From the Expression Editors:

It is a pleasure to offer you a complimentary copy of EXPRESSION 30.    This issue, the fourth one to appear during the Coronavirus pandemic,    faces a crucial theme, that of identity, which bothers a large   percentage of the human beings, of societies and of nations. It also    concerns students and scholars, trying to define the identity of past    and present cultures. The selected articles range in different    directions and should stimulate other contributions on the same    general topic: the identity of a culture, an age, or a social trend.    Five articles face the problems of identity of different ages and    different nature, in four different continents: Africa, America, Asia    and Europe. Amélie Balazut considers the paintings of French    Paleolithic caves, looking at the problem of human identity in    Paleolithic times, seeing the totemic animal counterpart of man as a    source of identity. How did Paleolithic people conceive their images    of half human and half animal beings? Stavros Kiotsekoglou analyzes    the meaning of the similarity of two archeological sites, one in    Greece and the other in Italy, stressing coincidences and what appears    to be common elements of identity despite the geographical distance:    cultural identity or pure coincidence? Jitka Soukopova faces the    confrontation between two different cultural identities,    hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, of a few thousand years ago, in the    oases of North Africa, when what is now desert was greener. How do    their rock paintings help defining their cultural identity? Emmanuel    Anati deals with the earliest known urban settlement in the Near East,    which came into existence in the age of hunter-gatherers, searching    for the identity of its founders and for the process that led to its    birth and development. What was the function of a fortified town among    clans of hunters? And Giuseppe Orefici explores the identity of the    makers of the extraordinary geoglyphs at Nasca, in Peru, their    religious beliefs and their social performances. What was the function    of miles-long cleaned and managed grounds and of the large size images    which are hardly visible from the ground? The attempts at defining    identity will be further considered in forthcoming issues. We hope    that you will be stimulated by these cases of cultural identity.    Those having something to say on the topic are welcome to participate    in this open sharing of knowledge and ideas.    Expression 30:    <https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1lNah2jUbETlfUhfpFImjWgUGwkQpHtYX%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&amp;data=04%7C01%7CEdward.Turpie%40mail.bcu.ac.uk%7Cd5341140c0aa4d31cc0d08d89b5c8c2f%7C7e2be055828a4523b5e5b77ad9939785%7C0%7C0%7C637430169103455012%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=4av3jRNNjPEsLEoPr3BtrSUUmBS%2BqaVf2oUCcNVgx%2Fw%3D&amp;reserved=0>    

Cordial regards and best wishes for the coming festivities and for a    new year free of pandemics!    Emmanuel Anati    (EXPRESSION General Editor)

The IMPACT Printmaking Journal has been published online. In is the second edition of the journal borne of the IMAPACT Print Biennale that is in its twentieth year. Some ME members will know of IMPACT as they have participated in the international Conferences, most recently in Santander in 2018. The Journal is edited by Wuon-Gean Ho, who suggests it would be lovely to hear from you. ME member Edward (Jonnie) Turpie has an article in the new journal.

IMPACT stands for ‘International Multi-disciplinary Printmaking: Artists, Concepts and Techniques’, which takes the form of a conference that is run every other year. The next are scheduled for March 2021 in Hong Kong, and 2023 in Bristol.

The IMPACT Printmaking Journal is an open-access peer-reviewed academic publication. There is no fee to submit and no fee to read the articles. All articles published from Autumn 2020 onwards are published under a creative commons licence CC BY 4.0. For more information on this licence please see here 

IMPACT Printmaking Journal supports scholarly and critical debate in the field of print: advancing technological knowledge, contextualizing print, talking about the poetry and language of print, and maintaining a showcase for print practitioners. 

Novel contributions from academics, scientists, writers, philosophers, students, graduates and independent artists alike are warmly welcomed. All contributions will be peer-reviewed by a panel of peer-reviewers. ​

The IMPACT Journal is published by the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR) at the University of the West of England.     ISSN 2732-5490  

Bringing together current research and critical debate about art, art history and visual cultures

Online Event
Wednesday 14 – Saturday 17 April 2021

Who should attend the 2021 Annual Conference?
The Annual Conference is open to all.  If you are doing research about art, art history or visual culture this online event is a perfect opportunity to share your research ideas. Or you can come along to listen and engage with new research. The Annual Conference is popular with academics, curators, artists, phd students, early career researchers, publishers, writers and anyone engaged with art history research. The conference is open to art historians and non art historians, and to members and non members. Everyone is welcome.

More details and booking link: https://eu.eventscloud.com/website/2065/about/

‘Teaching drawing online: a showcase of examples and resources for artists and educators’

Material Encounters member Chloe Regan delivered a workshop with the University of the West of England Drawing Research Group on ‘Teaching drawing online: a showcase of examples and resources for artists and educators’ at Thinking Through Drawing Symposium 2020. 

Contributors to the workshop presented their experience and advice on teaching drawing online and included:

Chloe Regan, Material Encounters Lecturer and Flying Faculty in Visual Communication at Birmingham City University and Birmingham Institute of Fashion and creative arts in China.

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Dr Catherine Baker, Material Encounters Associate Professor in the school of Fine Art at Birmingham City University, who has lectured widely on and participated in a number of international drawing initiatives.

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Drawing Room, London, is an internationally renowned gallery, unique library and arts organisation that is dedicated to opening up the world of contemporary drawing to everyone. ROCK PAPER SCISSORS is a major part of Drawing Room’s engagement programme which puts children at the centre and explores with them – alongside their teachers, schools, families and artists – what drawing can be.

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The Good Ship Illustration, offer no nonsense advice to illustrators and image makers navigating a creative career. They offer online courses and a Friday night art club on Instagram.

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Jake Spicer, Draw Brighton: Draw is an independent drawing school in Brighton and has been providing flexible and affordable painting, printmaking and drawing classes since 2009. Under usual circumstances Draw accepts 10 students a year on the long-term Atelier course and provides a daily tutored and untutored programme for over 1000 different drop-in students a year; currently Draw is providing life drawing resources and online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

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Sarah Hyndman, a graphic designer, author, and public speaker, who leads international typography workshops using drawing.

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Meg Buick, an artist and Associate Lecturer at UWE Bristol. Meg studied at the Royal Drawing School in London, and exhibits her drawings internationally.

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Chloe Briggs, an artist and teacher of drawing. Since 2008 she has been Head of Foundation at Paris College of Art. In 2013 she created, ‘Drawing is Free’ an initiative that brings different  people together through collaborations and events to draw.

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Stefan Gant, an Artist and Senior Lecturer in Drawing and Digital Practice at the University of Northampton. Stefan’s practice and research explores intersections of traditional drawing processes and interdisciplinary digital practice. He is currently artist in residence with The School of Archaeology, University of Oxford (2019-2023) based at Blenheim Palace.

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The online international symposium was held in collaboration with Indiana University Southeast, State University of New York at New Paltz, and The Big Draw.

Full symposium programme:  www.thinkingthroughdrawing.org

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Introduction to the workshop:

The workshop:

Thursday Oct 15th saw the first recordings for the new cluster film to capture the foundations of the cluster going forward in 2020. Socially distanced interviews with Dr Catherine Baker, Jacqueline Taylor and John from Photography Hub recorded in the School of Art Printroom.

As we have a number of researchers who are interested in Drawing Research, we thought that you might be interested in this Volume of Studies in Material Thinking (sadly no longer funded): https://www.materialthinking.org/volumes/volume-10

There are other volumes but this one focuses on Drawing as a Research Tool. Perhaps a reading gathering might also be a good idea?

Blame the Tools: 

Crafty Robots, Well-behaved Implements and Disobedient Devices

2-6pm, 8 October 2020 (NEW DATE)

ONLINE

There has been a long-standing recognition in the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, of the importance of tools and implements, and the ways in which they are used to create, transform and enhance objects. The character of these tools – the ways in which tools are handled, the skills and practices that underpin and enable their use and application – has received less attention. Yet it is the character of the tool and its embodied use, that becomes critical in the creation of – and our encounter with – objects and artefacts. 

Together with practitioners and academics from across disciplines, this symposium invites makers, curators, crafters, designers, historians, artists, collectors, architects, storytellers, users and social scientists to share understandings of the tool from multiple viewpoints:

·    How might digital technologies create new affinities with traditional tools and craft practices, and provide distinctive new ways of creating and encountering material objects?

·    What is the importance of imagination and adaptation in the use of traditional and non-traditional tools?

·    How does tool use contribute towards structures and practices of co-making and social agency?

·    And what part does it play in circular economy?

Keynote: Phil Ayres – architect, researcher and educator. He is Associate Professor at Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA), which he joined in 2009 after a decade of teaching and research at the Bartlett, University College London. 

Full programme will be announced soon!

Tickets: Free via Eventbrite

The symposium is convened by Dr Jason Cleverly and Professor Adrian Friend.

Project partners: King’s College London and London Craft Week.

CAN ART BE A PRACTICE OF RESEARCH was presented by guest speaker Professor Timothy Ingold, world renowned Anthropologist and author of books including: Lines (2016), Making (2013), Being Alive (2011) and The Perception of the Environment (2000).

The premise of the webinar was that it is a commonplace that scientists do research. We might reasonably ask the scientist to justify his or her research, to explain how it is done, and to disseminate the results. But that research is what the scientist does is not in question. With artists, however, it is precisely the opposite. It would have been unusual, in the past, for artists to admit to carrying out research, and even more unusual for the public to recognise it as such. Nowadays however, for a variety of reasons – partly institutional, partly to do withIntroduced by Dr Catherine Baker funding, but largely connected to changing practices in art itself – more and more artists present what they are doing as research. And this leaves the public puzzled. Are they pretending to behave like scientists? And if they are, what are they trying to find out, and what kinds of knowledge do they think their art can contribute that science cannot? That artists often find such questions difficult if not impossible to answer only serves to increase public suspicion.

In his lecture Professor Ingold turns these normal expectations upside down. He argued that research is fundamentally a practice of art, in which science has consistently fallen short.

This is a link to the webinar recording.

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/e91e6d99-4592-43ca-afbf-85387ba81209

ME member Lucy Paris made the Lino cut below while listening to Professor Ingold. she shared the print with the BCU #printgang who meet Tues, Wed and Thursdays at 2:30 on Teams to discuss, debate and make. If you would like to join them make a request to Justin.sanders@bcu.ac.uk

LOCKDOWN by Jonnie Turpie

Lockdown is difficult. No doubt about it.

For artist and researchers alike it is not easy to focus on intellectual or artistic work. If one is a practice-based researcher, as many material encounters members are, our practice has to be undertaken at home rather than in the studio or Art school facilities. Our reading and writing are interrupted, diverted or dominated by the tragic reality we are experiencing.

What to do? In order to keep making I have worked digitally, seeking material opportunities to output physical marks and images. To keep writing I have made a weekly reflective blog: LOCKDOWN. It is simply a structure that allows me to collate the week’s important events, chance occurrences, new possibilities, shared experiences and personal moments that have made the LOCKDOWN week memorable.

I have had some positive feedback and share the link below.  http://printsanew.jonnieturpie.com/blog

I make no claim to intellectual progression, but only to keep in mind that LOCKDOWN will end sometime, somehow and reflecting may be valuable to go forward come the day.

If cluster members wished to capture their own Lockdown weeks’ we could make this digital space a home for your musings in words and pictures. Publish yourself and link to this site or send to me and I will create a thread or LOCKDOWN space for us.

Take Care. Stay Safe.