of electronic resources including several database indexes to art and design journals and online journal articles.

A sizeable proportion of the collection is kept in store and must be ordered in advance, so do check the library catalogue (prism.talis.com/ncad) for full information on the library’s holdings. The first port of call for all users requiring assistance is the issue desk. The staff working in this area have experience of studying and working in the field of art and design and are happy to help researchers with reference enquiries.

The library offers a range of services and additional resources including loans, reservations and interlibrary loans. Facilities include internet access, black and white and colour photocopying, document and image scanning.

NCAD are part of the ALCID scheme (Academic Libraries Co-operating in Ireland) which is open to NCAD Masters and Doctoral students. This scheme gives admission without borrowing rights to all seven NUI Universities together with

Research Resources at NCAD

Trinity College Dublin, DCU, DIT, RCSI, RIA, Mater Dei, St.Patrick’s College Drumcondra, Mary Immaculate College (Limerick), St. Angela’s College (Sligo), University of Ulster and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Access to the library art and design databases (Art Full Text, Artbibliographies Modern, JSTOR, Design and Applied Arts Index) is available at the Library Learning Centre. This area can also be used for quiet study.

The Visual Resources Centre (VRC) The Visual Resources Centre holds a collection of digital resources, DVDs and CD-Rom. The Library subscribes to the ARTstor Digital Library, a collection of over one million images, and is developing the NCAD Image Library, a unique course-specific research tool.

The VRC is available for consultation on all issues related to finding art/design images and can provide oneon-one training sessions on using ARTstor and the NCAD Image Library. Training is also available on the use of presentation software and citation software. Group training sessions can be booked by telephone or online. A growing collection of DVDs on art and artists as well as arthouse and popular cinema are available for borrowing.

The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) is a unique research library that contains an invaluable and evergrowing collection of reference material documenting all aspects of 20th century and contemporary Irish art and design. NIVAL is an initiative of NCAD in partnership with the Arts Council and was established by former NCAD Librarian Edward Murphy.

NIVAL’s collection policy includes Irish visual art from the whole island as well as Irish art abroad and non-Irish artists working in Ireland. The collection consists of books, journals, exhibition catalogues and tens of thousands of items of ephemera such as invitation cards and press releases as well as news-clippings.

The core collection comprises files on individual Irish artists (4,000+) and Irish galleries (1,000+). The Artists and Galleries files are complemented by files in related areas such as design, fashion, sculpture, time based art, art collections, artists’ studios, annual exhibitions and arts festivals. NIVAL

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also holds a number of special collections of archival material documenting specific artists, organisations, art movements or material collections including an important collection of more than 600 unique or limited edition artists’ books.

The NIVAL website (www.nival.ie) hosts a number of important reference tools for access to information on the collections. These include cross-searchable databases of the artists, galleries and exhibitions files and a complete listing of the special collections. Expert advice is available on-site on how best to use the collection for your specific research queries. Internet access, black and white photocopying and scanning facilities are available. NIVAL is located on the ground floor of the Clock Building, adjacent to IT Support.

For more information call in or phone (01) 636 4347 or (01) 646 1102.

Library Opening Hours: Term time Monday to Thursday 9.30am–8.45pm Friday 9:30am–8pm Summer Monday to Friday 9:30am–4pm Databases and Visual Resources Centre only: Monday to Friday: 9.30am–1pm / 2pm–5pm NIVAL Opening Hours: Term time Monday (by appointment only) 10am–8pm Tuesday to Thursday 10am–5pm Closed Friday Summer Monday (by appointment only) 10am–4pm Tuesday to Thursday 10am–4pm

More information on the complete range of library services and access to the fully searchable library catalogue is available from the Library web pages at www.ncad.ie/library.

Opposite: Interior, The Edward Murphy Library, NCAD. Photograph: Alice Clancy

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Digital Repository of Ireland at NIVAL Case Study: Kilkenny Design Workshops Archive at NIVAL Preserving Visual Cultural Heritage and Improving Public Access

Above: KDW Director William H. Walsh with VIPs at the 1984 Retrospective exhibition

Principal Investigator: Dr. Una Walker; Research Assistants: Teresa Reilly, Katie Blackwood; Digital Archivist: Tricia Lyons; Administrative and research support: Donna Romano

The Kilkenny Design Workshops (KDW) were founded in 1963 by the Irish Export Board as part of its strategy to improve standards of design in Ireland. The primary aim of the workshops was to produce prototypes in conjunction with Irish industry. KDW was the first example of statefunded design workshops in Ireland and provided a template later used elsewhere in the world. The challenge now is to preserve this rich cultural heritage by employing a digital archiving strategy which can facilitate public access to these resources.

The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is an inter足 active trusted digital repository for contemporary and historical, social and cultural data held by Irish institutions.

DRI will link together and preserve the rich data held by Irish institutions, providing a central internet access point and interactive multimedia tool, for use by the public, students and scholars. DRI will allow researchers to access the history, cultural heritage and social life of Ireland in ways never before possible. DRI is developing a national e-infrastructure for the future of education and research in the humanities and social sciences.

NIVAL is collaborating with the Dublin Institute of Technology to make a substantial part of the KDW archive available to the Irish public through the DRI using web 2.0 interfaces and state-of-the-art metadata searching. The project involves the digitisation of over 2,000 images of exhibitions, public events, and product designs from the KDW archive donated to NIVAL by the Crafts Council of Ireland in 2001. NCAD is in a unique position to undertake this digital preservation and curation project.

The broader DRI Research Consortium comprises the partners: Royal Irish Academy (lead institute), National University of Ireland Maynooth, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, National University of Ireland Galway and National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) at NCAD. The KDW demonstrator project has received additional financial support from web development company Fluidrock. DRI is funded under the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions. Our participation in this ambitious project enables NIVAL at NCAD to build capacity in the important area of the digital archiving of visual resources and to create modes of access to these resources for the widest possible public audience.

Research Resources at NCAD

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The Dorothy Walker Archive at NIVAL Online Catalogue Project and accompanying Exhibition at NCAD Gallery

Dorothy Walker (1929–2002) was a dynamic and highly influential art critic, author and broadcaster. She played a central role in many of the most significant events in Irish visual art in the second half of the 20th century including the Rosc exhibitions, the Guinness-Peat Aviation Awards and the establishment of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She contributed art criticism to the New York Times, RTÉ, Hibernia, Studio International, and the Sunday Times. Her book Modern Art in Ireland (1997) provides the first critical account of the impact of political and cultural developments on the visual arts in Ireland in the post-WWII period.

The Dorothy Walker Archive was bequeathed to NIVAL and presented to the library in 2004. The archive is comprised of 40 boxes of primary source and supporting documentation charting the broad scope and diversity of Walker’s interests in Irish art and architecture, abstract modernism and the influence of international art and conceptual art practice on the Irish cultural landscape of the 20th century.

The archive includes correspondence, critical writings, national and international press material, catalogues, photographs and other printed ephemera that record Walker’s involvement with major art institutions and with artists such as Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Scott, Sean Scully, Michael Farrell, James Coleman, Eileen Gray and Joseph Beuys.

Philanthropy Pilot Initiative at NIVAL This Online Catalogue Project, addressing Dorothy Walker’s work, involves a thorough appraisal of this unique archival collection, the arrangement and indexing of the material and the development of a searchable online

catalogue available to the public on the NIVAL website at www.nival.ie. It forms part of our general plans to develop our capacities in the digital archiving of visual art material in Ireland with a view to offering online access to such resources to the widest possible public audiences in Ireland and internationally. This research project has been made possible by a grant under the Philanthropy Initiative of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and by the generous support of private philanthropic donors.

More adventurous thinking … from the archives of Dorothy Walker, with artist’s response from Seamus Nolan at NCAD Gallery, 14 June – 4 October 2013 To mark the completion of the first phase of the catalogue, NIVAL has curated an exhibition for NCAD Gallery exploring the influence of Walker’s words and work on the visual arts in Ireland. This audiovisual display features primary source material including draft texts, journals and correspondence with notable figures such as Seamus Heaney, Charles J. Haughey and Clement Greenberg; photographic documentation, publications and exhibition floor plans for the Rosc exhibitions and the Guinness Peat Aviation awards.

In response to the Dorothy Walker archive, visual artist Seamus Nolan has engaged with select works of art of the early modernist period in the context of NCAD Gallery and the street-fronting window space. Private collectors and museums have been approached by way of written invitation to consider the compatibility of these works of art within this contemporary gallery structure and the theoretical possibility of loaning these works for display.

Above: Marie Heaney, Patrick Scott, Seamus Heaney and Dorothy Walker at book launch The Dorothy Walker project would not have been possible without a grant from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the generous support of philanthropic donors. The National Irish Visual Arts Library gratefully acknowledges: Peter Collins and Denise Kinsella, Barry Donoghue, Margaret Downes, William Earley, Brian Ferran, Eugene Flynn and Ruth Murphy, Seamus and Marie Heaney, Verona Lambe and Tom McConalogue, Ken Langan, John Meagher, Edward Murphy, Kathleen Murphy, Carol and Randall Plunkett, Sean Scully, Séan Sweeney.

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

GradCAM 2012–2013 Dr. Lisa Godson NCAD Fellow at GradCAM 2009–2013

Above: Menu for the GradCAM-based art project ‘The Food Thing’. Of the Salt Bitter Sweet Sea, a public banquet for the Tall Ships Race, August 2012.

Commissioned by Dublin City Council Arts Office and held in the vaults of CHQ, Dublin, this banquet was an artwork that explored ideas and images of seafaring and food in the era of the tall ships. Combining food and talks, the meal sought to change perceptions of the age of sail and its impact on such things as sugar, Irish slavers and the growing taste and desire for spices.

Photograph: Michael Holly

The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) is a collaborative education, research and production platform. NCAD is a key partner, along with the Dublin Institute of Technology, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and the University of Ulster.

The consortium emerged from a successful funding bid to the PRTLI Cycle 4 securing a number of funded PhD Scholarships (2008–2012) and a core infrastructure.

A significant aspect of GradCAM is its identity as a permeable institution of enquiry. Alongside postgraduate students registered at the partner institutions, hundreds of others involved in the field of cultural and creative product­ ion have engaged with the platform in various ways. These can range from running specialist seminars, leading creative projects and participating in workshops.

Key activities undertaken within the ambit of GradCAM in 2012–2013 included supporting the complet­ ion of PhD work by GradCAM scholars, a number of public events, creative projects, research seminars, and the structured educational programme for early-stage researchers. The year saw the successful graduation of many of the initial GradCAM scholars, their doctoral projects ranging in focus from the relationship between art and education and event (Glenn Loughran), contemporary curatorship (Georgina Jackson) and the philosophy of participatory art practices (Tim Stott).

A strong feature of GradCAM’s work has been its germination and hosting of group seminars involving

shared research development. In 2012–2013 this work continued, including specialist groups such as Typography Ireland, Aesthetics and the Commons. Part of the output of these seminars is the holding of public events – for example, in May, the Commons group held a day of talks and discussions with the historian Peter Linebaugh. A major two-day conference on the material and visual culture of the 1916 Rising was held in April, originating from the GradCAM seminar on cultural history.

Many of the researchers involved with GradCAM are undertaking practice-led research, and in March we hosted a one-day workshop in partnership with a number of other Art and Design institutions, comprising the Learning Education Art and Design network. Other workshops were created explicitly in support of those intending to undertake doctoral studies, and focused on proposal writing and funding applications.

The key educational remit of GradCAM is to provide structured research training for postgraduate students. This takes the form of intensive weekly classes ‘epistemic practices’ that involve a rigorous interrogation of the nature of research and knowledge production. Regular workshops on key academic skills such as abstract writing and conference presentation are held as part of the course. The sessions provide students with an opportunity to develop their selfevaluation in a supportive peer environment through regular communication about their specific research project.

Research Resources at NCAD

Origin8 Derek McGarry Head of Design Innovation & Commercialisation

Origin8 is a design innovation and commercialisation gateway within the design faculty at the National College of Art and Design. Origin8 functions as a portal for business clients to collaborate with our leading designers and operates as a conduit between academia and industry.

Origin8 also supports staff, students and designers in residence in the development of products and services, campus company start-ups and related creative enterprise.

Over the last twelve months and across the eight design disciplines taught at NCAD, we successfully delivered over forty short and long-term client-based projects. We work closely with Enterprise Ireland who provides a range of research grants, such as innovation research vouchers, innovation partnerships, technical feasibility grants and commercialisation funding schemes.

Other clients have worked with the design faculty through knowledge transfer partnership agreements.

Origin8 as a new innovation and commercialisation support mechanism has attracted significant research funding to support a number of high potential start-up companies.

In addition to developing businesses outside the academy our postgraduate students are now benefitting from the setting up of design companies inside the institution. The first two companies to use this model are Gazel and Obeo.

Both companies focused on the commercialisation of

products that were initially developed by students and staff at NCAD and, from the outset, employed collaborative design research in real world scenarios.

Gazel is developing a unique clothes hanger that is ingeniously easy to use, stylishly elegant, and has mass market potential. The initial concept was the outcome of a human factors research study for Pfizer and Arthritis Ireland which looked at the issue of joint pain experienced by arthritis sufferers. Subsequently the NCAD proactively secured commercialisation funding for the clothes hanger which is now one of a programme of related homeware products currently being developed by the Gazel design team.

Obeo also captured commercialisation funding. Obeo is a disposable biodegradable kitchen counter receptacle for organic household waste. Once full you pop the Obeo in your outdoor organic waste bin and use a replacement Obeo until it is full and so on. This clever idea was first developed by a postgraduate student who was engaged with developing products manufactured using waste resources.

Not only is the Obeo biodegradable, it is made using an innovative technology that uses waste resources that was also developed by the student. The Obeo product was developed during a two year collaborative project with external partners Ballymun Regeneration, The Rediscovery Centre and RĂ—3.

Although only recently established, Origin8 now operates as a vital technology transfer support unit for spinins, spin-outs and related creative enterprise at the NCAD. With this initiative, the NCAD organisational culture is very much aligned with the Irish governments recent strategic plan to create a ‘smart’ economy. Our primary objective is also to focus on innovation and creativity, as well as the key intellectual capital necessary to transform those ideas into new technology, products and services.

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

NCAD Gallery

Above: Gallery installation view of Basic Space Shop as part of the exhibition The New Ecologies of Practice: A short season of projects by Catalyst Arts (Belfast), Occupy Space (Limerick), The Good Hatchery (Offaly), Basic Space (Dublin), 2012

The NCAD Gallery is the public face of the National College of Art and Design. Anne Kelly, Gallery Curatorial Coordinator writes: ‘The Gallery supports contemporary practice and critical debate in visual arts practices and aims to reflect the diversity and strengths of the college by developing and promoting the future of art and design in Ireland via its exhibition and educational activities.’

In 2012–2013 the Gallery produced and promoted an expansive visual arts programme of exhibition, projects, performance, workshops and events playing a central role in developing local, national and international connections.

Over the past year or so the Gallery has been fortunate to invite and be invited to support, collaborate and partner with many organisations and institutions in Ireland and further afield.

Recent exhibition partnerships include: Future Makers with the Crafts Council of Ireland; Towards a Newer Laocoön, a solo exhibition by Sarah Pierce, commissioned by the Irish Film Institute; and Archizines curated by Elias Redstone in partnership with the Irish Architecture Foundation.

The exhibitions programme plays a significant and meaningful educational role. It provides a context of contemporary practice in the immediate environment of NCAD. The gallery provides the opportunity for students, staff, invited practitioners, curators and critics to experiment with, develop and publicly display their work. Among the recent exhibition highlights is the New Ecologies of Practice, a short season of projects by Catalyst Arts (Belfast), Occupy Space (Limerick), The Good Hatchery (Offaly) and Basic Space (Dublin). This exhibition opened in February 2012 and included a series of projects involving a number of artist-led initiatives working throughout Ireland.

NCAD Gallery is also a space for research and debate.

It provides the resources to facilitate contemporary art and design debate by facilitating dialogue with departments within the College and with the wider public. As an

example, the Gallery facilitated Autonomous Practices, Autonomous Objects, Autonomous Institutions, a debate on autonomy within art.

In September 2013 we collaborated with NIVAL on the exhibition More Adventurous Thinking, exhibiting a selection of elements from the Archive of the late critic Dorothy Walker with artist response from Seamus Nolan (written about elsewhere in this publication). We also hosted an accompanying panel event Dorothy Walker: evaluating the legacy, organised by the Research Institute at NCAD. Opening Hours Monday to Friday 1pm–5pm Admission Free For more information please see: www.ncad.ie/about/gallery or contact: gallery@staff.ncad.ie

Research Resources at NCAD

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painttube A network of painting practitioners based in NCAD Kristina Huxley and Robert Armstrong Faculty of Fine Art, Painting

painttube is a research group of staff and postgraduate students at NCAD, who are engaged in Painting within fine art practice. It is connected to an expanding network of Irish and International painting groups deliver­ing events that explore painting within contemporary visual arts. painttube embraces current painting as a diverse practice and expanding field in dialogue with historical and critical realms. painttube intends to deliver symposia and related events that present a contemporary critical focus for painting practice in the public domain. painttube’s blog continues to have a wide audience and is linked to several other significant painting blogs worldwide.

The blog reflects NCAD’s current studio-based research. It also showcases postgraduate research interests, activity, work and achievements. painttube aims to augment teaching and learning practice within NCAD. The painttube team meet every semester to develop, plan and schedule symposia with our partners. NCAD practitioners, staff, post graduate students and alumni are welcome to join painttube. It also welcomes connections with other institutions and counterparts. In Spring 2014,

Above: painttube Symposium, Abstraction More or Less, 23 March 2012, NCAD

painttube will be hosting a symposium at NCAD entitled The Edge of Painting and will be shortly putting out a call for abstracts. painttube will also contribute to a conference on contemporary painting practice planned for early 2014 at Belfast School of Art (at the University of Ulster). painttube was established in 2011 by Robert Armstrong and Kristina Huxley in association with Eamon Connors, Diana Copperwhite, Chris Maguire, Susan MacWilliam, Madeleine Moore, Paul Nugent and Ollie Whelan. painttube.wordpress.com

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Distillers Press Dr. David Caron Visual Communications Lecturer, Faculty of Design

Opposite: Mary Plunkett and Jamie Murphy, Distillers Press.

Photograph: David Caron.

The letterpress print workshop located in the Department of Visual Communication of NCAD, under the highly skilled stewardship of Seán Sills, is the only working letterpress facility in third level education in Ireland.

It had its origin as a small printing workshop at the College’s previous location, Kildare Street, but moved with the Department of Visual Communication to the Thomas Street campus in the early 1980s when the facility was greatly expanded under the late Bill Bolger, the then Head of Department. With several operational presses, it has a substantial collection of 19th and 20th century type in a wide variety of fonts. This comprises approximately 280 cases of metal type and 110 cases of wooden type, details of which can be found on the Distillers Press website: www.distillerspress.com.

A key role of Distillers Press is as an advanced teaching tool to introduce the fundamentals of traditional craft typography to undergraduate students. For those embarking on the study of typography, the origin of terminology such as uppercase, lowercase and leading becomes alive to them when they experience how type was traditionally set. However, the real potential of the Distillers Press

facility becomes clear when it is used by more experienced designers, artists and postgraduate students to explore the creative and expressive potential of letterpress printing, often combining type and image.

Ireland’s first practice-based Masters student in the visual arts, Joe Gearvin, undertook his MA in the print workshop in the late 1980s. In more recent years, Mary Plunkett (MA 2011) produced a limited edition book titled Night Prayer, a contemporary Book of Hours, combining letterpress, linocut, etching and digital printing. Mary was awarded Masters Design Graduate of the Year by the Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI) and also won the Supreme award across all seventeen categories of the Annual Irish Print Awards. Jamie Murphy (MA 2012) also created a limited edition book, Albert, Ernest & the Titanic, a substantial, beautifully crafted tribute to the two printers who worked aboard the ill-fated liner on her doomed maiden voyage, with a foreword by writer Colm Tóibín.

Jamie’s book was awarded the NUI Art & Design Prize and the RDS Printmaker Award. This academic year Jamie, following on after Mary, will take up the post of Designer in Residence in Distillers Press.

Research Resources at NCAD

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Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Design

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Research Methods for Product Design Professor Alex Milton, Head of Design Faculty

It has been recognized for some time that there is a dearth of critical texts addressing the range of research methods employed in the study and practice of design.

This is not simply an academic matter. Product design companies now acknowledge the importance of research in their work – indeed, the research methods and particular approaches to design that a company chooses will often differentiate them from others and provide distinctive advantages for their organisation, their stakeholders and their clients. The act of research is increasingly manifest in the design process.

The Research Methods for Product Design (Laurence King, UK, 2013) book I have co-authored with long term creative partner Professor Paul Rodgers from Northumbria University, aims to help readers conduct effective and useful research in order to produce better products that users will find pleasure in using. It builds upon our previous bestselling book for Laurence King, Product Design – which has now been translated into Spanish, Italian and Chinese. Our new book demonstrates, hopefully in a clear, highly visual and structured fashion, how the focused application of a range of research methods can support product designers and help them address the very real issues the world faces in the twenty-first century.

Indeed, product designers now need a comprehensive understanding of the research process that is social as well as technological in scope. Indeed, their day-to-day work routinely involves them observing people, asking questions, searching for information, making and testing ideas, and ultimately generating societal solutions to manifest problems. Product design is now a global phenomenon; competition for work today transcends physical, national and cultural borders, and an increasingly challenging economic environment means that product designers have to offer far more in terms of research expertise than they did perhaps 10 or 15 years ago. Huge technological advances in information, computing and manufacturing processes also offer enormous opportunities to product designers, such as the development of ‘intelligent’ products and services.

These technologies also raise important research questions – including ethical ones – that need to be dealt with. Product designers are, in many ways, best placed to address these global challenges because of the manner in which they can apply their design thinking to societal problems.

Despite this, the teaching of research methods remains a somewhat neglected subject in many productdesign courses and design studios around the world. The key goal of the book, therefore, is to introduce readers to the variety of research methods and tools that can be used, as well as ideas about how and when to deploy them effectively. Above all the book highlights creative research methods developed and utilised within the Product Design department at NCAD, and demonstrates our expertise and contribution to the discipline.

Left: Book cover, Research Methods for Product Deisgn, Lawrence King, 2013.

ISBN 978-1-78067-302-8

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Task Furniture for Education Moving Education Professor Alex Milton Head of Design Faculty

Above: Hedge School, Emma Creighton, TFE, 2012

The Task Furniture in Education (TFE) project led by NCAD, consists of a group of interdisciplinary researchers made up of academic and industry partners situated in Germany, Ireland, Portugal and the USA who are using a design led approach to explore the theme of ‘Moving Education’. The project is the recipient of a 1.3 million euro Marie Curie FP7 IAPP research grant.

Lack of movement during daily activities has been linked to increased risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Movement has been shown to have a positive impact on cognitive performance. Globally, there are many experts in the fields of science, pedagogy and technology researching the topic of movement and education in relation to physical and mental well-being and academic performance. Practicing educators are also implementing innovative approaches to movement in their learning environments. This has not been reflected in the range of task furniture available on the market today.

The ultimate goal of the project is to join the dots between these groups to provide educators, students and relevant stakeholders with a resource that will raise awareness of the impact of movement in the learning environment. The overarching aim of the TFE project is to create and explore opportunities for knowledge transfer and collaboration in order to inform guidelines for new product development within a consortium of complementary researchers working in the fields of design, task furniture manufacture, physiotherapy, architecture and ergonomics.

‘Task Furniture’ includes seating, work surfaces, storage, display, lighting and acoustic solutions and refers to furniture, fixtures and equipment that support the task of learning. The project is composed of two parts. The ‘Learn’ phase of the project began in November 2010,

and to date the TFE research team has been working closely with experts, educators and students, employing a range of qualitative and quantitative design and science based methods in order to collect and curate a knowledge bank on the topic of movement and education. The next phase of the project, ‘Moving Education’, which commenced in October 2012, involves the use of design methodology to build on the initial research, adopting the lens of movement and education to translate the research gathered to date into tangible solutions and critical provocations. These outputs will aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry, research and practice and designers and stakeholders.

Biologist E.O. Wilson defined consilience as ‘literally a “jumping together” of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation’. By bringing together educators who are implementing innovative approaches to movement in their learning environments and practitioners in the fields of sports science, endocrinology, pedagogy, ergonomics, physiotherapy and technology, the TFE and ‘Moving Education’ research team hope to create an accessible and relevant series of outputs which brings focus on the area of movement and education in relation to physical and mental well-being and academic performance.

The ‘Moving Education’ outputs will fulfill the aspirations of the initial FP7 project proposal by utilising a multidisciplinary approach throughout the process, reviewing the most current theories and practices on this topic, researching and analysing activities in the field and translating this research into tangible outputs which will ultimately have a lasting impact on the task furniture industry and improve the long-term health and learning experiences for students and educators.

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Rethinking the Classroom Natalie Keville NCAD MA Design for Education

Why are our classrooms crowded with over-engineered, over-sized, non child oriented heavy furniture? Why should we, as learners, sit all day? These are the type of research questions that inspired the MOOV furniture solution for education project developed as an element of the EUfunded Task Furniture in Education Project.

MOOV is a dynamic modular furniture solution that creates a healthy learning environment. MOOV furniture is movable and stackable, it is easy to reconfigure and store. MOOV is a desk and seating furniture solution for schools that corrects posture, enables movement, and can increase pupil performance. The furniture is designed to encourage a healthy posture for task purposes. This promotes pedagogical development through freedom of movement. The furniture system facilitates movement in education by enabling teachers and students to control

their environment, while promoting an active body and mind. It is designed to encourage a healthy posture through standing while working and has a high perch stool integrated for periods of rest. These positions maintain the healthy ‘S’ curvature of the spine while supporting the body for task purposes. The form facilitates a dynamic learning environment through its ability to nest away for storage purposes and move to a required arrangement to suit task. This gives the user complete control of their space and learning preferences. Its user-centred design approach recognises that the child should be the most important person in the learning environment, not the furniture.

MOOV aims for forward thinking in education.

Supervisor: Prof. Alex Milton,

Above: NCAD TFE MA Design for education. Artist: Natalie Keville, June 2013.

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Right: Book cover,Textile Surface Manipulation, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, GB, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4081-5670-4

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Textile Surface Manipulation Nigel Cheney and Dr. Helen McAllister

This publication within Bloomsbury’s ‘Textile Handbook’ series sees the culmination of just over two years of research and investigation. The imperative behind the book was to take a single theme and exhaust it, showing just how diverse a designer’s response could be to any one subject. The techniques we focus on reflect some of the teaching methodologies that both of us have developed at NCAD over the last 20 years. We feel it is a good representation of the current manifestation of the Textile Art and Artefact course here. As embroiderers we have both delivered the same manifesto throughout our respective careers so that our discipline can be seen as a combination of construction, manipulation andembellishment.

It seemed a natural step to develop the book through successive chapters on building surfaces, decorating surfaces, manipulating and deconstructing surfaces.

An opening chapter on visual research demonstrates how to move from use of clichéd image to a research approach to abstracting surface qualities, imagery, colour, repeat design, composition and manipulated textures. The end chapter or gallery section references a snapshot of our

many talented graduates and encourages the reader to contextualise their practice in a contemporary context.

The 144 pages of the lavishly printed book show outcomes that range from fashion, interior to textile art approaches. In addition there are also examples of techniques that help practitioners visualise idea development and articulate possible solutions and permutations through sampling and sketches. The 300 original images are edited from over 4000 digital images of the work at various stages.

The final 20 original projects reported represent an intense period of making we entered into over a number of years.

The change in rhythm from teaching to writing to making is a challenging one but a cycle that has revitalised both of our practices and certainly clarified our understanding of effective, pedagogical approaches in teaching textile design.

Upon reflection we can see how the thousands of research hours have distilled into a simple volume that we hope will inspire students as well as engaging with more experienced makers looking for new inspiration and techniques.

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Medical Device Design at NCAD Enda O’Dowd Industrial Design Lecturer

Above: Paracentesis procedure pump (Terence Kealy, 2012)

The MSc course in Medical Device Design is an innov­ ative, design-led, studio-based programme. It draws on the strengths developed in the Industrial Design Department in human-focused design and innovation and combines this with the biomedical engineering expertise of University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin.

The programme runs over an intensive 11 months, during which students attend lectures in UCD and TCD in subjects such as medical science and biomechanics while also working on design projects with Irish-based medical device companies. This allows the students to work on cutting edge innovative designs while also learning the importance of the iterative design process. Students are drawn from both designers interested in pursuing a career in the medical device industry and from engineers wishing to learn creative design skills. The mix of backgrounds, skills and experiences among the students leads to a studio environment where peer to peer learning is the norm.

Human-Focused Research The contemporary design process begins with humanfocused research. The emphasis is placed on gaining insights through access to clinicians, patients and other potential stakeholders. Peer to peer learning is further encouraged in the research phase during which the students work in teams to pursue an investigation which is then shared.

Concept Generation During concept generation there is an emphasis on sketching and building ‘quick and dirty’ sketch models in a process of drawing and building to think visually and functionally.

This is an iterative process of synthesis and analysis where students are encouraged to develop their ideas as far as possible without moving to computer aided design.

Final Design Development During the final design and development stage detailed engineering specifications are produced using computer aided design and laboratory testing. Materials and manufacturing processes are defined and regulatory requirements such as EC and FDA are also evaluated where possible.

Unfortunately the majority of the design work carried out contains proprietary information and cannot be placed in the public domain. Companies and organisations we have worked with include: Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Cook Medical, Hollister, Neosurgical, Vitalograph. Hospitals we have worked with include: the Rotunda, St. Vincent’s University Hospital and the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear.

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Product Design at NCAD Sam Russell Product Design Lecturer

The Product Design degree course is a studio-based course that enables students to develop themselves within a creative art school environment, underpinned by technical expertise and extensive links with industry.

Central to the course are a series of ‘live’ research projects that are linked to external commercial and non-commercial projects. It is not usual to include undergraduate activity in a publication such as this, but in the product design area the students on our B.Des are making a real contribution to applied research in design and already making a social and commercial impact. Students work in partnership with SMEs, multinationals, NGOs and public bodies to deliver research that responds to specific design briefs and deliverables. This focus on live projects instills a deep link between research activities and real world practice and needs.

The following are two examples of recent research projects conducted in the last academic year: Liberties Assets Mapping Project This collaboration between 3rd year Product Design stu­ dents and the Liberties Asset Mapping Project focused on re-imagining non-clinical health services in the Liberties

area. The students started this project with an in-depth ethnographic research phase guided by the project partner LAMP and service designer Ré Dubhtaigh. This research helped them build a meaningful understanding of local people, their skillsets and existing social networks that could feed into the design of a new age friendly services. Over the next four weeks the teams worked together to design and test new ideas for services. The final outcome was a diverse range of concepts for simple, low cost and localised services.

These ideas were showcased at Age Action 2012 exhibition in the Guinness Storehouse.

Friends of the Elderly This collaborative project focused on researching and develop­ing a range of design solutions to assist mobility for the elderly. The project was conducted in partnership with Dublin-based NGO Friends of the Elderly. It involved extensive user-centered research into the elderly, their needs, resources, networks and abilities. This research continued with user-feedback loops to determine the effectiveness and suitability of evolving concepts. Input from both the project partner and the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design informed the final range of design outputs.

Above: Mobility for the Elderly Designers: Ellen Fogerty and Roisin Bowden, Year 4 Industrial Design, December 2012

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Education

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Research activities and publications 2012–2013 Professor Gary Granville Head of Faculty of Education

As well as the ongoing R&D work of the Faculty (summarised in brief elsewhere in this publication) Gary Granville has been engaged in a number of specific research activities.

The Dublin Lockout of 1913 has been a major focus of interest in the past year, with the centenary of that momentous event about to take place in autumn 2013.

Granville has a new book in publication to mark that centenary. Dublin 1913: Lockout and Legacy grew out of an educational development project: the City of

Dublin Humanities Curriculum. The book contains a simple narrative of the events of the Lockout but is most striking in its use of original documents and images charting the lives and experiences of ordinary people living in Dublin in that time of upheaval, especially the conditions of the tenement dwellers of the city.

As well as this publication, Granville is leading the NCAD partnership with SIPTU in producing the major art-project the Dublin 1913 Tapestry which is briefly described elsewhere.

Above: Front Cover of Dublin 1913: Lockout and Legacy, Gary Granville (O’Brien Press 2013)

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The Dual Identity of the Artist Teacher Dervil Jordan Lecturer in Art and Design Education

‘Becoming a teacher may mean becoming someone that you’re not. This dual struggle that works to construct the student teacher as a site of conflict’ (Britzman 1991).

What does teaching do to the artist teacher in the contemporary educational context? Artists who become art teachers can struggle with a dual identity as the demands of art teaching often impact on their ability to maintain a sustainable art practice. The realisation that in taking up a teacher identity the student teacher may need to suppress aspects of their artist identity can often be difficult to accept for the novice art teacher, their artist selves having been all about identity formation up to this point.

This research examines the identity formation of artists and designers who opt to become art teachers and how they develop their identity as teachers over time. In particular the career experiences of novice art teachers, mid-career art teachers and end-of-career art teachers are viewed through a longitudinal lens to explore their professional formation.

Using a life history approach the study examines What Does Teaching Do to the (Artist) Teacher? (Wallard, 1961). It examines the influences of the art education they experienced

and their artist formation on their art teacher identity. In doing so, the study hopes to uncover the tensions and synergies that art teachers experience in managing their teaching selves alongside their artistic selves. The life history study of the art teacher hopes to shed light on how art teachers and the work they do differs (if at all) from other subject teachers. Eisner in 1998 suggested that art and design teachers often pride themselves on the difference of their subject within a school curriculum that many progressive educators have characterised as over prescribed and information led (cited in Addison et al. 2010, p.8).

My research draws on the existing research literature relating to six conceptual themes: third-level artist formation, art teacher formation, growth and change in teachers’ life histories, art education theory, phenomenology of teacher experience and contemporary education policy.

The research methodology primarily uses an ethnographic approach, exploring the life histories of ‘artists’ and ‘designers’ who become art teachers through in depth interviews and a focus group. The participants in the study are selected where possible, from the past student cohort of the post graduate teacher education programmes at NCAD with two newly qualified teachers, two mid-career teachers and two end of career teachers selected to make up the sample on which the research will be based.

Ultimately the research aims to shed light on the specific qualities that are particular to the formation of the art teacher and how this signature pedagogy (Shulman, 2005) impacts within schools. The study will also highlight where the broader issues of current educational policy and institutional practice impact on the identity of the artist teacher. It will examine the extent to which the signature pedagogies of the creative art teacher are developed and recognised in schools and how these qualities might provide a roadmap for a model of enlightened education into the future.

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

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Left: Primigravida 2, Drawing on blinds, Leanne Mullen, artist and art teacher, St. Vincents Secondary School, Dundalk.

(This piece is the second of a series of three black conte crayon drawings on blinds that were found in the empty convent space adjoining the school.

This convent once held a laundry and orphanage, is now a derelict building.)

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An Exploration of Part-time Students’ Experiences of Learning in Higher Education And the Implications for Teaching and Curriculum Development in Arts Education Nuala Hunt Head of Continuing Education

Above: CEAD Diploma class, 2012

Higher education in Ireland is undertaking significant reform. An area which is under researched is part-time student’s experiences of learning in higher education and lecturers’ experience of teaching part-time students. This is particularly the case with regards to part-time study in art and design. In Ireland part-time higher education has traditionally fallen within the widening participation lifelong learning agenda, though generally strategies in this area have tended to focus on addressing barriers to participation and access for minority groups as well as disadvantaged students. NCAD has historically had, via its continuing education provision (CEAD), a commitment to widening participation in art and design education and this is currently being reviewed in the light of the broader changes occurring in the College as a result of our move to 3+2 modular provision.

Until recently part-time higher education did not warrant much attention from policy makers and was tangential to government strategies in the area of widening participation. In 2012 the HEA disseminated a consultation paper and a follow on final report titled Part-time and Flexible Higher education in Ireland, Policy, Practice and Recommendations for the Future. The targets and recommendations outlined in the report form part of

the HEA strategy on Equity and Access and will inform planning and development within Higher education.

Whilst it is encouraging to find greater attention being given to part-time and flexible learning there remains significant questions and issues arising for policy makers and HE providers. The issue of financing part-time higher education remains to be addressed also how to support and accommodate greater diversity within higher education with limited resources is a challenge. The HEA report had limited empirical research to draw on and relies heavily on quantitative data gathered by higher education providers.

According to recent research, ‘very little is known about the overall workload and general life situations of part-time students’ (Darmody and Fleming 2009). This research project will examine student’s experiences of part-time higher education generally and of art and design in particular. In Ireland there are limited part-time pathways and progression routes for adults in art and design HE. The pathway to a part-time degree continues to elude mature students who want to progress but require flexible modes of study. The lack of empirical research into mature students; motivations, persistence and experience of part-time art and design presents challenges for policy makers and providers as they attempt to address lifelong learning and equity within HE.

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Dr. Richard Siegesmund Fulbright Scholar, Visiting Fellow, Research Institute of NCAD

I am currently Professor and Division Head of Art and Design Education at Northern Illinois University (NIU), USA, where I specialize in arts-based educational research, the use of visual imagery in qualitative social science research, and the examination of aesthetic theories that inform art education in primary, secondary, and post-secondary contexts. During the 2012–2013 academic year, I had the opportunity to visit Ireland as a Visiting Fellow at NCAD and was able to interact with NCAD Art Education MAVA students and staff and to discuss arts-based research methodologies both in Ireland and the USA. In May 2013, the Ninth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) invited me to conduct, with my Northern Illinois University colleague Dr. Kerry Freedman, a half-day workshop entitled ‘Creating and Analysing the Visual in Research.’ Participants came from various disciplinary backgrounds including Anthropology, Communication, Nursing, Art Therapy, and Education.

The clinic covered conceptual issues in making and interpreting visual images in multiple contexts. ICQI has invited Dr.Freedman and myself to return in 2014 to reprise this training. In June, we presented a shortened version of this programme at the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) European Regional Congress in Canterbury, England. I currently serve on the Scientific Committee for the 2nd Conference on Arts-Based Research and Artistic Research, scheduled for the University of Granada, Spain in January 2014.

I am interested in reimagining aesthetic theory by retracing divergent philosophical pathways. Through these explorations, I consider new implications for understanding the outcomes of art and art education and examples of my 2013 public­ ations on this topic include: • ‘Dewey, Artography, and Ab-Use of Global Dialogue.’ In N. Denzin & M.Giardina (Eds.), Global Dimensions of Qualitative Inquiry (pp.137–155). Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA. • ‘Teaching What We Value: Care as an Outcome of Aesthetic Education.’ In Aesthetics, Empathy, and Education, T. Costantino and B. White, Eds. (pp. 221–234). Peter Lang: New York, NY, authored with his former student, Lauren Phillips.

• ‘Arts-based Research: Data are Constructed, not Found’ in S. Klein (Ed.), Action Research: Plain and Simple, (pp. 105–132). New York, NY: Palgrave, authored with his doctoral student Karinna Riddett-Moore.

• ‘Images as Research: Creation and Interpretation of the Visual’ in F. Hernández-Hernández & R. Fendler (Eds.), 1st Conference Arts-Based and Artistic Research: Critical Reflections on the Intersection of Artand Research (pp. 17–26). University of Barcelona: Barcelona, Spain, authored with Kerry Freedman.

I hope to return to Ireland as part of my ongoing relationship with NCAD to continue the debate about the fundamental character of art education and to share my research with your staff and students.

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Research and Development Projects in Education 2012–2013

A number of collaborative projects have been sponsored from within the faculty including the following: Creative Connections: A European Action Research Project involving both National and International Partners This EU-sponsored Comenius project across six countries (Ireland, UK, Czech Republic, Portugal, Finland) focused on direct linkages between primary and post-primary school students’ using art images and digital media. Dervil Jordan is the national co-ordinator for Ireland. Staff colleagues Tony Murphy (Digital Media) and Fiona King (research) are key field workers in the project. Creative Connections is the second round of Comenius project funding which the Faculty has received.

The project aims to develop and promote an active inter-country dialogue, specifically between children, to enhance understanding of different perspectives on European citizenship.

There are organisations which facilitate connections between schools in Europe, but none which specifically use art as a focussed learning opportunity to discuss issues relating to culture, identity and citizenship. The aim is to

evolve European-level connectedness through children’s ‘voices’; giving them the opportunity to communicate with one another, to discuss their responses to tasks and to comment upon each other’s visual art works.

Faculty of Education staff, Dervil Jordan, Fiona King and Tony Murphy are currently leading the Irish team for Creative Connections, an EU comenius funded research project. Creative Connections reunites four former partners, England, Ireland, Portugal and the Czech Republic (all of whom participated in phase one of the Comenius-funded Images & Identity (I&I) 2008–2010) and includes two new partners in Finland and Spain. Creative Connections, embarks on an innovative way of developing connectedness through the creation and appraisal of artworks between schools and pupils in Europe. The participant teachers and participating Irish schools are Máire O Higgins and Siobhan Mc Kenzie from Larkin Community College, Dublin 1; Sarah Lambe, Melissa Hogan and resident artist Mirjam Keune from Mater Dei National School, Dublin 8; Catherine Lehane from Jesus and Mary Secondary School, Gortnor Abbey, Crossmolina, Co Mayo, and Maria Mulligan from Don National School, Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon.

The Creative Connections website provides a forum where pupils will upload their art works, and a written commentary on the meaning of their work. The website also houses a ‘Connected Gallery’ which is a database of contemporary artists work from the partner countries.

The artworks explore a variety of themes, which include ‘mapping identity and nation’, ‘cultural reporter’ and ‘art as activism’. This ‘Connected Gallery’ provides a platform for teachers and pupils to develop a multi-lingual dialogue and generate conversations about identity and citzenship by children in schools across Europe. The sharing of ideas and the creation of a network across European schools will occur through the interaction with the website and this will extend pupils understanding of their European peers.

Online and digital media are important to young people (Mayo and Nairn, 2009); For many pupils the practical, creative and social aspects of art making, partnered with informal discussion with peers and their teachers allow for ‘funds of knowledge’, (Moll et al, 1992:133), to be valued and utilised in order to extend pupils’ learning. Visual

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

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Images are a powerful and effective educational tool that communicates personal social and cultural values and beliefs more fully than words (Mason, 2010).

Future Creators: Promoting Digital Literacy in Dublin A collaborative project between the Digital Hub agency and NCAD, this programme works with a group of young adolescents in the Dublin 8 region in an out-of-school digital media initiative. Learners are engaged in a variety of learning schemes, with a focus on app development and on film-making. Gary Granville and Finola McTernan are the NCAD leads on this project, with David Cotter working as lead tutor.

The project aims to provide a digital learning experience to young people who attend schools in Dublin 8, to facilitate an engagement with creative technologies and to support them in developing a skill-set and career aspirations in the creative technology sector. More broadly the programme aims to explore a model of digital learning that can help to inform curriculum development nationally with reference to the proposed curriculum development initiatives at Junior and Senior Cycle in schools.

Initially piloted in October 2011, 24 young people, recruited from local schools, attended classes for two evening per week to the end of May 2012. The classes generally took place in the Digital Hub and the young people gained experience in editing digital photographs using Pixlr and Adobe Photoshop, recording and editing podcasts using Audacity, publishing content online using Wordpress blogs, developing iPhone apps using Xcode and devising and editing short films using Comic Life and iMovie.

The young people also attended the NCAD through a series of workshops facilitated by the Departments of Visual Communication, Fashion and Textiles and Industrial Design, focussing on studio technologies and facilities available at NCAD. Seventeen pupils successfully completed the pilot phase of this project, receiving Certificates of Participation in June 2012.

Future Creators 2 commenced in October 2012 and eighteen young people from Dublin 8 are working on app and game development, digital content production and digital film making projects, due to be showcased at

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school pupils to make informed choices when considering higher education in art and design as an educational pathway. The project involves third year art and design students visiting a participating school for two hours per week over a six-week period. Schools that are linked to the Access Office are eligible to participate in the project.

Preparatory training in classroom management was facilitated by Fiona King, Faculty of Education, as well as exploring creative strategies that will assist secondary school pupils in developing a contemporary scheme of artwork.

Eight secondary schools participated in this year’s project.

The project concludes with a showcase of the pupil’s work during December in the Faculty of Education to which they attend with their families and teachers.

An initial evaluation of the Arts Mentoring Project has shown that while the primary focus is to provide positive engagement with secondary school pupils, it has also had a positive impact on some facilitator’s own arts practice as it ‘taught them to communicate better’ and ‘encouraged the collaborative aspects of their practice’ and their future education and career choices.

Overleaf: Arts Mentoring Exhibition, 2012; Participating School: Firhouse Community College, Tallaght; Student Mentors: Molly Moynihan – Fine Art Sculpture, Morganna Murphy – Textile Design.

Above: Children’s initial exploration of identity and diversity of nationalities that exists within a classroom at Mater Dei NS

the NCAD in June 2013. A ten-week digital film-making project, designed specifically for the alumni of the first Future Creators project commenced in March. This represents a response by the Digital Hub and the NCAD Access & Outreach to the strong demand identified from the young people to remain connected to the project and to continue developing creative skills for their future education and career pathways.

Future Creators has enabled the NCAD Access and Outreach programme to engage in a new model of partnership between industry and secondary schools in Dublin 8, providing a transferable blueprint for the teaching of digital skills in both formal and informal educational settings. An External Evaluation of the project over the two years is being conducted. The results are expected to contribute to dissemination and promotion of the approach at national level.

Arts Mentoring Project The Arts Mentoring Project (AMP) led by Finola McTernan and Dervil Jordan aims to assist senior cycle secondary

The 1913 Tapestry Project: This major participatory art project is a joint initiative of NCAD and SIPTU to commemorate the 1913 Lockout in Dublin. Two artists, Cathy Henderson and Robert Ballagh, were commissioned to design a large-scale textile narrative of the events of 1913. This narrative is expressed in a series of 30-odd panels which are being created by hundreds of volunteers drawn from craft groups, community projects, schools, youth clubs, prisons, health care settings and many interested individuals. The project was formally launched by the President Michael D. Higgins in November 201 and is due for completion in autumn 2013. The Dublin Lockout of 1913 has been a major focus of interest for Gary Granville in the past year, with the centenary of that momentous event about to take place in autumn 2013.

Gary Granville leads the project for NCAD and Angela Keane, a teacher and graduate of the faculty, secured a postgraduate studentship to work in a research and development role, liaising with the artists and with the participating groups. Finola McTernan provided the context for participating schools to link with the Access project and

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

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to develop a 1913 Lockout theme for school interventions.

A celebratory event for the completed Tapestry work of participating schools was held in NCAD in April 2013.

Mary Cawley Travel Bursary This bursary is unique to the National College of Art and Design, and awards a total amount of €5000 every year to students who are registered with the College’s Access Office.

The bursary was created through the will of John Cawley in memory of his mother and aims to support activities that lead to professional development for full-time students at the NCAD. This year’s recipients will travel to Seattle to participate in Pino Signoretto’s Glass Sculpture class, visit the exhibit­ ion, A Bigger Splash at Tate Modern as part of their ongoing research in performance art, attend the Venice Biennale; visit the Valencia Institute of Modern Art and the Sala Parpallo collective and enrol in an internship programme for Fine Art Print in New York.

Visual Art and Issue-based Education The Faculty has developed a sophisticated practice in the incorporation of issue-based education within initial teacher education programmes. The work is led by Tony Murphy and Fiona King, who have established the Faculty as a recognised model of excellence in this area. The work is shaped by the Ubuntu Development Education collaborative project that has worked across various teacher education providers in Ireland for a number of years sponsored and supported by Irish Aid. Tony Murphy and Fiona King have presented and published papers on the educational application of visual arts in development education based on their applied research in NCAD. Along with Dervil Jordan they have also been engaged with Amnesty International and other such agencies in promoting these approaches to teaching and learning.

Above: Participants in Future Creators project 2011–2012 Left: Image from Poster for event to celebrate the work of schools participating in the 1913 Lock Out Tapestry Project, NCAD, April 2013

1913 Lockout Tapestry Project The work of schools participating in the 1913 Lockout Tapestry Project will be celebrated in the Harry Clarke Foyer, Harry Clarke House, NCAD, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8 at 10.30 am, Tuesday 9th April, 2013.

Refreshments will be served.

Participating Schools: Mater Dei Primary School, Basin Lane

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Fine Art

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Centre for Creative Ageing, St James Hospital, Dublin Above: Still from video documentation of Terror model floating amongst older age bathers doing laps, an encounter developed as part of the Cavan Festival.

More of us are living longer. In Europe this has been an incremental development over the last 100 years but in other parts of the world an increase in longevity has occurred very rapidly and recently, transforming populations in a few decades. This demographic change is having social, cultural and economic impact. These dynamics are experienced personally, and globally. It is suggested that one of every two girls born today will live to one hundred years old.

The Fine Art Faculty of NCAD has been part of a consultative group contributing to the development of a Creative Life Centre to be located in a brand new building on the St James’s Hospital campus.

The Creative Life Centre (which is a ‘pillar’ of Mercers Institute for Successful Ageing) will act as a physical location and a hub for expanding creative practices for the elderly throughout the hospital and into the community. The new facility will offer a unique and innovative health environment, serving and advancing care to an ageing population.

The Creative Life Centre is designed to be a place of creative encounter. It will function as a cross-generational studio and art space where experiential creative engagement

Professor Philip Napier Head of Faculty of Fine Art

with older people can take place. Art practice claims an advanced position in exploring how we see, how we perceive, how we feel, how we know and in connecting this to others. Fundamentally our creativity reminds us what it is to be human and this is an important dimension of living in relation to highly administered and institutionalised environments. The Creative Life Centre currently exists in that pivotal moment between the drawing board and a designed spatial and specified plan, and physical construction commencing on site – between proposal and present reality. This offers a window of time to develop a range of art educational and processes in relation to NCAD students and older people and to develop more long-term research actions which seek to make good a linkage between the university and the hospital. It points to a rich and necessary reconnection between art and social purpose.

NCAD staff possesses significant experience of creative work within health environments and there is an existing body of art research, which in different ways explores and encounters older people. The faculty is building a research cluster in the field of creative aging and in growing an effective partnership with the proposed Centre.

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Contemporary Self-Portrait Project Anthony Hobbs Head of Fine Art Media Department

Above: the first CSP workshop exhibition at NCAD Gallery, Jan 2013. Photograph: Anthony Hobbs

The Contemporary Self Portrait project is an EU funded scheme involving Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland, The Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia, Bildmuseet, Umeå Universitet, Sweden, Association ISSP, Latvia and the National College of Art and Design, Ireland. The CSP project focuses on giving individuals, local communities and different European regions ways of expressing their personal, local and European identity through self-portraits. The self-portraits will be made in workshops using various methods in all partner countries.

Participants will gain an experience of being seen and heard and acknowledged.

Other objectives of CSP are: • Developing workshop methods and ways of making self-portraits and communal art.

• Encouraging international dialogue and cross-border cooperation of community art professionals, artists and students, in order to create regional self-portraits of different areas.

• Producing period pieces of local and regional selfportraits and communicating local and regional identities through them.

The long-standing relationship between NCAD and the Fatima/Rialto community was the perfect match for this project and the F2 centre in Rialto served as the base for an intensive workshop period led by invited artists Ailbhe Murphy and Pia Barstch.

This culminated in an exhibition in the NCAD Gallery in February 2013. A summer workshop in Latvia, with Elina Brotherus, hosted by the International Summer School of Photography (ISSP) ran in August and had two participants from each of the partner countries attending.

Sinead McDonald and Lua Flannery represented Ireland.

This ongoing research project will be the vehicle for at least two further community-based workshops in October 2013 each followed an exhibition and a publication. The project concludes with an international Symposium in Umeå, Sweden in April 2014 to consider the final outcomes of this collaborative work.

Chris Maguire from the Painting Department and Anthony Hobbs from the Media Department are the NCAD staff partner representatives on the project. Eileen Leahy, a PhD researcher in the field of Community Film is also a member of the team.

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

It Has No Name Pauline Cummins Lecturer, Faculty of Fine Art/Sculpture

It Has No Name is part of an ongoing art project that came about in light of the findings of the Irish Government’s ‘Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse’ and the subsequent Ferns (2005) ‘Ryan’, (2009) ‘Murphy’ (2009) and ‘Cloyne’ Reports (2011). A culture of systemic abuse of children and cover up has been exposed within the Catholic Church in which the Irish State is complicit.

In 2012 the Irish government passed the Children’s Bill. This strengthens and makes explicit the rights of the child within the Irish constitution. The government recently published the ‘McAleese’ Report into the Magdalene laundries (2013) which exposed the level of state involvement in the incarceration of women within these church-run institutions.

In the aftermath of the fall-out from these commissions of enquiry and reports, the project It Has No Name is an attempt to use art processes to explore ways of dealing with these largely raw and still undigested issues.

This exhibition involved live performances from four visual artists Pauline Cummins, Sandra Johnston, Frances Mezzetti and Dominic Thorpe which took place on Thursday 18th April 2013. In addition, an exhibition incorporating video, sound and installation by all four artists was presented in Broadcast Gallery, Dublin from 18 April – 4 May 2013.

This was followed by a roundtable discussion on Friday 19 April held in the Dublin Institute of Technology exploring ‘Memory and Testimony’ and how artists address theses subjects in their work. The list of speakers included Liz Burns, Pauline Cummins, Feidlim Cannon, Paddy Doyle, Sandra Johnson and Louise Lowe.

All the artists involved have been developing a significant body of work over the past five to ten years exploring ideas around silencing, abuse, redress, memory and the representation of truth. As a methodology developed during the project, some of the artists paired up informally with an invited person from another field, in the research and development of the work. One example was Dominic Thorpe’s work in response to Paddy Doyle’s wish to expose what he describes as abusive treatment at the hands of the redress board. It is intended that the results of this reciprocal exchange will feed into what will be presented collectively in the exhibition in DIT. There is also a planned series of performances by the same group of artists in Limerick City Gallery in Spring 2014.

Left: Performance Remembrance, Pauline Cummins with Sinead Keogh, It Has No Name, performances and exhibition, Broadcast Gallery, DIT, Dublin, April 2013

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Ekphrasis Dr. Kevin Atherton Faculty of Fine Art

Above: In Two Minds – Past Version, performed at Writtle Calling, Chelmsford, Essex, 2012

The work that I am currently engaged in could on one level be described as a purely archival process. As I respond to various requests from curators and archivists to provide a record of my earlier film, video and performance works from the 1970s and 1980s, I am simultaneously troubled and flattered by their invitation to enter the canon. In an attempt to continue the radicalism of the

original practices, I feel that, rather than just recording something, what I’m actually doing is applying Homer’s process of ekphrasis in order that the disruption generated by the original works can persist. In this way my application of the Ancient Greek notion of ekphrasis, which permits the use of rhetorical devices in the process of transition from one art form to another, allows me to make a new work.

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Excess Baggage Show, Tallinn, Estonia Above: Vanessa Daws, This is Your Normal, finale of a 10 week acclimitisation program to enable swimming in the frozen Pirita River, Tallin, Estonia with the world ice swimming champion Henri Kaarma, 2013. Film still.

Excess Baggage, a pop up show incorporating work from NCAD student artists studying on the Art in the Digital World Masters, was held in Tallinn, Estonia, from March 21–23 2013. The format of the show consisted of each artist carrying their work with them and travelling on a direct, low budget flight, with minimal on-site preparation and set-up time. The intention was to work within these self-imposed limits, testing and responding to the mobility of emerging technologies, while further developing links between similar interest groups in Tallinn. The show

Leah Hilliard Faculty of Fine Art Lecturer

spanned two sites in the historic Old Town district of the city; the newly established gallery at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and a dark space at the nearby Design and Architecture Gallery. Works included video, photographic prints, digital paintings, animation, 3D modelling, physical computing, performance, and software-based sculpture. Excess Baggage was kindly supported by Culture Ireland as part of the EU Presidency International Culture Programme 2013. excessbaggageshow.com

Participating Artists: Chloe Brennan, Sylvia Callan, Mitch Conlon, Vanessa Daws, Aileen Drohan, Angie Duignan, Luz Estrada, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Ulla Juske, Róisín Loughrey, Sinéad McDonald, John Murphy, Gearoid O’ Dea, Kevin Ryan and Paul Terry.

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Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

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Playhouse Professor Philip Napier Head of Faculty of Fine Art

The Lyric Theatre in Belfast is that interesting and increasingly rare example of a producing theatre.

It commissions new work and produces interpretations of classic forms of theatre, supported by a suite of inhouse skills including costume making and set design.

In the last few years the theatre has completed a major radical renewal of its physical and conceptual estate.

A landmark, award winning building by the architectural firm Tuomey O’Donnell has advanced this project. The new architecture has produced a complex and beautiful series of spaces where the materiality and forms ‘at play’ blur the distinction between public areas and the spaces to produce theatre.

The Lyric has been working through the National College of Art and Design, Dublin to develop an innovative public art commissioning process, for the theatre site. The commissioning process designed by the Fine Art Faculty at NCAD has created an advanced platform where the time to evolve ideas and to reflect upon the potentials of different approaches to creative development have been part of a valuable discursive exchange. This has involved selected students from the MFA at NCAD and recent alumni and students from the MFA and Art in Public courses at the Belfast School of Art, University of Ulster.

Regular meetings in Dublin and Belfast between students, staff and theatre professionals unpacked and made visible different dimensions of the creative interplay

between function site and situation. As a result of an extended research period, proposals where presented in a public exhibition at the Lyric Theatre. It was decided to advance a proposal by Sofie Loscher of NCAD to a further stage of feasibility.

Loscher’s work has evolved the device of using planes of glass to suspend a form which when viewed from different angles apparently appears and disappears depending on your point of vantage. Her work has an ethereal presence that is given substance by the movement of the viewer, physically and perceptually. It is informed by an exploration of Victorian techniques of creating illusions ‘on stage’ and through the building of spatial scenarios, which appear to produce a reflection, but where space perception and reality are carefully managed. Aspects of these concerns were manifest in Loschers work at the MFA exhibition at Moxie Studios in Dublin in June 2013.

The effort to make an artwork for a situation, which is already inscribed by significant creative effort in terms of performance and architecture, presents opportunity and difficulty for an artist. In this already ‘full house’, how might an artwork function as an unexpected guest, offering another perspective or extending a point of vantage, not yet imagined?

Staff ‘players’ contributing to the discursive dimensions of this project in Dublin and Belfast have been: Prof.Philip Napier and Dr. Kevin Atherton from NCAD; Dan Shipsides from the Belfast School of Art; and Ciaran McAuley, CEO of the the Lyric Theatre.

Oppostie: Lyric Theatre proposal model, Sofie Loscher, NCAD

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Per Cent for Art Yvonne Cullivan Lecturer First Year Studies

Right: Studio Development, Belturbet Per Cent for Art Commission, 2013. Ordinance survey map, written notes, photographic documentation

In June 2013 I was awarded a Public Art commission under the Per Cent for Art Scheme managed by Cavan County Council pertaining to the new bypass in Belturbet town. At this specific point in our economic history, a bypass is an ominous development for a small trading town such as Belturbet. This development provides an interesting context for my practice, which is rooted in the deep observation of personal, cultural and environmental spheres undergoing transformation.

I often welcome public participation in my projects in order to achieve outcomes that are communally shaped and collectively responsive. A three month research phase has just been completed on my project. This involved in-depth, onsite engagement with selected members of the local community. The new bypass, by the nature of its geographic route, reveals vistas of the local environment which were otherwise hidden, including a special area of conservation preserved under the EU Habitats’ Directive.

During the research phase, I consulted with experts in botany, engineering, environmental consultancy, food production, outdoor pursuits and agriculture in relation to their specific knowledge of Belturbet and its surroundings.

Locals, selected for their understanding of history and folklore, social history, youth culture, flora and fauna and river navigation, shared their expertise with me. The engagement involved discussion, interviews, walking the land, site-visits, navigating the waterways, workshops and my participation in the working processes of others. I also consulted research in the areas of Psychogeography and Sensory Ethnography, and a range of historical publications and archives.

Over the next three months I will be developing and producing a series of audio/visual responses to the research findings. The works will be location specific and experiential in nature. Methods of dissemination involving locative media and use of digital archiving will subsequently be developed with a completion date in June 2014 envisaged.

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Tondo @ the Lighthouse Eve Parnell NIVAL, NCAD

Graduates of NCAD Eve Parnell, Eoin Mac Lochlainn and Gerard Cox are members and founders of the Tondo Artists’ collective. In August 2012 the Tondo Artists’ collective presented an exhibition of drawings, sculptures, installations and paintings in the Irish Landmark Trust Lighthouse on Wicklow Head.

As members of Tondo we have met regularly since 2007 to discuss our work and to explore current issues in contemporary art. We believe that exhibiting outside the gallery setting brings a new impetus to our work and allows us the freedom to investigate ideas which might not otherwise come to the surface. It also encourages us to continually look afresh at their own art practices and to explore and experiment with alternative methods and materials. In the past, Tondo members Eve Parnell, Eoin Mac Lochlainn

and Gerard Cox have exhibited in many alternative spaces, including a railway station, a public park and a small crate; they have also exhibited in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Themes for new work generally emerge in response to particular spaces and in this case, the old lighthouse on Wicklow Head proved to be a rich source of inspiration for the group. It stands 29 metres high and was once one of a pair of octagonal lighthouses built on the headland in 1781.

(Its twin was demolished when a new lighthouse was built closer to the water’s edge in 1816).

The lighthouse sets the mood and provides the back­ drop for a number of art installations, sculptures and paintings. The members of the Tondo Artists’ collective invited fellow Artists John O’Grady, James Clancy and Sahoko Blake also to take part in this exhibition.

Above: Signal ‘Ad Astra/To the Stars’ from the International Code of Signals

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Visual Culture

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Cultural Threads Professor Jessica Hemmings Head of Visual Culture

Above: Mr. Somebody and Mr. Nobody pop-up shop, 2011

Cultural Threads (Bloomsbury: 2014) is a book length project that considers contemporary examples of artists and designers who work at the intersection of multiple cultural influences and use textiles as their vehicle. Specifically, this book considers the influence of postcolonial thinking on contemporary textile practice through the themes of trade, migration and hybridity.

Ideas about belonging to multiple cultures, which in reality result in a sense of connection to everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, are pertinent to society today more than ever. So too are the multiple, often overlooked, histories behind the objects that make up our material world.

Much like the cultural references of their makers, many contemporary textiles exist in an in-between world, not wholly embraced by the establishments of art and design, nor functional objects in the conventional sense of craft.

My research in this area first began over a decade ago when I presented ‘Texts on Textiles: The Weya Applique Project’ at the Fabric(ations) of the Postcolonial Conference at

the University of Wollongong, Australia in December 2002.

This paper explored literacy and economic development via the textile and was later published as ‘Emerging Voices: The Weya Applique Project of Zimbabwe’ in Reinventing Textiles Volume 3: Postcolonialism and Creativity (Telos: 2004).

More recently I have continued this research, publishing ‘Material Meaning’ in Wasafiri: the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing (issue 63, autumn 2010), which was commended in the journal’s 2010 renewed Arts Council funding bid: ‘One article that deserves special mention was “Material Meaning”, which approached the notion of diaspora and displacement in terms of the ideologies and locations inherent in textiles.’ This followed in 2011 with my keynote address at the ASNEL conference Postcolonial Studies Across the Disciplines in Hanover, Germany. My paper, “Postcolonial Textiles: negotiating dialogue”, considered the idea of an emerging postcolonial aesthetic in contemporary textiles and will be published under the same title as a chapter in the forthcoming book Cross/Cultures: Matatu (Rodopi Publishers).

Funding from the Design History Society in early 2013 allowed contributors to my current project Cultural Threads to debate and discuss their planned chapter content at a two-day workshop in London during April 2013. I presented this research at the Design History Society conference in Ahmedabad, India in September of 2013. It is my ambition that the next stage of this research will expand beyond textiles to consider ‘crafting the postcolonial’. www.jessicahemmings.com

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Art in the Contemporary World at ‘Former West’ Dr. Declan Long, Dr. Frances Halsall Faculty of Visual Culture Lecturers Since it was started 6 years ago Art in the Contemporary World (ACW) has established itself with a national and international reputation for excellence and innovation.

It is a space for engagement with, and critical elaboration of, discourses at the cutting edge of contemporary art theory and practice in Ireland. The course is led by Declan Long and Francis Halsall.

The core activities of Art in the Contemporary World are focused on the taught MA program. This offers an opportunity for focused engagement with the varied challenges presented by today’s most ambitious art practices.

Students are encouraged to bridge the relationship between theory and practice by entering into an intense and sustained interrogation of both their own practice (be this art making, research, criticism, curating etc.) and that of others. Over the years we have welcomed graduates from a variety of backgrounds, including: fine art; art history; philosophy; literature; film studies; architecture; communications; or design. We are always interested in recruiting from across a range of disciplines in order to generate a dynamic mix of student research interests.

Early in 2013 we were delighted to respond to the only formal invitation offered to an Irish institution and offer four funded places at the Former West Research Congress and Learning Place – this took place at the House of World Cultures in Berlin from 18–24 March 2013. After a competitive call for participants, places were offered to: Ciara Hickey, Barry Keogh, Hugh McCabe and Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll. Their report from the event follows.

Art in the Contemporary World at ‘Former West’ by: Ciara Hickey; Barry Keogh; Hugh McCabe; and Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll.

The fourth Former West Congress titled Documents, Constellations Prospects (18–24 March, 2013, Berlin) set out to examine specifically if there are prospects to reclaim the possibility of a common world – a hope we all shared back in 1989, thinking that the fall of the Iron Curtain was a promise of a new era of freedom and equality. The Congress sought to reshape the ongoing debates through the constellations of artworks, documents, lectures, workshops and talks organised into five currents: ‘The Learning Place’ (conceptualised by Boris Buden), ‘Art Production’ (Boris Groys), ‘Infrastructure’ (Irit Rogoff) and ‘Insurgent Cosmopolitanism’ (Ranjit Hoskote). In addition, ‘Dissident Knowledges’ contributions proposed dynamic interventions into the ongoing programme with a series of artworks, performances, and statements. The tightly scheduled events started early in the morning and continued late into the night – a structure more archetypal of a festival rather than a symposium format. But, as one of the speakers rightly noted, this festival feeling added to the performative character of the week injecting it with much needed fervour and enthusiasm.

Ultimately the very title Former West was haunted by a question, namely: if the end of (the) Cold War brought about the emergence of Former East, why is there no Former West? The explanation was rather obvious.

The West never acknowledged the impact of 1989 on its own political and economic system or revised its own protocols after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Neither had it questioned the role of the end of the Cold War on its own political and economic status quo. Instead, it assumed a triumphant victory of capitalist democracy over its only relevant ideological opponent – that of Communism. In other words, in the post-89 world the designation ‘Former East’ was coined to refer to those previously repressed parts of the globe now supposedly liberated and ready to embrace a better and brighter future symbolised by its Western counterpart. But with the benefit of hindsight, especially now when the so-called West often looks for its own political and economic alternative, is the victory still relevant and valid or has the West and its model of

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

neoliberal politics reached its exhaustion? Taking this into account, the Former West project embarks on a pursuit for a new conception of how we define the West through a long-term international research, education, publishing, and exhibition in the hope of addressing the following question: How do we go about thinking political alternatives in a post-1989 world and what sort of role can art and knowledge production have within this?

We represented NCAD at The Learning Place section of the Congress. It was by far the most experimental component. Designed as ‘educational performance’, it aimed to produce critical thinking about knowledge as opposed to a simple act of providing information.

A hundred and fifty students from all over the world were divided into groups of fifteen to work on a common task – developing a ‘meta-text of contemporary art and knowledge production, i.e. CV’. The idea of working within a modernist ideology of progress, neoliberal in character and the object of major criticism throughout the Congress, seemed ridiculous and counter-productive. The majority of participants abandoned ship and gradually the groups fell into disarray. The task was not completed and as such, the project as envisaged failed. On the other hand though, it inspired disruption and opposition against mainstream politics, forming a stirring of collective subjectivity which most likely counts as the ultimate success of the assignment.

As part of a Learning Place workshop we went on a walking tour of the centre of former East Berlin to look at the changing city and the deconstruction of the DDR. This was lead by the Berlin based artists Nina Fischer and Maoran el Sani Fischer. Their work concerns collective memory and a collective social history that is drawn from anecdotes and memories as told by a community. Their exploration of the past does not depend on official histories that are tied to the symbolic production of knowledge and power that resides in the infrastructure of the bureaucratic archive. The work they walked us through on the day we spent with them in Berlin traces the topography of the lost city that existed before, and for a short time after, the fall of the Berlin wall. Their recalling of the underground nightclub scene that existed in the city centre of the former east is an example of this peculiar undermining of bureaucratic official history, as it assembles a collective

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Above: ACW students arrive at fourth Former West Congress, Berlin titled Documents, Constellations Prospects, March 2013. Photograph: Barry Keogh

memory from first person narratives of a place or an event.

This work presents the possibility of placing the subject back into the centre of art production and provides a space for collective subjectivity.

The topic of infrastructure was one of the main themes of Former West. This strand was organised by Art Historian, Irit Rogoff, who gave a keynote presentation. Rogoff started by noting how we in the so-called West tend to pride ourselves on a functioning and superior infrastructure. This takes many forms: a logistical infrastructure that includes transportation elements such as roads and railways; a technological infrastructure consisting of various forms of communication networks; a financial infrastructure dedicated to the movement and circulation of capital; as well other infrastructures dedicated to the facilitation of

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activities in specific fields of endeavour such as education, law, and all the myriad forms of cultural practice, including of course, art. While infrastructure takes many forms, its defining characteristic is a focus on delivery – delivery of material things such as goods, services, cash, people – or delivery of immaterial things such as credit, data, information, thoughts, ideas. One way or another it moves things from place to place. It facilitates connections between things. It allows things to enter into various forms of relations with each other.

Rogoff’s proposition is that infrastructure is a defining characteristic of the contemporary condition, and that therefore we need to address it critically. We need to be alert to both the problems and the possibilities that it presents, in order to figure out how we should operate effectively within it.

Infrastructure is often presented as an enabling force – something that promises us agency and thereby allows us to get things done – but we often fail to recognise that it is also, as Rogoff puts it, ‘a set of protocols that bind and confine us’. It is perhaps obvious that something that facilitates delivery also exerts controls over that delivery – control over what can be delivered, how it can be delivered, by whom and to whom it can be delivered. When we consider that what gets delivered includes thoughts, ideas, and other outputs of cultural production; we can see how it is critical to at least question to what extent, and in what way, infrastructure helps ensure the kind of hegemonic situation that Former West was seeking to examine.

In one of the public lectures, Homi Bhabha, Director of the Humanities Centre at Harvard University, spoke on ‘Insurgent Cosmopolitan’. He began with the idea of the cosmopolitan (the citizen of the world) and he spoke of Kant’s idea of hospitality and the ethics surrounding how we should behave to strangers. He described the way in which, as human beings, we share the planet and because we live on a globe, if we take a position where we are moving away from a person, we are in fact also moving towards them in the opposite direction. This anecdote highlights something of the reality of being part of this world and the problematic position of avoidance or disregard toward any of our neighbours local or global. It is a way of illustrating that no matter how far we feel removed from many of the others with whom we share the planet, we are ultimately all connected to each other.

However, in contrast to this beautiful image of humanity sharing the globe together, the opening salvo of talks around ‘art production’ was more deflationary. Boris Groys, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, and Franco Berardi, Marxist theorist and activist, suggested that new media technology pervades contemporary life as a manifestation of neo-liberal consumer capitalism and that it is contributing to increased precariousness, atomisation and individualisation. This contributes to the loss of agency in a post-political world where society is left to suffer at the vagaries of a financialised world that cannot be directed toward a better future for humanity. For both of these speakers the problem that is manifest in the global society is down to a problematic subjectivity. Berardi declared that ‘facebook is the end of friendship’ and that the founding of Apple was the beginning of the end of civilisation. He sees the failure of politics as the failure of what he terms ‘collective subjectivity’. According to both Groys and Berardi, because of our inability to form coherent historical discourses of continuity, it becomes impossible to identify our perspective on the present with any sense of authority, and thus it becomes impossible to project any sense of coherence into the future.

Franco Berardi’s lecture posed the following questions: how can we imagine the notion of the future; what is the current position of the West; and what is to be gained by imagining political alternatives? He began by discussing how the ‘West’ has always been linked to the concept of the future; that the puritans leaving for America invented the modern concept of future – they wanted to be purified from an impure political and religious past. It is the continuous displacement of the frontier, Berardi claimed, that has always defined the notion of the future. In the present age, due to changing technological, political and geographical circumstances, this frontier has dissolved and with it any notion of the future.

He identified 1977 as the specific year that the future ended with the occurrence of several key events: the creation of the apple trademark, the first successful stem cell research, the death of Charlie Chaplin (the soul of modernism), and the rise of punk culture whose manifesto was ‘no future’. Indeed, the title of the address was Game

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Over, emphasising this notion that we are currently in a ‘post future’ scenario. Game Over is a reference to a performance Berardi made in 1979 responding to the Gang of Four trial in China. The performance involved him and three others simultaneously playing an Italian videogame over an extended period of time in which they always lose the game. The performance was an acknowledgement that an era of social change and activism (the mid 60s to the mid 70s) was coming to an end and anticipated the machine that was to come (neo-liberalism) and that this machine will always win. He had a pertinent quote on the machine as ‘something essentially built by humans who are always predestined to lose’.

The first part of the talk enforced the idea that both the concept of the future and the concept of society was destroyed by this neo-liberal machine. He spoke about the recent European collapse as the final moment of the neoliberal destruction of the social civilization of modernity as well as the future. In a neo-liberal system where social benefits, healthcare and education are being attacked, these social structures are increasingly viewed as unrealistic and unsustainable desires. Instead of being the pillars upon which society is built, they can be viewed as obstructing protective forces that essentially ‘prevent us from seeing the true harshness of life’ (as one Italian government official was quoted as having said).

Berardi went on to claim that in light of this, the only positive future Europe can potentially have is one that is inextricably linked with Greece. He described the Greek situation as a scenario where the naked human body is now exposed to the storms of economics, violence and war, without the protections offered by modernity and its associated welfare state and social protections. He offered this as an example of precariousness in a pure form, where all previous protections and certainties no longer exist. Crucially, Berardi claimed that in 1977 the radicals dreamed of living in a state of precariousness and coveted the freedoms that the destruction of stability and randomization of work could offer.

Conversely, he noted, there is absolute disillusionment with precariousness in its current form as represented by Greece.

Yet, even if we revise the concept of West in terms of politics, it remains valid as a geographical configuration, with migration as the movement which nowadays reinforces

the West format. Though technically the physical borders were removed in 1989, for Marysia – a Polish citizen – the real freedom of movement came only in May 2004 when Poland was finally admitted to the EU. This feeling of ‘being outside’ the Western structures can be debilitating and we could all see it in small interventions staged by a group of students from Bosnia and Herzegovina whose hand-written notes ‘Let us be part of your world’ or ‘Please, love us!’ were left around the venue. In a perfect example, Joanna Warsza, Polish co-curator of the latest edition of Berlin Biennial, brought to our attention the EU agency called Frontex whose role is to reinforce the borders between the EU and non-EU countries; or, in other words, between the new East and West. Paradoxically, Poland now hosts the headquarters of this agency in Warsaw, making us the West that many dream and long for.

Rogoff’s answer to this is that we should constantly be seeking to introduce incoherence into the infrastructure.

By doing this we can generate what Deleuze and Guattari called asignifying ruptures – moments of disruption that cause reconfigurations of parts of the rhizome – moments where assigned roles are de-assigned – moments where fixed meanings are destroyed and new possibilities emerge.

The job of the artist, in fact the job of all of us, is to try and cause such asignifying ruptures. This is not a call for a world without infrastructure, but rather a world in which infrastructure is productive rather than restrictive.

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The Design History & Material Culture of Blood Donation in Ireland, 1950–1975 Teresa Reilly MA History of Design and Material Culture 2012 Post-graduate 2012 Design History Society Essay Prize Winner Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Godson

Holtorf, C., 2002. My Blood for Thee. In: J.M. Bradburne (ed) 2002.

Blood – Art, Power, Politics and Pathology. Munich, London, New York: Prestel.

Mauss, M., 2008. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London and New York: Routledge.

Titmuss, R.M., 1970. The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. London: Allen & Unwin.

Above: Donor Attendant placing a pelican lapel pin on donor’s lapel, ca.1955.

Photograph courtesy of the National Blood Centre archive.

donation as one of the most ‘sensitive universal social Blood donation as an altruistic act or an archetypal indicators, which tells us something about the quality of pure-gift, is challenged by Marcel Mauss’s (1929) theory relationships and of human values prevailing in a society’ of the gift, where he posited that there can be no such (for example Titmuss; 1970, p.13). thing as a ‘free’ gift since there is always an obligation By following a sequential order of events that epitom­ to give, to receive and to reciprocate the gift. Using his ised the blood donation experience, the essay begins with theory as a central concept, this essay explores the design an analysis of the visual identity and promotional materials history and material culture of blood donation in Ireland produced by the NBTA, the first step in attracting and over a twenty-five year period, from the inception of the motivating Irish citizens to join their blood donor club.

National Blood Transfusion Association (NBTA) in 1950 The next stage was the physical experience of giving blood when blood donation was first introduced as a national in a donation clinic as a ritual of gift giving. This was service. The essay examines the biological, the ephemeral characterised by a sense of sociability and community, and the symbolic objects that were associated with the significantly assisted by the figure of the uniformed NBTA experience of blood donation, from both a material culture female donor attendant. Finally, the essay ends with the and a design history perspective, in order to understand the last stage of the blood donation experience, which involved prevailing beliefs and values that existed in Ireland at this time. The objective is to explore how the cultural influences, donor reward and recognition. The NBTA pelican lapel pin played a pivotal role in promoting blood donation which shaped the NBTA’s design decisions – in their visual identity, branded material, uniforms and pelican lapel pins – in Ireland, but more importantly it was perceived as a reflected and constructed the Irish public’s relationship with ‘symbolic reward’ in the final stage of the ‘obligatory return of gifts’ (Mauss: 2008, p.x). This simple object signified the blood donation. The findings reveal that everyday objects complexities of Irish identity from this era, encompassing and design played an important role in normalising the many attributes such as charitableness, morality and previously alien concept of giving blood. citizenship.By investigating the seemingly mundane and As a literal ‘part of oneself’, blood is a unique form of quotidian items that people interacted with during the gift, laden with symbolism since ‘woman and man, body experience of blood donation in the mid-twentieth century, and spirit, and life and death are directly juxtaposed in this analysis of the design history and material culture of blood’ (Holtorf; 2002, p.21). How a population engages blood donation documents Irish culture and society from with the act of ‘giving’ blood indicates broader cultural a perspective previously unexamined. influences and beliefs. Scholars have described blood

Research and Public Engagement from the Faculties

Territories of Encounter Keynote Talk at the Art Therapy Department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 24 Mar 2013 Pamela Whitaker Associate, NCAD Research Institue The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) offers one of the few Master of Arts in art therapy programmes in the United States located within a fine art and design academic setting. An invitation to speak at SAIC’s annual art therapy symposium, was an opportunity to elaborate upon a chapter I had contributed to Materials and Media in Art Therapy: Critical Understandings of Diverse Artistic Vocabularies, edited by SAIC’s art therapy director Catherine Moon. This particular symposium was dedicated to inter­­disciplinary community based arts practices, and my presentation elaborated upon my work with children and adults propagating local landscapes as habitats for social activism.

My work as an art therapist involves collaborating with primary school children, their teachers, and residents of rural townlands to generate biodiversity gardens. These anarchic gardens are gathering spaces for the telling of personal stories, and places for collective social analysis.

Located within the common grounds of everyday life, these disruptive gardens mark out new pathways for social engagement. They create meeting places for intergenerational forms of active citizenship, where the insights and lived experiences of different ages grow together. My goal is to ignite inert areas of rural landscape, converting complacency with aspiration and place-making.

I am also developing these themes in the context of urban environments. Through the course of field trips into city streetscapes, parks, buildings and abandoned sites art therapists can document and incorporate lived surroundings as stimuli for personal reflection. In essence art therapy can help to re-shape the study of subjectivity

beyond psychological interpretations into a more sociological assemblage that roams and accumulates contemplative data.

Territories of Encounter was simultaneously a performance, and the reshaping of a conference venue into an interactive studio. Random seating arrangements, interspersed with messages to participants, and bodily contact between audience members generated spontaneous interactions, which crossed the boundaries between personal and public spaces. My talk was a call for the re-routing of art therapy into interdisciplinary territories, with the hope of liberating the profession from its purely clinical associations. The methodology of the presentation was to reconfigure a predetermined public space, into an unplanned scene of physical and social happenings. This approach imitated my formulation of art therapy as an encounter with the public domain as a therapeutic landscape. I transport art therapy out into the open, to be permeated with chance meetings, found materials, and with the circumstances of urban and rural environments. The art of psychotheraphy is socially active, uninhibited, and restless. Allowed to wander, art therapy can enter into diverse fields of contemporary art practice where catharsis, desire and growth prevail. The ecology of everyday happenings can enlarge the scope of therapeutic territories. By crossing clinical thresholds into new experiential locations, art therapy can travel additional routes of creative becoming and contribute to an examination of contemporary subjectivity. Interdisciplinary community arts practices, implies a means by which art therapy can collaborate within art education, offering another dimension for personal and social well being.

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Recently Completed Dissertations

PhD Research

Margaret Fitzgibbon Loss and Return

My enquiry explores the collective memory of an Irish family through Installation Art Practice. It has its origins in a childhood immersed in family stories, myths, home movies, photographs, furniture and even love letters that informed our family narrative as an Irish emigrant family living in England from 1950–1966. In 2003 I discovered my father’s 8mm camera and started making short experimental films and as a consequence became curious about the collection of the home movie footage he had made of those early family years. In 2005 my mother passed on to me some 29 letters she had in safe keeping for over fifty years. These are my father’s letters written to her during the early days of his emigration 1950–1952 – sadly, her return letters were lost. In 2008 these family records became the focus of my research project. Drawing on a range of discourses on memory and the archive and deploying the methodology of art practice, my research project asks a series of interrelated questions, such as: What modality of ‘time’ do we encounter in a family archive?

What kind of spaces are represented and who has agency?

How do truth and fiction intertwine in these accounts and

what are the links between autobiographical, biographical and social or collective memory? What role does film and photography play in prosthetic memory?

My methodology of approaches deploys art practice as its core activity while making use of ethnographic and oral history approaches to understanding memory. Artistic strategies include found-object, assemblage, collage, digital photographic processes, the production of sound and experimental short films reconfigured from the home movie footage. They are integrated with oral histories collected from my extended family. My subject position offers me the opportunity to be simultaneously both inside and outside the project – alternating as subject and object – whilst employing my own memories and experience through my multiple roles as daughter, niece, sister, artist and researcher.

PhD Fine Art, Sculpture, Core Researcher, GradCAM 2008–2013 Supervisor: Dr. Siun Hanrahan; External Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Jewesbury, University of Ulster

Above: Street Portrait, Left: Original photo (16 × 11cm), Right: Reverse of photograph. Hand-written inscription reads ‘7/8/58 in Dublin, (Mary leaving for England)’. Original photograph attributed to Dublin’s iconic street photographer, Arthur Field.

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Tina Kinsella Bracha L. Ettinger’s Matrixial Theory and Aesthetics

Ettinger, B.L., 2006, ‘The Matrixial Gaze’ in Massumi, B. (ed.), The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 93–122.

Ettinger, B.L., 2011, ‘Uncanny Awe, Uncanny Compassion and Matrixial Transjectivity Beyond Uncanny Anxiety’ in FLS Psychoanalysis in French and Francophone Literature and Film, Vol. XXXVIII. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2011, pp. 1–31.

Funded by the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland through its Postgraduate Scholarship Scheme (IRC) Opposite: Untitled (detail), Tina Kinsella, 2003–2009

Bracha L. Ettinger’s Matrixial theory articulates a transsubjective stratum which is a ‘shareable dimension of subjectivity in which elements that discern one another … [and] without knowing each other, co-emerge and co-inhabit a joint space, without fusion and without rejection.’ Drawing on Ettinger, my doctoral research proposes an ontology of the subject that offers a radical supplement to traditional and contemporary philosophical, theoretical and psychoanalytical discourses on the subject and the ethical relation.

According to Ettinger, subjectivising processes commence during the late intrauterine encounter between becoming-subject/becoming-infant and becoming-mother through transgressive cross-inscriptions of non-conscious corporeal-psychical aesthetic and proto-ethical (prior to concrete intersubjective relations) affect. This transgressive encounter reveals that psychical and corporeal boundaries have always, already ‘been transgressed’ and, as such, ‘on certain levels’ they ‘are only a fiction.’

I place Ettinger’s key insights in conversation with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘flesh’ and Jacques Lacan’s analytic of ‘other jouissance.’ This gives rise to two key concepts: ‘Matrixial Flesh’ and a ‘Jou(with-in) sense of Becoming-Non-Life-in-Life.’ With these two concepts I conceive of the subject as primordially aesthetic, and the ethical relation as innately affective and affecting.’ Partialised, matrixial subjectivity is considered as ‘matrixial flesh’, and ‘jou(with-in)sense’ is suggested as an almost-enjoyment.

The latter is perhaps experienced as a relief, transgression beyond one’s individual borders and participating in/with the becoming, and shareable, flesh of the world.

PhD, Faculty of Visual Culture, 2013 Supervisors: Dr. Francis Halsall; Dr. Siún Hanrahan

PhD Research

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Andrew Folan The Prometheus Above: The Virtual and Actual Prometheus, digital animation and laser sinter series.

The process of morphogenesis (the biological shaping of an organism through cell differentiation) is employed analogically to describe growth and transformation in digital synthesis. Morphogenesis (in its technological instance) is an algorithmic evolution of the virtual entity.

The evolution of the virtual entity bears many analogies with its biological counterpart. In this research, an analogy is made between the computer as a cognitive driver and the materialization process as a somatic manifestation of the thought process. The analogy with the natural and biological, and the potential for adaptive growth and development, aligns this study with a spectrum of scientific and artistic practices and philosophies.

While the virtual entity is extant, living (as it must do) on a feed of electric current, it retains its dynamic potential. This is the digital morphogenesis, an open ended, and evolutionary concept. It is infinitely extensible in both time and material. We can play and rewind this durational entity, we can observe it unfolding, we can prototype it and evolve it. Essentially we can keep it living in the

timeless information world and recall it as required.

Conceived at the virtual–actual interface, the invented hybrid Cogitare Virtualis x Fit Actu (a virtual conception made actual) enables a new species to flourish. The first manifestation of this species is the Prometheus. The Actual Prometheus (a virtual sculpture made material) is formed from nylon powder fused by laser, and has the ability (through its virtual origins) to regenerate and become manifest in modified form. In its transformation – from information to material – it moves between the timeless (virtual) and timed (actual) instantces of reality.

In the regeneration and animation of the Virtual Prometheus, every point of information retains its potential to be reconfigured. This metric and non-metric topology fuses the thought process with its material counterpart.

PhD through practice-based research in Fine Art Media, 2013 Supervisors: Dr. Kevin Atherton; Dr. Paul O’Brien

PhD Research

Above: Untitled, 36 inch × 16 inch digital images

Catherine Lynch Art Mama Praxis Reflective Arts Practice as a Transformative Tool

This dissertation seeks to confront the material reality of the female artist’s life. It explores one of the most pivotal and critical periods of transition that can affect a female artist’s personal and professional development: the birth of her first child. An examination of the shifting intersections of art and motherhood is proposed.

This scholarship centres on the mother-artist double.

Feminist literature and academic text inspire and inform an understanding of the mother’s journey. Themes of flux and change are constants in the life of the mother and artist.

The chosen methodologies are those of auto-ethnography and practice-based reflective artistic research. My art practice began as a tool to help me to map my research journey.

However, I soon realised how fundamental the art research

was to me in existential terms. This study gave me a com­ prehensive insight into the potential of art practice to extract meaning from life and to capture and acknowledge the transformation occurring in my own life.

Hopefully this practice-based scholarship functions as a transformative tool. I’ve come to see this study as relevant to my development as an artist, educator and mother – facillitating transitions of identity, modifying and re-configuring our pathways, and taking leaps of faith on our individual journeys.

PhD through practice-based research in Fine Art Media Supervisors: Pauline Cummins (NCAD); Dr. Patricia Kennedy (UCD)

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Maire Ni Bhróin Formative Assessment of the Visual Arts in Ireland

Above: Mermaid and Merman, Image for Claymation by 12-year-old

The benefits of using formative assessment methods in education are becoming more widely acknowledged.

This study brings together the relevant research in the fields of art education and methods of assessment. It examines the effects of implementing formative assessment in teaching and learning in the visual arts and does so from the perspectives of pupils and teachers in Irish primary education. The study addresses questions such as: How does formative assessment work in art education at primary level?

What strategies work best? It investigates the perspectives of both pupils and teachers and it questions whether formative assessment can help generalist primary teachers gain confidence and competence in their teaching of the visual arts.

The fieldwork took the form of a qualitative field study conducted in a number of primary schools from June 2011 to January 2013. It involved an action research project in which the researcher operated as a participant observer involved in incorporating formative assessment approaches into art teaching and learning activity in a primary school. Group interviews conducted with a sample of pupils at the beginning and end of the project and individual interviews with six primary teachers of classes from senior infants (age six) to sixth-class (age twelve) who took part in a co-ordinated formative assessment art project.

The key data consisted of video recordings of the art lessons and content, analysis of these, a reflective journal, transcripts of interviews with pupils and teachers, teacher responses to follow-up email and pupil artefacts.

Seven major findings emerged from my analysis: • Eight distinctive teaching and learning strategies could be identified as effective in implementing formative assessment in art education.

• Teachers and pupils generally believed that the quality of the artwork improved as a result of formative assessment.

• Pupils generally welcomed the benefits of formative assessment strategies.

• Teachers indicated that they would in the future continue to incorporate formative assessment into their teaching of art.

• Each teacher could be observed developing a personal style when implementing the formative assessment into their teaching of art.

• Formative assessment may be more effective in art if practiced in other curriculum areas.

• Teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, time requirements, pupils’ understandings of what constituted good quality art and the quality of pupil interrelationships posed challenges to the successful implementation of formative assessment in art education.

It was found that the use of formative assessment has the capacity to improve teaching and learning in the visual arts at primary level and that generalist primary teachers can benefit from a flexible framework for its implementation.

PhD Faculty of Education Supervisor: Prof. Gary Granville

PhD Research

Naomi Sex Next_Previously_ Meanwhile

My practice-based research centred on the ideological space between professional and amateur art practice. I explored the activity of artistic ‘opportunity seeking’ and how artists present themselves and their practices within various professionalized contexts. I considered informal artistic situations and employed a range of eclectic practices in an attempt to capture the usually concealed attitudes prevalent in the artistic field. To articulate and publicise my findings, I now use the performative lecture as a professional container and as a formal device to reveal the informal, the veiled, the intangible, the invisible, the elusive and the evasive character of the artworld. As a consequence of this study, I later produced nine artistic projects which feature on the website www.naomi-sex.com.

Recent Research Activity • Awarded the summer residency, TAKT-Contemporary, Berlin, August 2013 • Awarded The Arts Council 2013 Visual Art Project Award to fund forthcoming event The Synchronized Lecture Series, scheduled November 2013 • Forthcoming research abstract entitled A Little Bit of

History Repeats Itself by Naomi Sex to appear in In/Print – a peer-reviewed biannual publication based in the School of Art, Design and Printing at Dublin Institute of Technology, Spring 2013 • Forthcoming feature based on research based practice, written by Claire Walsh (editor) to appear in the art journal Occupy Paper, June, 2013 • Forthcoming Solo event, November 2013, The Synchron­ ised Lecture series. This performative lecture series is scheduled to occur at the same time on the same day featuring a different actor in each location – the following Irish-based institutions are confirmed to feature the event: Dublin Institute of Technology, The National College of Art and Design, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Crawford College of Art and Design, Wexford Campus IT, Carlow School of Art and Design, GMIT Centre for Creative Arts and Media, Sligo IT, The Burren College of Art. PhD through practice-based research in Fine Art, Media Supervisors: Prof. Philip Napier; Dr. Kevin Atherton

Above: Next_Previously_Meanwhile

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Doctoral Work in Progress

PhD Research

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Alan Boardman Materiality, Emergence and Sensation in Post-Continental Philosophy and Contemporary Painting

‘Not every organism has a brain, and not all life is organic, but everywhere there are forces that constitute microbrains, or an inorganic life of things’ (What is Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, 1996). My research project interrogates the relation between contemporary painting and forms of realism and materialism present in postcolonial philosophy and asserts (remove ‘thereby to’) the claim – ‘art is a form of philosophy.’ In its own material terms, painting can be seen as a metaphysical enquiry into the structure-generating processes of the material world.

Engaging contemporary art theory and the aesthetics of Gilles Deleuze, Michel Serres and the new-materialism of Manuel DeLanda, this project makes the claim that painting has multiple temporalities and as such, contemporary painting is an entangled meshwork of both human and nonhuman agencies constituting complex/emergent systems.

I propose to excavate these temporalities by critically engaging with three contemporary painters, Philip Taaffe, Alexis Harding and Onya McCausland, whose practices deal

with the complexities of painting’s materiality and emerging meanings. It is hoped that this framing of contemporary painting as a complex system can be expanded to formulate an aesthetic theory of sensation compatible with the recent science of complexity and emergence.

Sensation is an aesthetic category that, while revealed within the conditions of the work of art, expands beyond art into all systems. As Deleuze and Guattari show, at critical thresholds some physical and biological systems can be said to ‘sense’ the differences in their environment that trigger self-organizing processes. In this way sensation produces forces and flows that operate beyond the register of systems of signification. Beyond the human and even the organic, they are understood as triggers of material processes. This is where the science of emergence meets the aesthetics of sensation. Aesthetics as sensation does not seek to map or represent. Instead, it is a component of the mechanisms of immanence as they emerge from matter itself. Aesthetics orientated in this materialist manner can set out to uncover the traces of intensive processes left behind in the informational patterns of matter.

PhD Student Visual Culture, Year 2 Supervisor: Dr. Francis Halsall

Left: White Earth, Onya McCausland, 2010. Panel made from chalk taken from quarry near Cambridge. (Image courtesy of the artist, © 2013 Onya McCausland.

All rights reserved.)

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Emma Creighton A Design Learning Intervention for Second-Level Students

Above: Hedge School Dublin Design and Learning Workshop, NCAD Gallery, Nov 2011. Photograph: Emma Creighton

This ongoing interdisciplinary PhD research investigates the effectiveness of a design workshop as an explicit out-of-school intervention into the conventional school process. In line with European and international trends, the research places an emphasis on both the personal and academic development of the student, with a focus on the individual learner and the development of skills and competencies. By working in an out-of-school context the research practice explores how this development can be enhanced by extending learning beyond the four walls of the school.

The argument for inclusion of design education at second-level is not a new one. Arguments dating back as far as the 1970s propose that design should be considered as a third area of education to sit alongside the humanities and sciences. This research extends these arguments further by investigating the impact and effectiveness of an out-ofschool design learning programme as external leverage on school learning, rather than embedding it within the formal curriculum.

The objective of the intervention is to engage stu­ dents in a meaningful learning experience, giving them the opportunity to understand and develop skills in areas such as creative and critical thinking, communication, collaboration and self-directed learning. The aims of the

research are; 1) to expose students to new ways of learning 2) to develop student’s key skills and competencies 3) to encourage metacognitive awareness among students and 4) to empower students to take ownership over their own learning.

Over the course of the research workshops have been run in various out-of-school contexts. A recently completed longitudinal study explores the learning outcomes and the long-term impact of one particular case study further. Our findings to date indicate that the proposed out-of-school design workshop has the potential to have a positive longterm impact on students in terms of both personal and academic development.

In September 2013 the research was presented in a paper titled An Out-of-School Design Learning Intervention for Second Level Students at the International Engineering and Product Design Education conference hosted at DIT, Bolton Street. In November 2013 the research was presented at the Cumulus Dublin Conference in NCAD, in a paper titled Design Learning as an Intervention in General Education.

PhD Student, Faculty of Education/Faculty of Design – Task Furniture in Education, Year 2 Supervisors: Prof. Gary Granville, Head of Education; Prof. Alex Milton, Head of Design Faculty

PhD Research

Lucy Dawe Lane Re-viewing Conceptual Art Mel Bochner’s Objects

This year’s Venice Biennale was accompanied by a re-making of the landmark exhibition When Attitudes Become Form: Live in Your Head curated by Harald Szeeman and originally shown at The Kunsthalle in Bern and the ICA, London in 1969. The reconstructed exhibition took place at the The Prada Institute, curated

by Germano Celant in dialogue with Thomas Demand and Rem Koolhaas. In common with most re-enactments of historical conceptual art projects, it bore the double date of 1969/2013, presuming an identity which foregrounds art as event rather than object.

My research investigates the turn to immaterial practices within art in the late 1960s, but conversely charts the consequences in terms of material residues; their persistence through time and their influence upon subsequent curatorial practices. The focus is on Mel Bochner’s objects, chosen because of his refusal to accept the rhetoric of de-materialisation, whilst at the same time pursuing a practice utilising tenuous and intermittent material means. Bochner’s early knowledge of the manuscript translations of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical work at North Western University, together with his

lifelong investigation of Wittgenstein’s writings meant that his approach differed from hard conceptualism on this question. His integral use of simple objects, colour and space as well as verbal and numerical notation insists upon a bodily share, and acts as a metalanguage about art, which performs as its own philosophy.

To date, the aesthetics of conceptual art has incor­ por­ated conceptualist practices by drawing upon models developed for literature and music. However, following the implic­ations of Bochner’s position, my research project examines the impact of conceptual practices upon the body, arguing that the nature of encounters with such artworks however cerebral, necessarily involve affect and the senses. Drawing particularly upon the work of philosopher Michel Serres it argues not only for deeper consideration of material residues, but also examines the nature of the experiential excess they invoke.

PhD Student, Faculty of Visual Culture, Year 4, part-time Supervisors: Dr. Francis Halsall; Dr. Declan Long

Above: Mel Bochner, Sketch for Continuous/Dis/Continuous, 1971–1972, pencil, red and black felt-tipped pens, blue chalk and watercolour on paper, Museum of Modern Art, New York .

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Cathy Fitzgerald Beyond Ecocide Toward Deep Sustainability Stories from a Small Irish Forest

Foster, John (2008), The Sustainability Mirage: illusion and reality in the coming war on climate change, Routledge Earthscan Series, London, iBook edition, accessed 2012.

Weintraub, Linda (2012), To Life!: Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, California University Press.

Cathy’s ongoing, two-and-a-half acre forest transformation project began in 2008 (‘Hollywood’ is being transformed from a clear-fell conifer plantation to a continuous cover mixed forest using new non clearfell forest methods). The project is a dialogical, transdisciplinary eco-art inquiry and is continually informed by the small forest community in which Cathy lives, as well as from ongoing conversations with leading proponents of eco-art and experimental ecocinema, and from leading foresters and Green politicians.

Shared online, the project is comprised of audio-visual works, writing and theory. It forms a synergistic reflexive praxis that involves and traverses; new transdisciplinary eco-art methodologies and (new to Ireland), non-clearfell continuous cover forest methods.

Outcomes of the project include: writings and ecocinema works, new forest data for the COFORD*/UCD research project on ‘low impact silvicultural systems’(LISS); national forest policy development (Green Party Forest Policy (2012) that includes as its key recommendation new non-clearfell forest methods); and the successful proposition in 2013 that The Green Party of Ireland and Northern Ireland

recognise ‘that a crime of ecocide (the long term destruction of ecosystems by man) be supported in international law’.

This inquiry explores the validity of new methods of transdisciplinary eco-art praxis as presented by Weintraub (2012) as a means to navigate the complex emergent and intersecting dynamics of forest and human ecologies, and to produce new understandings of ‘deep sustainability’ relevant to a specific bioregion. Such emergent, contingent understandings will be critical in our adaption to accelerating ecological changes and are argued to be urgently needed, in going beyond ‘the illusory practices and false promises’ of ‘sustainable development’ policies, as noted by John Foster in his book The Sustainability Mirage: illusion and reality in the coming age of climate change (2008). Ultimately this project is a model of new eco art praxis and is transferable to other situations.

PhD Student, Visual Culture Supervisors: Dr. Paul O’Brien; Prof. Jessica Hemmings

PhD Research

Liza Foley The Cultural and Material Agency of Leather Gloves in Eighteenth Century England

This research examines the significance of leather gloves in eighteenth century England. Adopting a perspective that privileges artefact, archival, visual and literary sources through material culture analysis, it traces the glove’s physical and conceptual transformation from a dead animal skin to a luxury article of refinement. It pays particular attention to the relation between the materiality of leather and the construction of politeness. Through an analysis of the production and environments in which leather was produced, it will show how the materiality of leather made its contribution towards the production of the cultural meaning of leather gloves.

Equally, the cultural meanings of the gloves, relating to issues of the body, class distinction and the performance of gender, have significant impact on the materiality of the

glove itself. Understanding the glove through the relation of materiality and cultural meaning confirms the leather glove as an article of significant material agency. This agency becomes apparent in examples of personal and ceremonial gift exchange where gloves can also hold powerful influence as erotically charged or emotionally invested artefacts.

The implications of this research may be seen not only to demonstrate the significance of the materiality of objects in terms of material culture studies but also to reconsider the cultural relevance of these artefacts whose significance currently resides at the margins of historical enquiry.

PhD Student, Faculty of Visual Culture, Year 1 Supervisor: Dr. Anna Moran

Above: Glover’s trade card, 18th century, Trade card collection, The Lewis Walpole Library.

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Lisa Moran How It Is The Container in the Work of Miroslaw Balka

Paolo Herkenhoff, ‘The Illuminating Darkness of How It Is’ in Helen Sainsbury, ed., Miroslaw Balka: How It Is, catalogue for the Unilever Series, London: Tate Publishing, 2009, p. 52 Miroslaw Balka cited in Arifa Akbar, ‘Dark Arts in Turbine Hall’.

The Independent, 13 October, 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/art/features/ dark-arts-in-turbine-hall-1801782. html, accessed 29/5/2012 James E. Young, ‘Miroslaw’s Balka’s Graves in the Sky’ in Typography Miroslaw Balka, exhibition catalogue, Miroslaw Balka: Typography, Modern Art Oxford, 2009, p. 178.

Miroslaw Balka is a contemporary Polish artist working in sculpture, installation and video. His work is often associated with themes of memory and history – his own and that of his native Poland. He describes himself as an artist ‘working in the field of memory’. Employing strategies from minimalism, Balka constructs objects which contain, frame or function as thresholds. These objects often hold ephemeral material such as ash and salt or enable the viewer to enter into or pass through them.

My thesis is focused on the role of the container in the work of Balka. Drawing on psychoanalyst W. R. Bion’s theories on projective identification and the model of the container/contained, I propose that Balka addresses the unrepresentable through strategies of containment.

Balka’s work is concerned with limits: the limits of representation, the limits of knowing. Referring to 196 × 230 × 141 (2000), which consists of a corridor closed on one end and a light bulb suspended in the centre which goes off when one enters the space, Julien Heyman describes Balka’s work as ‘an experience that can never be had in full’.

Responding to How It Is, (2009) Paolo Herkenhoff suggests that Balka inverts the modern function of art – that of rendering visible. He notes, ‘Balka does not wish to conjure the sublime in this work; the urge is to approach

the unconfigurable, the unrepresentable’. He demarcates the darkness, the impossibility of representation, rather than absence, ‘I wanted to make something that will give you different emotions, which is more about limits than possibilities.’

Having come of age in the ruins of Poland’s recent history, many of Balka’s works make direct or indirect reference to the Holocaust. The prohibition on representation of the Holocaust, grounded in concerns that to represent is to make relative, problematises the possibility of addressing this subject. The psychoanalyst W.R. Bion developed a theory of mental functioning based on the model of the container/ contained, informed by Melanie Klein’s concept of the epistomorphilic instinct, where the need to know and be known is a motivating factor in human development. Bion’s theory of container/contained provides a framework within which to understand the relationship between Balka, his work and the viewer where Balka does not ‘represent’ but makes present through strategies of containment.

PhD Student, Faculty of Visual Culture, Year 5 part-time Supervisor: Dr. Francis Halsall

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Candace White Materialising Modernity Leisure Architecture in Ireland, 1920–1948

My study investigates the new building typologies that developed in the early decades of the twentieth century concerned with the ‘new leisure’, or ‘mass’ leisure envisaged in the 1930s and 1940s. It analyses the design and reception of the buildings and the contemporary architectural commentary relating to ‘the new architecture’, leisure and the prevailing social conditions. The specific buildings that my study focuses on include swimming pools, spas, holiday camps, roadhouses and cinemas. The Irish Builder and Engineer was the journal of the building profession at the time and is a key primary source for the survey.

Examining the journal, I seek to reveal evidence of an internationalist and cosmopolitan outlook among the architectural profession in Ireland and document their interest in contemporary debates around modernist aesthetics, urban planning and social theory. Planning schemes described in the journal were often tinged

with a modernist utopianism and they reflected a new preoccupation with mass leisure as a requirement in the design of a healthy and more egalitarian society.

A formal study of the buildings and discursive commentary on them also reveals that modern architecture, in its various forms, was considered and often adopted as a means of attempting to build up, or at least envision, ‘a first class nation’. Architecture for promoting healthy leisure, such as swimming pools and spas, was influenced by the design typology of the sanatorium whilst reflecting contemporary ideas about the healthy body culture and civic improvement. Buildings such as cinemas, on the other hand, often incorporated luxurious materials in combination with ersatz substitutes, especially in their interiors, which allowed the public to temporarily experience a way of life far removed from their own quotidian existence in the Ireland of that time.

Cinema-going was credited by some architects as promoting a more open outlook in the population and also prompting people to take an interest in assessing their own lifestyles.

PhD Student, Faculty of Visual Culture, Year 4 part-time Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Godson

Left: Lee Baths, Victoria Cross, Cork, built between 1933–35, designed by the City Engineer S.W.Farrington, featured in The Irish Builder and Engineer, June, 1935. Accessed in the Department of Early Printed Books, Trinity College Dublin.

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Eimir O’Brien Envisioning Change Ecclesiastical Art in Ireland 1950–1962

Opposite: Crucifixion (1962), Melanie le Brocquy. Bronze with dark brown patina, mounted on linen-mounted board 76 × 51cm (30 × 20"), from an edition of six.

My thesis investigates the emergence of a modern style of ecclesiastical art in Ireland during the decade prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). While the study does not look explicitly at architecture, a consideration of this is interwoven into the fabric of what is being studied and will need to be taken into account. The research is specifically focused on the role played by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland through its Church Exhibitions Committee (1956–1966) in promoting modern ecclesiastical design in Ireland at this time. As indicated by their name, one of the main tools of the CEC was exhibition and more generally, promotion of sacred works of art.

Between 1956 and 1962, the CEC organised three exhibitions, Églises de Francais Reconstruites (1956), Modern Churches in Germany (1962) and Sacred Art (1962).The first two exhibits displayed what were considered to be good examples of modern European church design. The third showcased a wide range of contemporary Irish ecclesiastical art and architecture. These exhibitions received, what may seem today, an inordinate amount of contemporary

media coverage, not just in specialist journals but in the broadsheets and tabloid press, often taking the form of double page spreads and front page treatment.

I would argue that, during a period of change and uncertainty for the Catholic church in Ireland, this art appears to have had the ability to focus public debate on art and devotion. And that, by envisioning new forms of sacred art, these artists were giving material form to some of the abstract and theological and liturgical debates that were taking place at the time. Additionally, through the exhibition and promotion of this work, the CEC helped facilitate a negotiated process of visualising not only what forms modern church art might take, but how the Catholic church in Ireland might develop as a religious and cultural community.

PhD Student, Faculty of Visual Culture, Year 2 part-time Supervisors: Dr. Lisa Godson, Dr. Paul Caffrey

PhD Research

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Emma O’Toole The Material Culture of Pregnancy & Early Infancy in Ireland, 1680–1830

Above and opposite (L–R): Pap boat, cream coloured earthenware in the form of a boat, with curved spout and handle, England, 1790, V&A Collection; Child’s ‘pudding’ or safety hat, padded cotton, England, 1775–1800, V&A Collection; Baby’s rocking cradle, cherrywood, USA, 1780–1799, V&A Collection.

The concept of childhood is often considered to be a relatively recent invention. However, from the late seventeenth century, specific ideas surrounding raising, educating, feeding, clothing and entertaining children reveal changing perceptions regarding the early years of life.

Bridging the fields of material culture, the history of the family and medical history, this doctoral thesis addresses women and children’s engagement with material culture, a very understudied area in Irish history. Using the work of historians such as Amanda Vickery and Toby Barnard as methodological models, this research addresses such areas as the objects, spaces and related ideas surrounding maternity and early infancy, together with the wide and increasing range of commodities marketed to aid families in the

PhD Research

management of their children’s health, diet and well being.

Using an extensive patchwork of sources, including artefact collections held in Ireland, Britain and Canada, alongside family and institutional papers, ephemera and illustrations, this research will shed light on the uncharted vast chain of changes that occurred in the organisation of domestic life on the arrival of children in the home. With an increas­ ing number of publications dedicated to introducing new methods for the cognitive, social and nutritional develop­ ment of infants, this research questions to what extent they were adhered to by Irish upper class families. The research will consider the re-arrangement of the house upon the arrival of an infant and the evolution of dedicated infantile spaces. Through detailed analysis of the market

for maternity and infantile commodities this thesis argues that it represented a key area within consumer culture and one that professionals, manufacturers and retailers were acutely aware of. Through the examination of these areas, this research will determine what crucial roles commodities played in daily child care practices and question to what extent these commodities were also associated with gender roles, display and status.

Govt. of Ireland Doctoral Scholar at NCAD, 2013 Faculty of Visual Culture, Year 2 Supervisor: Dr. Anna Moran

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Turner Prize 2013 Dr. Declan Long Faculty of Visual Culture

1. Isabelle Graw, ‘Judging – Yes, but How?’ in Daniel Birnbaum & Isabelle Graw (eds.) The Power of Judgment: A Debate on Aesthetic Critique (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010), p.37.

2. From the Tate explanatory statement on the Turner Prize. See: http://www.tate. org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/ exhibitionseries/turner-prize

Painting, video installation, performative ‘situations’, drawing and sculpture: from the perspective of NCAD, there is surely an appealing diversity to the work selected for the 2013 Turner Prize. As one of the four judges invited to spend a year researching artists from Britain who merited a nomination for the prize – a year of travelling back and forth to the UK to see as many eligible exhibitions as possible – it’s worth noting that striving for such diversity in the final line-up was not a set objective.

Rather, more simply, the goal was to make a case for the very best work seen during the twelve-month period, with each member of the panel putting forward several artists who in one way or another, in one medium or another, seemed to be pointing in new artistic directions or developing especially distinctive visions. The resulting diversity of the selected artists – from painter of imaginary people Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, to yarn-spinning video installation artist Laure Prouvost, to choreographer of Constructed Situations Tino Sehgal, to inveterate scribbler and sculptor David Shrigley – is nevertheless a happy outcome of a pleasurably demanding process.

The plurality of forms that were presented in Derry (where the Turner Prize was staged as a central part of the UK City of Culture programme) is entirely in keeping with the challenging variousness that characterises contemporary art practice more generally. Accompanying this openness about how art can be imagined or made today, however, is widespread anxiety about how critical ‘judgment’ might

be undertaken. As Isabelle Graw writes, ‘well-founded and well-argued judgments have become a rarity … what we are currently witnessing in this field is hesitance, if not refusal, to actually judge.’¹ In proposing and comparing bodies of work that utilise the different capacities of radically dissimilar art media – each variously drawing or diverting from distinct historical traditions – one of the exciting, daunting responsibilities assumed by the judges of the Turner Prize is, then, to convincingly articulate (to ourselves as much as each other) good reasons why one artist’s work can be seen to stand out above the remaining three on the shortlist. Eternal vigilance, crucially, is the price of imaginative liberty.

My colleagues in this process have themselves brought informed perspectives on British art (and art in Britain) from usefully diverse geographical positions: Annie Fletcher, originally from Ireland, is currently Curator of Exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven; Susanne Gaensheimer is Director of Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art; Ralph Rugoff is Director of Hayward Gallery, London; Chair of the jury, Penelope Curtis, is the Director of Tate Britain. Working with such experienced – and critically vigilant – fellow judges has been vastly rewarding. Whatever the outcome of our deliberations, it will have been a delight to participate in this process of celebrating ‘new developments in contemporary art’ ² in all their diverse forms.

Derry-Londonderry City of Culture: NCAD Contributions

Left: I’m Dead, David Shrigley, 2013

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Derry Intimations, Projections, Confrontations with History Professor Desmond Bell Head of Academic Affairs and Research

Above: Redeeming History (1992), film still

During the 2013 City of Culture celebrations, the Foyle Film Festival celebrated its 26th year with not just the annual film festival but a series of special events, The Unusual Suspects – a series of unusual screenings at unusual locations, director’s talks and a community based cinema initiative engaging local communities in making and screening films about their areas. As part of this I was asked to present a series of film projections of a number of my films which deal with Derry, its history and multiple identities. These were screened in a number of resonant sites and seek to encourage a range of critical debates with significant others.

The films to be screened are: • We’ll Fight and No Surrender (1989) at the Memorial Hall of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, the city’s leading Loyalist organization. This film first screened on Channel 4 TV and represents the first and most sustained attempt to explore the formative role of the siege narrative in the identity of the loyalists of Ulster. Some of the film was shot in the Memorial Hall and in the nearby Fountain Estate.

• Redeeming History (1992) at the Masonic Temple, Bishop Street, Derry, was commissioned by Channel 4 TV and tells the story of a group of Protestant pupils from Foyle and Londonderry College who explore the complex history of Frederick Hervey, the Earl Bishop of Derry and eighteenth century champion of Catholic Emancipation.

Elements of the film were shot in the Masonic Hall which originally was the Earl Bishop’s Derry palace.

• Rotha Mór an tSaoil (1999) at Long Tower Church in the Bogside, tells the story of migrant worker (spailpín) Mici Mac Giobhan who like generations of Donegal migrants passed through Derry on a journey which was eventually take him to the gold fields of the Klondike.

The Foyle Film Festival is one of only a handful of inter­ national film festivals with Oscar affiliation and BAFTA recognition. The Festival is funded by Northern Ireland Screen and Derry City Council. It took place from 20–24 November 2013.

Derry-Londonderry City of Culture: NCAD Contributions

The Glass Album An archive of Land War photographs from Gweedore Declan Sheehan Visual Culture PhD Student, Year 2

This research is a critical and experimental curatorial engagement with The Glass Album. This is a collection of thirty-eight late nineteenth century photographs of the district of Gweedore in County Donegal taken within the context of the Land War in the west of Ireland and currently held in the collection of the Ulster Museum.

The research examines the historical narrative of The Glass Album, produced by the Derry commercial photographer and prominent Presbyterian, James Glass.

The photographs in the album are from two distinct periods: images from the 1870s that feature the inhabitants of Gweedore, their living conditions and environs; and a collection of photographs taken in the 1880s featuring sites in Gweedore associated with the killing of an RIC officer there in 1889 during the Land War, which figured in the subsequent murder trial. My thesis examines the production and distribution of these images and their contemporary re-appropriation. The project is a visual arts curatorial project rather than one of historical enquiry in so far as it engages the archival material in various contexts including the museum, the gallery, within the public realm, and through a series of commissioned projects by artists exploring the current resonances of these striking images.

The curatorial element of the research includes: museum exhibitions in Donegal and Derry; projects by commissioned artists at sites in Donegal and Derry;

working with arts organizations including the Earagail Arts Festival in Donegal and Derry~Londonderry UK City of Culture 2013.

My research has identified various private and institutional collections of archival material relevant to my research theme. These include original nineteenthcentury cartes de visite from the studio of James Glass, a second original version of The Glass Album presented at the 1889 court case which features the fourteen photo­ graphs of Gweedore taken by James Glass annotated with notes and maps, a wide selection of papers related to the court case and the subsequent prosecutions, and prison photographs and penal service papers of those found guilty of the murder and sent to Mountjoy prison in Dublin.

I have commissioned work that has been requested to respond to the Glass Album and work is in progress by artists Walead Beshty, Matt Collishaw, Will Curwen, Eoghan McTigue in collaboration with curator Padraig Timoney.

Within this research project, I explore a number of curatorial processes developed through my engagement with the archive and with a range of critical theories of photography. I do so within a field best described as a semiotics of colonial and class identity.

Supervisors: Dr. Declan Long, Professor Desmond Bell

Above: Photograph Š National Museums Northern Ireland Collection Ulster Museum

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Designation of Derry-Londonderry as UK City of Culture 2013 Opportunity and Challenge Professor Declan McGonagle Part of the writing team for the Bid, Chair of the Interim Board, UK City of Culture, Derry-Londonderry, Board member of the Culture Company up to 2012

The bid for designation of Derry as the UK City of Culture 2013, involved a consortium of Derry City Council, ILEX Urban Regeneration Company and a variety of city arts organisations. The television producer, Phil Redmond, following his involvement in the successful European City of Culture in Liverpool, persuaded the Labour Government to establish a version of the European City of Culture for the UK and Northern Ireland. In 2010, the new Coalition Government confirmed the process but without any central Government resources to be made available.

It was acknowledged by the jury in their citation that Derry’s bid – both for the initial shortlisting in late 2009 and for the juried designation in mid 2010 – was exemplary in summoning up not only arts and cultural potential, but also providing a comprehensive socio-economic analysis of context within which the City of Culture process would have to function effectively if citizens and visitors were to be fully engaged. So, right from the beginning, the bid articulated the potential, indeed, necessity for public value and for a model of participation and engagement as well as one of consumption. The bid was strong, I feel, because, for the fours years up to 2009 (not to mention decades of work before that) there had been particular opportunities for the city to consider its future, strategically. Arts and cultural

organisations, of the broadest kind, were able to consider their own identity and purpose and to come together to collaborate around a common strategy of economical and cultural regeneration.

This had direct implications, for instance, for how the future of Ebrington Barracks in the Waterside area of the city was considered. The argument was also being made in 2005–2006 for a new bridge across the River Foyle to join the Waterside and City sides and connect Ebrington to the City Centre – districts held apart by a river, also embodying community division.

This meant that the city was more ready than many others to respond strongly and strategically to the call for applications for the City of Culture designation from cities throughout the UK. The bid argued and provided evidence for an inclusive approach and for transformation of ‘edge to centre’, culturally, socially and economically.

It also provided for legacy capacities to be built into the experienital programming proposed for 2013 and for the total process to be understood and communicated as being driven by both ‘celebration and inquiry’. This double focus would be unique to Derry-Londonderry because of what the city and its communities had learned over the period of the Troubles and as a result, its longer story in history.

It is no coincidence therefore that in 2013 Derry provided a visible contrast to sites of sectarian violence elsewhere in Northern Ireland, previously typical of the summer Marching Season across the province. UK City of Culture has functioned as a catalyst to pull together strands of thinking and activity – not for the purpose of a one-year party, and an inevitable hangover – but to nourish and accelerate an existing trajectory of cultural and social development.

It is true, of course, that a key question, asked by some, on the designation of the city as UK City of Culture in July 2010, was: How can an Irish town be a UK City of Culture? The answer was/is that Derry-Londonderry is both. This duality is both key to the long and short story of the city and key also to unlocking the potential and legacy which 2013 dramatises and against which the initiative must, and will, be judged. It is gratifying to see that NCAD has been able to make a number of important contributions to the City of Culture programme.

Derry-Londonderry City of Culture: NCAD Contributions

Kathleen Coyle, Derry writer Susan MacWilliam Lecturer in Fine Art, Faculty of Fine Art

Above: Research Image, Artists own work, 2013

My work explores multiple viewpoints and considers and employs forms and processes of portraiture, interpretation, reconstruction and representation.

The archive is a primary research source in my work as is the immediate and personal space of the interview. I am currently developing a video work about much overlooked Derry-born writer Kathleen Coyle (1886–1952). The project is supported by Derry City of Culture 2013 and by the NCAD Research Institute.

Born in Derry in 1886, Kathleen Coyle lived in Dublin, Liverpool, London, Antwerp and Paris, where she was a friend of James and Nora Joyce. In 1937 Coyle travelled to the U.S. where she spent time at the McDowell Colony, New Hampshire before living in New York and New Jersey.

During the 1940s Coyle wrote short stories for Redbook Magazine and Tomorrow Magazine (published by Irish medium Eileen Garrett’s Creative Age Press). Coyle’s novels and short stories explore the struggles of life from a female perspective, and her 1929 novel Liv contains an introduction

by Rebecca West. Coyle’s 1943 autobiography The Magical Realm describes in vivid detail her Derry childhood.

Forthcoming Exhibitions 2013–2014: An Answer is Expected, (solo), NN, Northampton and QUAD, Derby (work developed from ESP archives held at Rhine Research Center and Duke University, Durham, NC); Ghostly Matters, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje; and It is Only a State of Mind, Heidelberger Kunstverein.

Exhibitions since June 2012: Things in Translation, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda; It is Only a State of Mind, NGBK, Berlin; Cinesonika 3, Nerve Centre, Derry; Out of This World, (solo), Noxious Sector Projects, Seattle; F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N, (solo), Open Space, Victoria, BC; Some Ghosts, video portrait of Poltergeist Investigator Dr William G Roll (1926–2012) screened in International Features, Portobello Film Festival, London and Dr William G Roll Memorial, Rhine Research Center, Durham, NC. Public Talks: Artist Talk and Screening, NGBK, Berlin; Orion Lecture Series, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, BC (with MFA Studio Visits). www.susanmacwilliam.com

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Right: Research Image, Artists own work, 2013

Derry-Londonderry City of Culture: NCAD Contributions

Traverse Detail Mary R. Cullen Lecturer NCAD

Traverse; to move, pass, cross, bridge, negotiate.

This word can be interpreted in many ways. Similarily the narrative in the work can be read in a multiplicity of formats. Images from the past (childhood experiences of crossing the border) merge with contemporary images from Dublin and recent travels in Japan and Berlin. The work reflects an emotional, selective and sensory response to cultural and social circumstance. Images from these cross-cultural journeys are imprinted on my memory.

Photographs also record and reaffirm these memories.

Selected formal and informal objects are metaphors for communication, status, conversation and dialogue (dia – through or across).

I have juxtaposed and altered this information to present three composite pieces that convey the collective experiences. The work includes the collation of tactile experience and memory, montage photography and digital imagining towards printed outcomes on silk twill. The accompanying image is a documentation of the process.

Traverse I, II, III (60 Ă— 137cm each) have been exhibited in CultureCRAFT at the London Street Gallery as part of the Derry-Londonderry City of Culture 2013 celebrations. The exhibition, curated by Seliena Coyle NCAD, travels to the National Crafts Gallery, Kilkenny in January 2014.

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Oral History Archive of Derry’s Shirt Factory Workers BT Portrait of a City, 2013 Louise Walsh Lecturer, Sculpture Department NCAD

Opposite: Louise Walsh with an element of her delayed public artwork for Derry.

Photograph: Trevor McBride

This project addresses the contribution the shirt factories and their mainly female workers have made in shaping the unique social, economic, and cultural identity of Derry. I first worked as Artist in Residence in the City of Derry in 1987 and again in 1991 as part of a project called Available Resources (organized by artists Brian Connelly and Brian Kennedy through the Orchard Gallery). I spent a month making charcoal drawings of women in the City Shirt Factory as they worked. At that time the shirt industry in the city was already in decline. This was a defining mom­ ent in the development of my artistic practice, clarifying my interest in women’s labour history.

In 2006, I returned to Derry, commissioned by the Department of Social Development to commemorate and celebrate the city’s female shirt factory workers, via a site-specific public sculptural installation in the Waterside area. The artwork referenced a sewing machine working on a shirt, the folds of which were formed by sculpting the grassy ground flowing down towards the water below. I was instructed to fabricate the artworks before planning permissions were obtained; when the site became unavailable, large sculptural elements designed to operate on a particular elevated location were rendered ‘homeless’.

The new site to the riverfront of the landmark Guildhall building could develop into a landscaped civic amenity centered on celebrating the shirt factory industry. However,

the process of re-situating the revised work has proved to be an arduous one beset by funding and bureaucratic blockages.

To inform the public sculpture in 2006, I began a series of conversations with local women as part of my consultative process. These dialogues were recorded in the Verbal Arts Centre and revealed a rich and layered social history of women’s working lives and industrial expertise.

Grounded in this engagement with the community of shirt factory workers over two decades, I am now conducting a new series of interviews that gather the direct voices of these workers, developed as an Oral History Archive. My oral history archive is a core project for the Artist Commissions strand of the BT Portrait of a City Project (BTPoaC), curated by fellow NCAD researcher Declan Sheehan. The Archive creates a legacy accessible to communities, schools, and the public in Derry for years to come in digital audio, written form and online (elements of the recordings publicly accessible online at btportraitofacity.com).

This project uncovers the unique perspectives of skilled and vibrant Derry workers, highlighting their creative and story-telling talents, and is supported by and situated within the curatorial and institutional frameworks of the BTPoaC. The BTPoaC was designed to develop a publicly accessible archive of the city, and recognises the need for a rigorous and sustained engagement with the special impact that the shirt industry has had on the development of Derry. BTPoaC is a major contribution to the Derry~Londonderry UK City of Culture 2013 programme. My work is developing through several curatorial strands, with other related projects further extending public awareness of and access to the Archive across multiple contexts. These include a series of ten fifteenminute radio pieces broadcast in Derry and in London in October and November 2013, commissioned within a residency by the artists’ radio station Resonance FM at Void Gallery Derry, a project also curated by Declan Sheehan for City of Culture 2013.

Furthermore, I am working on a series of large-scale public art pieces for installation outside the Rath Mór Centre, Creggan, foregrounding recent research employing quotes from the archive and inviting a renewed engagement with my 1991 Shirt Factory drawings. Material from the Oral History Archive will be made publicly accessible within the building, in association with the Verbal Arts Centre and

Derry-Londonderry City of Culture: NCAD Contributions

the Guildhall Press and my ongoing relationship with the Over 50’s Club based in the Centre will evolve through a collaborative project. Rath Mór is the perfect location in which to further develop the Oral History project. During the Troubles the industrial sites of Creggan were abandoned by the multi national companies sited there, including the Rocola Shirt Factory (1975–1984). Subsequently it was self-help activism, led primarily by women of the area, that contextualised Creggan Enterprises’ development of the Rath Mór Centre within a social economy framework, focusing upon strong relationships with and accountability to the local community.

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Cumulus International Conference 2013 Nicky Saunders NCAD Cumulus Convenor

Above: Professor Alex Milton, Head of Design Faculty with keynote speakers Paul Adams and Werner Aisslinger at Cumulus Conference.

Photograph: Marc O’Sullivan

On behalf of Cumulus (the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media) and in association with Dublin Design Week and University College Dublin, NCAD organised this major international conference, that provided a platform for sharing ideas and concepts about contemporary design research in this age of austerity.

Today’s global recession forces design practice, research and education to address a number of questions: How can design find a balance between excess and austerity? How can design help the education of the next generation? How can we use design to create places and spaces for renewal and growth? How can design improve our wellbeing and welfare?

How can design bring local communities together to work on projects that improve how we live, work and play?

We propose that in the deepest recession since the great depression of the 1930s we need to turn the modernist mantra ‘less is more’ on its head as the reduced budgets of governments, business and people demand ‘more for less’.

Vibrant economies are built on innovation. Innovation demands an ethical responsibility that Design, the engine of the previous decade’s unsustainable consumerism and excess needs to address.

This conference aimed to stimulate discussion on how design researchers, practitioners and educators can respond to today’s budgetary constraints, and stimulate growth and

renewal in our economy, culture and society. After all you can’t impose austerity on the imagination!

The conference consisted of keynote talks, paper presentations, workshops, poster exhibition and curated gallery exhibition. The conference coincided with Dublin Design Week 4–10 Nov 2013, a celebration of design includ­ ing walks, talks, launches, exhibitions and workshops. The festival’s audience included the designers who design things, the business community who purchase design services and most importantly, the public who are the end users of all designers’ services.

Cumulus is the only global association to serve art and design education and research. It is a forum for partnership and transfer of knowledge and best practices.

The Faculty of Design in NCAD is a leader in the field of design research, enquiry, experimentation and product development in Ireland. The Cumulus Dublin Conference 2013 provided an international platform for design debate with a very Irish flavour!

7–9 Nov 2013, National College of Art and Design, Dublin www.cumulusdublin.com

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Film, History and Public Memory Professor Desmond Bell Director of the NCAD Research Institute

This AHRC funded knowledge-transfer project conducted in partnership with Queens University Belfast, explores how documentary film can facilitate historical understanding in a post-conflict context like Northern Ireland. It builds on the partnerships with educators, cultural organisations, media-producers and broadcasters across Ireland that emerged from the 2011–2012 AHRC-funded project, ‘Documentary Film and the Public Communication of Historical Knowledge in Northern Ireland’, to exploit the power of film as an educational tool.

The project consists of an interdisciplinary collaboration: myself as a documentary film-maker and film studies academic; and Queens historian Fearghal McGarry, author of Frank Ryan (2010). It culminated in the production and exhibition of the feature-length drama documentary The Enigma of Frank Ryan dealing with the life of Republican activist, International Brigade volunteer in Spain, and Nazi collaborato, Frank Ryan. The completed 93 min film premiered at the 2012 Dublin International Film Festival and was subsequently selected for the World Cinema section of the 35th Festival des films du Monde in Montreal. The academic partnership of Fearghal McGarry and Des Bell has continued to maximize the knowledge transfer impact of the Frank Ryan film through dissemination at festivals (Belfast, Foyle, Denver, Cairo, Minneapolis),

television broadcast (TG4) and DVD distribution, as well as through the production of complementary interpretative and interactive educational resources (hosted on our website www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan) Our project extends beyond film production and exhibition to consider broader issues relating to public engagement with history. The team worked in partnership with EU-funded educational initiative ‘Teaching Divided Histories’, based at the Nerve Centre in Derry, to provide resources and curriculum materials for secondary education in Ireland, north and south. The Teaching Divided Histories project brought together post-primary teachers from schools across Northern Ireland and the border counties to develop and pilot a range of innovative education programmes that use film, digital photography, animation, comic books and webcasting to enable young people to explore common experiences of conflict and peace building.

The relationship between film and history was further explored by a major international conference organised in collaboration with the Teaching Divided Histories project as part of the Derry-Londonderry City of Culture 2013 programme.

2–3 Oct 2013, Nerve Centre, Derry www.qub.ac.uk/sites/frankryan

Above: The Enigma of Frank Ryan (2012), 93mins colour, Glass Machine Productions.

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Conferences and Symposia

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Object Matters: Making 1916 The Visual and Material culture of the Easter Rising Dr. Lisa Godson NCAD GradCam Fellow 2012–2013

The rationale for ‘Object Matters: Making 1916’ was threefold: the wealth of research into visual and material history in Ireland; an interrogation of the ‘material turn’ – the interest in objects so evident across the humanities; the ‘decade of commemoration’ in Ireland, involving the centenaries of such key phenomena as the 1913 Lock-out and of course the 1916 Rising. It was intended that the conference would not only present new research, but also question the role and agency of material culture in the ways we approach and understand the past.

The programme involved 27 speakers over two very full days, and was launched by the Lord Mayor of Dublin Naoise Ó Muirí, followed by the first keynote – Pat Cooke (UCD), the former director of both the Pearse Museum and Kilmainham Gaol. He explored how the material remnants of the Rising were collected and presented in Irish museums.

Given the dominance of a Catholic, sacramentalist material culture, Cooke spoke about how such banal objects as hats and typewriters acquired the status of relics, and their auratic, emotive power.

The panels that followed featured speakers presenting papers across a wide range of fields including film studies, art history and archaeology. A number of artists also spoke – Brian Hand on his innovative findings on the relationship between the tricolour of the suffragettes and that of the Irish Republic.

Throughout the conference ran the seam of memorymaking. Commemorative practices can be seen as the formalisation of collective memory. Accordingly the theme of how memory is materialised is absolutely germane as we face into this decade of commemorations and reckoning.

The Object Matters conference was organised by Dr Lisa Godson (NCAD) and Dr Joanna Brück (UCD School of Archaeology) and co-sponsored by NCAD, UCD, GradCAM and Dublin City Council. A selection of the conference papers will be published as a book by Liverpool University Press in 2015.

26–27 April 2013, Civic Offices, Wood Quay, Dublin www.1916conference.wordpress.com

Opposite: Poster for the Object Matters: Making 1916 conference, designed by Clare Bell (DIT/GradCAM) and Mary Plunkett, designer-in-residence at NCAD. Printed with Seán Sills at Distillers Press, the letterpress studio at NCAD.

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Small Histories A Seminar/Study Day on Irish Visual and Material Culture, 1870–1921 An IADT / NCAD collaboration Convened by Dr. Elaine Sisson (IADT), Dr. Anna Moran (NCAD) and Dr. Linda King (IADT)

Opposite: Snapshot from an Irish family album, 1919 (www.jacolette.com), used to illustrate a paper entitled Seaside, Snapshots and Vernacular Irish Photography, presented by Orla Fitzpatrick, University of Ulster, as part of Small Histories.

We are now immersed in what has been termed ‘the decade of commemoration’ which revisits a momentous period (1912–1922) in our national history. Already we see the tendency, within historical commentary and historical analysis, to focus on ‘big history’; that is to say, the well-known histories that address political events and their national and social effects. But where do the threads of ‘big’ history begin? Is it possible to isolate a date or a decade and construct an historical national narrative from one point?

And is the large sweep of the big picture having the effect of sidelining other, more fragile, histories that have begun to emerge in recent years? Parallel to the ‘big history’ lies the ‘small history’: the history of everyday life: the private, the personal, the commonplace, the mass experience. Taking this as a starting point, the Small Histories Seminar/Study Day explored how researchers are approaching the materiality of the popular experience, focusing on the period spanning 1870 up to and including 1921.

This seminar day profiled new and emergent scholarship which uses visual and material culture to construct and reconstruct historical narratives that run parallel to the wellknown ‘big’ histories. The papers presented, which varied from an analysis of early 20th century Irish seaside snapshots to the ship’s printers onboard ocean liners, show how visual and material culture methodologies often offer a sideways glimpse of cultural history that feeds such exploration.

The day included a superb Keynote lecture by Professor David Crowley (RCA) entitled Spectres of October and was concluded by a lively panel discussion which included Catriona Crowe: Head of Special Projects, National Archives; Brian Crowley, Curator, Pearse Museum; Liam Doona, Head of Design and Visual Arts, IADT; Luke Gibbons, Professor of Irish LIterary and Cultural Studies, NUI Maynooth; Niamh O’Sullivan, Professor Emeritus, Visual Culture, NCAD. 14 Dec 2012, National Library of Ireland, Dublin

Conferences and Symposia

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

Conferences and Symposia

Objects in Focus Collect-ED Nigel Cheney MA, Lecturer in Embroidered Textiles, NCAD.

As part of the ‘Objects in Focus’ symposium at the National Museum of Decorative Arts and History in Collins Barracks in February 2013, I presented a paper that explored certain practical, pedagogical and philosophical issues that concern design educators involved in the development and delivery of a Visual Research programme that aims to develop skills in observation, analysis, reflection and individual idea generation. The purpose of the symposium was to allow historians, scholars and practicing artists to present their work for discussion with an interested public and researchers working in the fields of visual and material culture today.

Primarily it explored the role of artefacts, material culture, and the study of collections (public, formal and vernacular) by design students. The presentation focused on a specific case study of a project entitled ‘the Collector’; a drawing project undertaken by textile students as part of a full time honours degree programme.

It discussed to what extent museum collections can stimulate and excite contemporary design students, and more generally for those interested in design culture.

This project highlighted differences between student understanding of what a museum can be, their reaction to the objects themselves, presentation and display, and

ultimately what informed their own visual arts practice.

It reflected on what conditions, experiences and interaction with types of physical objects yielded the most useful stimuli for these students and in turn generated the most exciting and relevant visual information. The presentation relied on visual documentation of the work generated by the students in order to discuss the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of visual research for textile designers.

The outcomes of the project provided evidence that posed challenges to the museum in the possibilities of providing a different experience for design students. It examined the differences in the quality of visual research provided by a tactile interaction with artefacts in contrast to a distanced observation through display cases which still characterizes displace practice in the museum.

As a result of delivering this paper and responding to feedback from the participant audience as well as subsequent meetings with the education staff at the museum, plans are underway to develop an ongoing programme of collaborative research on the design of display practices in the contemporary museum.

23 Feb 2013, National Museum of Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks, Dublin

Opposite: Research drawing from the sketchbook of Sylvia Starkowska

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In Situ: NCAD Research & Public Engagement 2013

The Research Institute at NCAD Interdisciplinary Adventures for the Visual Arts, Semester 1 2013–2014 Above: Morphology of Soap Bubbles, Spider Webs, Neural Networks or Cloud, Tomas Saraceno

A series of lectures, symposia and screenings to explore the interface of visual art and a range of contemporary disciplines. A number of leading researchers report on the outcomes of their collaborative work and critically reflect on their ‘interdisciplinary adventure’.

Art – History – Film Tues 8 Oct @ 5pm Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre, NCAD A screening in association with History Ireland of The Enigma of Frank Ryan (2012, 90 mins, and panel discussion with the director Des Bell, historical consultant Fearghal McGarry (Queens University Belfast), author of Frank Ryan and film-maker Pat Murphy (Anne Devlin, Nora).

Film-makers and historians explore the different ways each approach the narration of history.

Introduced and moderated by Tommy Graham, Editor History Ireland

Conferences and Symposia

Art, Music And The Sonic Tues 5 Nov @ 5.30pm Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre, NCAD A symposium organized in collaboration with the Contemporary Music Centre bringing together visual artists, composers, and musicians to explore the interface of film and musical composition. The symposium will take the form of a number of short screening of recent work in sound and image together with presentations from the panel designed to set up the discussion.

Contributors: • Trish McAdam, film-maker, contributor to the Fractal Music film project, screening, Rough Time • Paul Moore, Professor Video Art, Magee College, UU Derry, contributor to The River Still Sings • Frank Lyons, Head of School of Music, University of Ulster, composer, The River Still Sings • Desmond Bell, film-maker and Professor, NCAD, director The Last Storyteller Introduced and moderated by Yvonne Ferguson, Director of the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin

Art, Imaging And Science Tues 3 Dec 2013 @ 5.30pm Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre, NCAD A symposium held in collaboration with the Science Gallery, Dublin to explore the interface between science, imaging and art.

Contributors: • Silvia Casini, postdoctoral research fellow at Ca’ Foscari University Venice • Professor David Weaire, Emeritus Professor of Physics, TCD • Grace Weir, Artist in Residence, Dept. of Physics, Trinity College Dublin • Emer O’Boyle, UCD, Gloria Project (Global Robotic-telescopes Intelligent Array) Introduced and moderated by Micheal John Gorman, Director of the Science Gallery Art and Philosophy Tues 21 Jan 2014 @ 5.30pm Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre, NCAD A lecture organised in collaboration with GradCAM from a leading philosopher who has focused on the relationship between current philosophical activity and contemporary art theory and practice.

Professor Peter Osborne, University of Kingston, author of Anywhere or Not at All: The Philosophy of Contemporary Art Respondent: Dr. Declan Long, NCAD

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