News & Events November 2008

New Issue of Interpreting Ceramics

Issue 10 of Interpreting Ceramics brings together a group of articles on the theme of gender and world ceramics. A number of the articles arise from presentations at Traditional Women Potters: Old Forms and New Markets, a symposium held at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK, following the weekend of the Aberystwyth International Ceramics Festival in July 2007. Other articles have been offered independently. The symposium was organised by Moira Vincentelli, who has edited this issue of the journal and who herself provides an article which introduces and frames the contributions of the other authors. There are two reviews of the exhibition Sankofa: Ceramic Tales from Africa, which Vincentelli curated in collaboration with Manchester Museum in 2006, and which has since toured elsewhere.

Interpreting Ceramics is an initiative of a group of academic staff in the UK who have joined together under the title of Interpreting Ceramics: Research Collaboration (ICRC) and include members of the Centre for Ceramics Research. The journal Interpreting Ceramics is the first outcome of the collaborative work of ICRC. It is the first refereed, electronic journal for ceramics and in publishing on the Internet the journal allows contributors to exploit the possibilities of new digital media as well as offering more traditional text based approaches. Four institutions have joint proprietorship of the journal and they are the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the University of the West of England, Bristol and Bath Spa University College.

Professorial Lecture: Intelligent Design? Real World Knowledge And Creative Industry

5.30pm, 25th November 2008
E10 Lecture Theatre, Rathmell Building, Caerleon Campus, University of Wales, Newport

In his lecture, Professor David Smith argues that one of the trends of globalised commodification of knowledge is that the citizen is reduced from the status of participant in a community of knowing to clienthood in a network of commercial or quasi-commercial transactions. He suggests that it is a sociological truism that social structures draw boundaries around the activities of individuals and groups and help to specify and develop the relationships between them. Professor Smith argues that sustainable societies will depend on intelligent design - not in the quasi-fundamentalist sense of an attempt to impose an iron-age world picture on 21st Century society, but rather, in the sense of "designing intelligently": mobilising and using the collective intelligence of people at large to make a better world. He argues that universities have a role to play in achieving this, but that, as currently configured, they are parts of the problem, rather than of the solution. He concludes by making some observations on how we might move forwards.

Entry is free. To book a place contact Research and Enterprise Department (RED), 01633 432 400

Leverhulme Artist in Residence Award: Truthing Gap

Dr Rona Lee (CFAR) has received an award from the Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence Scheme to support a year long project, beginning in November 2008, working with Dr Tim Le Bas a sonar geophysicist at The National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

This project centres on methods of undersea survey, seabed mapping and the translation of sonar (sound based) data into visual imagery. Its origins lie in the chance discovery of a historical bathymetric (undersea) map of the world, which left Dr Lee fascinated by the looking glass world into which it provided a glimpse.

"At the time I was working on a cycle of projects investigating the liminal character of different coastal locations and the ways in which they might be said to constitute a border zone, between for example, civic and natural. Thereafter I began to speculate about the implications of passing over the edge' and entering not only another element but also a space ‘outside' of geography, whose histories are geological rather than social.

Thus began a journey, that led me to contact Dr Le Bas, a sonar geophysicist and expert in seafloor data visualization, at The National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, one of the world's top five oceanographic research institutions."

The deep ocean and the seafloor beneath it constitute the largest yet least known environments on the plane and are currently subject to rapidly increasing economic and ecological pressure. The work of Dr Le Bas and his colleagues seeks to minimize the challenges posed by such locations to attempts to map them.

Technically the term ‘truthing gap' refers to the necessity to verify sonar data with other findings, in this context it is used to refer to the play of myth, imagination and objectivity, involved in envisaging environments that cannot be experienced directly.

"By working together we hope to: bring fresh approaches to bear on methods of undersea survey; support reflection on processes of knowledge production, and in particular the role of perceptual and subjective response within them; and more generally to foster new understandings."

Resulting work will be shown as part of the Ocean and Earth Open Day at NOCS in March 2009 and exhibited at London Metropolitan University, Unit 2 Gallery and NOCS in late 2009.

The Animal Gaze: Symposium and Art Exhibition

Nov 18 - Dec 12, 2008
Unit 2 Gallery, London E1

Helen Sear's work Spot has been included in the touring show The Animal Gaze, an exhibition of over 40 selected artists. The curatorial policy of the exhibition has been to avoid the usual representations of animals in our visual culture, in favour of adopting a stance outside anthropocentrism, deconstructions of species taxonomy, constructions of the idea of difference and documentation of the consequences of indifference.

Spot is a series of three works previously exhibited at Turner House Penarth, FSM Gallery Florence and Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castello Spain. The series Spot 2003 was the result of an eighteen-month commission for the Yard Gallery and Nottingham Museum and Castle working with the natural history collection at Wollaton Hall, an Elizabethan stately home and one of the first British natural history museums.

Focusing on the British bird collection, Sear made connections between the specimens and the site where they were housed, choosing to photograph the birds in the style of society portraiture (in particular, the Elizabethan portrait painter Nicholas Hilliard), thereby raising their status on a par with those on display in the main Hall.

In January 2009 the show tours to the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World at Exeter, Plymouth City Museum & Gallery, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth College of Art & Design and the Roland Levinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth.

European Centre for Photographic Research Seminar Series 2008/09 Guest Speaker: Paul Rooney

2.30pm, 12 November 2008
Room H8a Rathmell Building, Caerleon Campus, University of Wales, Newport

Still from Paul Rooney's film La Décision Doypak, 2008

Research Seminar: 'More Than One Life'

Paul Rooney primarily works with text, video, sound and performance. He is interested in the personal and social aspects of popular entertainment, such as music, comedy and storytelling. His work has a unique social dimension in that it often involves collaborations with people and engages with their working and leisure experiences. As art critic Robert Clark has said: "His work can make convincing and affecting poetry out of a trip to the corner shop".

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