D Sarah Larby
Ruby Richards
Victoria Shaw
Betty Foster-Eardley
Esen K�l�ç
Alice Waites Ashleigh Jerman Catherine Morgan Stefani Zinonos Milo Le Brocq Draco Fevronia Petrou Olivia Savage Jodie Bright Sonia Yousefi Azimi Jess Sache Talia Ellis Henry McApline Olivia Tess Russell Daisy Baker George Crane Suzanna Easton Niko Sollohub Sophie Law Jenna Pajunen Grace Benita Georgina Davis Louisa Dee Molly Higgins Phoebe Hoyland Elizabeth Scoffin Farah Dailami Lily Thomson Dan Cole 107-109-114 Erin Shields Emily Hoey Freyja Appleyard-Keeling Abby Barker Maddie Travers Poppy Jones-Little
Georgina Montague
Ashleigh Harrison
Henry Johashen
Meri Croft Caitlin Vann Amy Myhill
Charlie Steele
Emily Dodd-Noble
Hannah Woodward
Natalie Whitney
Kathleen Lagan Shruti Shah Georgie Strauss Ruby Blanchard Marnie Moody Sophie Gottlieb Nada Khouri Eliza Arron-Unsworth Abigail Lence Joe Travis Imogen Dawe Sasha Napoli Zoe Hollands Gemma Jones
Displaced/Replaced Displaced and uprooted by an unprecedented shift, as a collective we prevail. The silence of our studios in Leeds collides with a barrage of togetherness as we traverse new media in a bid for the continuation of artistic dialogue. Our practices evolve in what is now an unfamiliar environment and our creativity breathes new life into repurposed space. As 2019 is replaced by 2020, our previous artistic routines are re-placed by the rawness of arresting discovery. As a cohort of final year Fine Art students we have curated this book; as a discursive exploration of the new place in which we find ourselves, documenting the changes and adaptations of our creative processes in this printed time capsule of the ‘present’. Here we have each responded to our displacement, and in the face of adversity this publication showcases our practices in new light. We are in a unique situation in which we are on the precipice of what feels like both a daunting beginning and a significant end. The suspenseful unknown of spring 2020 ensures an alien timelessness which will perhaps become characteristic of this year, this generation and this art school as a whole. Responding to the now is all we have and so we come together one final time in this publication.
BA Fine Art students, 2020 School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies University of Leeds 1
1 Foreword 4 Adaptation Dr Sam Belinfante 6 A Response Prof Griselda Pollock 16 Nada Khouri 17 Poppy Jones-Little 18 Eliza Arron 19 Abigail Lence 20, 37 Hannah Woodward 21 Imogen Dawe 22 Dan Cole 107-109-114 23, 62, 69, 88 Abby Barker 24 Suzanna Easton 25 Shruti Shah 26, 38 Daisy Baker 28 Kathleen Lagan 29 Georgina Davis 30 Henry Johashen 31 Joe Travis 32 Sophie Gottlieb 33 Talia Ellis 34 Charlie Steele 35 Emily Hoey 36 Caitlin Vann 39, 41, 47, 65, 79 Olivia Savage 40 Gemma Jones 42 Niko Sollohub 43 Jenna Pajunen 44, 55 Olivia Tess Russell 48 George Crane 49 Ashleigh Harrison 50 Milo Le Brocq Draco 51 Sonia Yousefi Azimi 52 Amy Myhill 53 Elizabeth Scoffin
54 Ruby Richards 56 Sarah Larby 57 Freyja Appleyard-Keeling 58 Henry McAlpine 59 Ruby Blanchard 60 Georgina Montague 61 Catherine Morgan 63 Georgie Strauss 64 Farah Dailami 66 Phoebe Hoyland 67 Molly Higgins 68 Jodie Bright 70 Esen Kılıç 71 Louisa Dee 72, 81 Fevronia Petrou 73, 74 Stefani Zinonos 76 Alice Waites 77 Lily Thomson 78 Marnie Moody 84 Jess Sache 85 Maddie Travers 86 Ashleigh Jerman 87 Grace Benita 89, 98 Erin Shields 90 Meri Croft 91 Natalie Whitney 92 Betty Foster-Eardley 93 Zoe Hollands 94 Emily Dodd-Noble 95 Sophie Law 96 Victoria Shaw 97 Sasha Napoli 100 Acknowledgements
Adaptation Adaptation is a word that has echoed around the virtual halls, where we have all unexpectedly found ourselves, in the last few weeks. I have always been interested in the way students have (creatively) grappled with the contingencies of time, money, space, and each other in the degree show project. Students must necessarily adapt their practices as both individuals and as a community, a process that often results in unexpected and revelatory developments. But this situation is entirely different. As I write this text the school building is still closed and, like the Mary Celeste, exists only as a ghostly static theatre – tools downed at a moment’s notice – seen only, as yet, by the security services via their closedcircuit cameras. The nature of this adaptation is Darwinian in scale and has seen indescribable upheaval, improvisation, translation and compromise. This publication and its collateral projects are testament to the astonishing creativity and divergent thinking of all sixty-three students in this group. As each and every one of them communicated to me and my colleagues and to each other via the tiny apertures in their phones and computers, something very special happened, an e-vent that will personally change me as an artist and a teacher. Something was conjured up and true to its etymology this was invoked together, across great geographical and technological distances.
4
This extraordinary collaborative effort has been summed up perfectly in this publication on which the students worked symbiotically with Fraser Muggeridge and his studio. The careful observer will notice that the main text in this book is in fact constituted of two fonts – Gill Sans and Helvetica – that playfully intertwine without ever quite touching. Of course, all of this aloof dancing, this social distancing, is extremely theatrical in nature and of course ‘adaptation’ brings to mind the performing arts (hit particularly hard in the current crisis) especially opera, where translation from one medium or technology to another is commonplace and collaboration is inbuilt. The stages here incorporate garden sheds, greenhouses, bedrooms, kitchens, rooftops, as well as the threads, pages, and streams of digital and social media. Whatever the context, though, these young artists have, above all, conjured up an audience and will undoubtedly be at the forefront of conversations about where, when and how culture might manifest in the post covid-19 landscape. Dr Sam Belinfante School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies University of Leeds Dis-placed and Re-placed in London
5
A Response I love starting with words. You suggested that I might think about space, the spaces of the art school. So, let us start with this word and its etymology. This shows us how meanings travel over time to give us our word, school, carrying along its travels many associations now buried inside. School derives from Old English scōl, scolu, via Latin from Greek skholē, meaning ‘leisure, philosophy, lecture place’, reinforced in Middle English by Old French escole, that became école, the French word for school. What I found entertaining was that this tripartite definition captured almost perfectly what art schools are about. Certainly, lots of leisure, or so it seems to outsiders who cannot recognise the nature of artworking and why it requires so many trips to the front steps. Philosophy, indeed, for there is certainly lots of agonising – from ‘what’s life all about?’ to ‘what’s the point of art?’ to ‘what should, or even can I do?’ to ‘why does it not work?’ let alone ‘what are all the art historians or cultural theorists talking about?’ These questions take us to ‘lecture place’ where we need the dictionary again. Lecture is from the French and means ‘reading’. With few books, the medieval university involved scholars reading aloud to the listening students either from precious manuscripts or from those they had themselves written. Now we listen not so much to someone reading, but a lecturer speaking to us, and with luck with images to keep us interested. Our space – School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies – embodies the idea of a bringing together of people and subjects. Our space, the Fine Art Building, 6
is primarily composed of studio spaces, workshops, staircases, computer clusters, and seminar rooms. We used to have our own library. Instead now we have a student common room. And we have the Project Space, our own exhibition space. Now all of this is silent. No voices lecture. No chats echo down the stony staircases. No groups cluster on the front steps or gather around individual works in that strange teaching/learning encounter special to Fine Art education – the crit. No computers hum while moving image art is being made. In the Project Space, an exhibition hangs silent, unvisited in the darkness. Where is the space, the School of Fine Art, now? You will read this in printed form, or initially online, dispersed in the virtual space of digital communication, reading it probably in either the space of your computer, in a room, in a house, distant from the companions on your degree. Why? What does it mean that you are creating art and making a show not ‘in a school’ but ‘as this school?’ So, in this unique displaced and re-placed exile from school, I want to congratulate all of you for finding ways to adapt to this new situation which has so radically changed what you had all anticipated as the crowning event of your three or four years of studying Fine Art. The Degree Show, and all the preceding late nights working to bring it together, clean up the dust, paint the holes in the walls, arrange the opening party, the friends’ and parents’ barbecue – none of this is going to be part of your memories. The show would have served as the punctuation point of the degree, an event that condensed this curious and misunderstood process: a degree in making fine art. 7
I am deeply sad for you. We are all mourning something that will no longer happen because of the world pandemic, while some may well be mourning the loss of real loved ones, relatives or friends. Yet, you will remember this year and this disappointment under the sign of a much larger event, not just locally, for all Fine Art students graduating anywhere this year, but for the entire human population of the planet. I am sure several of you are deeply engaged with the politics of global warming and planetary survival. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a virus exposed all the obstacles and national divisions as fictions, transgressed all borders and made cultural differences trivial compared to a shared human vulnerability to a life form most of us cannot quite understand. A virus is a protein with RNA surrounded by a resource pack of fat that seems to need and thrive on locking into other DNA in the proteins of any living form that can sustain it. Barriers between species in terms of DNA keeps many of them at bay. But once a virus jumps the species barrier, every human on this planet is vulnerable. In such cataclysmic conditions, we are also set against each other. Each must fear any other human being as they must fear us as unknowing hosts, silently and mortally colonised by this protein hungry for our bodies as its new lifeworld and lunchbox. Human sociality is pulverised as we are forced to keep our distance, fear contamination from not only anyone but anything someone else has touched. We might well soon have to robe and mask up like something out of the science-fiction movies we once watched in partial terror, whose narratives made us think that humans will always win in the end. This story is not a movie.
8
This is a grim situation in which you are nonetheless cooperating, planning, sharing, communicating and creating. I am thrilled to have been asked to write in support of this now virtual event that marks the culmination of your studies with us at the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies Leeds, where I have been teaching since 1977. This is also my final summer of teaching and my last degree show. My professional career is now ending with the same strangeness of a silent, echoing building and all of us scattered to our various homes and sheltering spaces. Skyping with some of you, I was struck by the real difficulty you must all be experiencing as students ‘being final year students working towards the Degree Show’ but back at home, back in childhood bedrooms rather than student accommodation and studios late at night. Being at university is a rite of passage, a process of transition. Looking back to your arrival, perhaps with a gap year behind you already, coming to University was the big step of living away from whatever had been home, from being children however adult in a parental or other kind of adult-run home. Now the law requires you to go home, to shelter at home in the somewhat more poetic US-American parlance for lock-down. How can you think like an artist ‘at home’, without other artists around you, without those spaces that are unlike any other in the university except perhaps the science labs? How can you create when you cannot make a mess, stay up all night to work something through in the studio or the computer or photography room, and above all use that specific kind of leisure that is just chatting, being with others?
9
All this brings me to what I have been doing in my space. My home space is a study, a book-lined room with computer and paper. I listen to music, mostly opera. In the last seven weeks, I have been writing a book about painting and sexual difference. Before this started, for over a year, I was planning and mounting the exhibition with Sam Belinfante to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the School, and then writing its history through studying the key players in shaping that history: the founders, the professors who led the Department that became a School in 2000, and above all the students who have passed through the studios and made the work that is at the heart of the story of this School. Jacky Fleming, a fourth year Fine Artist when she drew her wonderful series about the impact of art and advertising on women, John Hyatt, a second year Fine Artist who also took on feminist ideas and used Goya to inspire his Disasters of Sex etchings to Elizabeth Price’s Boulder, the most famous Fine Art PhD thesis, to Sutapa Biswas’ challenging of colonialism and racism in art with beautiful photographic and digital film works and the wonderful and infamous Leeds 13 with their Going Places… I wrote two detailed guides, one for each space, and an essay. The three booklets together form the ‘catalogue’ of the show — you may all get one still — a show silently waiting for visitors to animate the works again. In writing this history, I had to ask myself two questions: Why should Fine Art be in a university (and not a technically well-stocked, dedicated art school)? Why do Fine Artists need a university (a large multidisciplinary environment covering every subject across the sciences, humanities and the arts)? 10
The people who believed they knew the answers to both questions had set up the first Department of Fine Art in 1949. They were the trench survivor, war poet, art historian and advocate for modern art, Herbert Read and Professor of English at Leeds, Bonamy Dobrée. Read was also asking other questions. How do we teach art now that it is modern art – practices which radically changed the materials, meaning, and forms of art? Or shall I put it this way: what had happened through the novel kinds of art we now name Modern that made academic art training (spending hours in the life-class and copying classical statues and old master painting techniques) and even nineteenth century art school models (more life-drawing but new techniques and specialisms) redundant, irrelevant and inadequate? Read and our first Head of Department, the painter Maurice de Sausmarez, looked to the model of the Bauhaus (1919–1933) based in Weimar, that was suddenly cancelled and dispersed by the rise of fascism in Germany. Witnessing the radical changes from Cubism onwards, they knew that artists needed more than the transfer of skills and models. They would in future need to understand the fundamental question that modernism had asked: ‘what is art?’. The first answer was encapsulated in a book de Sausmarez wrote titled Basic Design, how to develop formal thinking and the relations of form and colour, very much a theorisation of what modern art involved. The second answer, offered by Read, lay much deeper in the past, in the most archaic traces of art in the world and it was formulated as what I would call the mystical concept of creativity, which can be found everywhere in every culture across the longest reaches of time. Creativity is also deep in the mind, 11
the unconscious. Both of them knew you could not be an artist without historical knowledge of all of human creativity and specifically of the prehistory and history of modern art itself. Then circa 1968, art ceased to be modern in both Read’s and de Sausmarez’s terms. The School of Fine Art registered that moment early in the 1970s when T. J. Clark became Professor of Fine Art, the first art historian to do so, and hired Terry Atkinson, a leading conceptual artist. The art history and the fine art taught at Leeds by both in a unique collaboration changed radically to meet the new conditions in which art was no longer just formal making nor free creativity. It was challenged to become a kind of thinking that had to meet, and make sense of, the complexities of the lived, social world. The School could no longer be offering training studios, the lectures no longer delivering inspiring stories of universal human creativity and its highpoints in the western canon. Class, race, gender, power, violence, desire, meaning, would be explored in what was made in the studios and what had been made in history. Women’s, Cultural, Film, Jewish and Postcolonial Studies also exploded into the academic and the art worlds. A Department of Fine Art, nestled in small, scattered spaces across the campus, half-understood by the rest of the university and often irritating to most, became the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, and finally, in 2017, entered its grand new building, that looked like an art school. But it is not an art school. This is the last point I want to make. This building establishes art making, art thinking, art history and the broadest field of cultural, material and heritage studies as part of this research-led, multi-disciplined university. What goes on inside the building defends the idea of a 12
university against current attempts to streamline the institution into being an economically profitable arm of the economy, where subject areas are judged for their usefulness against a model of value based on costeffectiveness and income raised. Fine Art might look as if it would fare badly on such a measuring scale. Clearly, however, there is a vast amount of money in and behind the top end of the international art world, and some of you may well get some of it. I wish everyone every success. You all deserve it. What I hope you take with you from the now silent Fine Art Building is a strong sense of what the founders of the Department and the makers of the School over the last seventy years put into practice. Fine Art is a core discipline of the arts and humanities – creative, reflective, poetic, inventive, thoughtful, historical, philosophical, ethical. It is also like the sciences – experimental, investigative, intuitive, practical, blue skies, material.
It cannot, however, be studied in isolation.
Leisure, philosophy and a lecture place, the definition
with which I began: hearing ideas, reading/studying, being asked to think about everything in many challenging ways, and having the time of your life with your fellow students across the entire campus and beyond. Even as you feel enclosed in bounded spaces – bedrooms, basements, garages, the screen on your smart phone, tablet or computer – wherever you are making your final work in this new online, virtual world where we are sheltering from a real (not a computer) virus, you have the irreplaceable memory of this adventure of studying at the University of Leeds, being the backbone of the School, and being pushed and provoked into 13
becoming artist-thinkers, thinking artists and I hope richly educated, sensitive, ethical and, one day again soon, socialising, creative people. Congratulations. Know that while this pandemic took something precious from you, by doing what you are doing now you are part of history, a new one, being written day by day, in fear but also in solidarity with a world we share, even if, at the moment, we are a bit too much ‘at home’. Technology has made virtual connection and electronic creation possible. The point of art and the idea of an art school was never the isolated artist in the garret, but the sociality of being in it together. You are now connected by machines. I hope that real contact will happen sometime again. We cannot tell. Until then, be well, stay safe, be artists.
Prof Griselda Pollock School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies University of Leeds Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
14
i
15
Nada Khouri Dis-placed and Re-placed in Knightsbridge, London
16
Ephesians 5:15, photograph, 36.2 � 25.4 cm
Poppy Jones-Little ‘Lumphood’ Dis-placed and Re-placed in Grantham, Lincolnshire
17
Accelerating airy lump, quoted before, firework residue, washing line, sky
Eliza Arron Dis-placed and Re-placed in Peckham, London
18
Everyplace, Everywhere, collage on brown paper, 40 � 28 cm
Abigail Lence Dis-placed and Re-placed in London
19
Fragmented Memories, oil on paper, 21 � 59 cm each
Hannah Woodward Dis-placed and Re-placed in Cardiff
20
Forget-me-not, photograph of shadow on brown paper
Imogen Dawe Dis-placed and Re-placed in Sou
Ground & First Floor, wood, copper piping, r
th West London
21 ope, 55.8 � 25.4 cm
p Dan Cole 107-109-114
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
22
5 cm 3, concrete, polyester
MY STUDIO IS OUTSIDE, THE FRESH AIR HELPS ME THINK. I DON’T MAKE WORK WHEN IT RAINS.
23
Abby Barker
011
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Manchester
My Studio, text, continued on page 62
Suzanna Easton Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
24
A Stockpile of Tangibles, acrylic paint on ruched material
Shruti Shah Dis-placed and Re-placed in London
25
Threads of Empire, oil on card, paper and wooden bricks, 21 � 15.5 cm
Daisy Baker
I have been writing every day since early April because I am scared that if I don’t try to differentiate between these bizarre days in my memory, they will blend into one image. It has been quite strange living in Leeds when you cannot really be in Leeds. I miss the banal, the tactile, the studio, the library. I miss printers and Co-op coffees. I miss small talk in the queue26 at Royal Park Pub when it spills people out of the door, and a busy morning campus. It’s an eerie time to live in Hyde Park when One Stop is silent, wellstocked with booze and only admits three people in at one time. I miss that wonderful creative feeling of spontaneity, but mostly I really miss the echoey sound of the Fine Art School staircase, and its 24/7 access. This global pandemic grew from a distant story into a terrifying reality. In its overseas infancy, we began 2020 like a revved-up engine. We were so ready for our degree show. Accepting that as no longer our tangible future has been difficult – in the same way as creating a home studio has been. Isolation has its restrictions – my bedroom is both my studio sanctuary and my quarantined confinement. Tidying it has become a cathartic practise in both my mental and physical process of creating work, and yet the digital accessibility of this most personal and intimate space (via Teams or Zoom) has now qualified to be seen within the support of each other’s homes. It has enabled us all to interact in such a wonderfully human new way. I miss physical closeness, but I am thankful to this new closeness. This new personal exchange, supporting why we are compelled to react, respond, and voice, has been restorative. It is a brilliant oxymoron of intimate creative distance.
Despite this time of pressure to be both isolated and productive, we have optimised. Lockdown for some has been lonely and scary, yet our collective virtual support has been an adhesive medicine. Our degree show was only in its infancy, but this legacy will evolve even after we graduate and disperse. Our ability to support the spiralling tangents and refocused incentives within our collective practice has cemented our artistic moral responsibility to react to the now. It is our obligation to represent the triumphs, the burdens, and the social fabric of daily discourse, dipping in and out of the serious to the banal. As a group, we have jumped this test and pulled together in this power as a collective. We have created opportunities to generate discussion. We have and continue to celebrate, support and channel each other’s work. While we feel vulnerable to uncertainty, we have remained connected. Our legacy will continue to shoot green from Leeds’ core, and when we return to what will be an abnormal new normal, we will always remain united within this momentous book we have created.
27
Kathleen Lagan Dis-placed and Re-placed in Chesham, Buckinghamshire
28
Structured Healing, wool, 150 ft
Georgina Davis
l
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
29
Transform, cut, erase, layered drawing, digitally edited, 5 � 6 m
a
Henry Johashen
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Northamptonshire
30
Reclaimed 1, reclaimed wood, clay, 128 � 61 � 68 cm
Reclaimed 2, reclaimed wood, clay, string, 177 � 102 � 37 cm
Joe Travis Dis-placed and Re-placed in Chiddingfold, Surrey
31 Working Amongst Clutter, digital illustration
Sophie Gottlieb Dis-placed and Re-placed in London
32
Home Is Where We…, photograph, 57.6 � 72.5 cm
Talia Ellis Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
33 What do we have to lose? Is it already lost?
Anyone who will listen 20 Wherever St Around and About The Earth
Post[al] Apocalypse, text, collage
Charlie Steele Dis-placed and Re-placed in Bredon Hill
34
In Horto Est, digital illustration
Emily Hoey Dis-placed and Re-placed in Wirral
35
Photographing the entrance to The City will break your camera, digital illustration
Caitlin Vann Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hertfordshire
36
Looks like we’re both stuck here (thanks for the company), photograph, 16 � 9 cm
Hannah Woodward
what if if if if if if if if if
37
it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s
a quick sketch, it’s a drawing, a note, it’s a piece of writing, a photo, it’s an archival document, a plant you’ve grown, it’s alive, something you’ve built, it’s strong, in your imagination, it’s exciting, a movement, it’s a performance, something you’ve created, it’s something to be proud of.
Daisy Baker Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
38
Susanna the Bather, acrylic on wood, 32 � 27 cm
Olivia Savage Dis-placed and Re-placed in
the Isle of Man
39
Thoroughly Distancing, Constantly Connecting, Excessi ve performance, photograph ly Moisturising
e
Gemma Jones
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Surrey
Six Feet, digital collage
40
Olivia 06/04/2020 Savage LOCKDOWN DAY 11 Dis-placed and Re-placed in the Isle of Man It’s a new week... In case you didn’t know In case you lost track I do
41 the birds continue to sing freely we spend time out in the garden
the sun shines dogs barking exercising in the garden what shall we have for lunch? breathe in the fresh air Someone’s coming. STOP Careful CAREFUL He places the pile down softly thank you, thank you watch where you step not too close wait for him to leave getting in the red van, he’s onto the next has he gone? ok ok ok
# Days in Lockdown, text, continued on page 47
carry on
Niko Sollohub Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
42
Islands, cyanotype, 40 � 29 cm
Jenna Pajunen Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
43
Drowning, digital illustration, 15 � 15 cm
Olivia Tess Russell LOCK DOWN THE CREATIVES! They said, Well they didn’t, As, of course, we aren’t the only ones here, As if we needed more crocheted hats or images of people44 making crocheted hats and nowhere to wear these crocheted hats Hypnotise me, Then maybe you can get me to walk down the stairs, put my boots on. Let’s see, Just before you find the door, there’s a kettle, this iridescent shining thing, that, once filled and boiled, makes going outside Just Too Much Hypnotise me, Then maybe this situation never happened. Maybe we wouldn’t spend half the day scrolling our paint brushes over our faces. Maybe we’d be back in the studio painting canvases, our feet, or our tutor’s Scottish accent. Anything That is no longer the reality. Now cups of tea make up for not really feeling productive today, just another one, With the stirring, Oh the buzz of housed caffeine!
Productivity is? Productivity is Realising productivity comes Crawling. It will come, but only when this heatwave ends. It will come through our letter-boxes, creep across our kitchen tiles This next bite will be the answer! It will, Be present Rooms overturned, returned to –, transformed thinking, Biscuit jars spilling overturned, returned to –, Packs of ideas found in Concepts of contemporary Anew, a time where the satire of routine is Stuffed, Chewed, up stairways Online classes, Familiar sighs, just a click away Creativity will come, If I can just, Switch my, Camera – Can you hear me alright?
45
There are new ways to ‘Make!’ Blanket – cosy, grassy, Unfamiliar or tea-time! Screaming difficult, Paws and Yoghurt pots, Suncreamed fingers on keys the windowsills can see, We’ve got it Structures toppled, exterior living is ever-changing Twisting, our inside architecture Prepare a homage to –, a Dance for home-life! We now know the moves. It has come, Flowing in its production We are making, Assembling etching Anew – Gathering, planting Four-legged desks on digital sheets, we know the moves Headphones can bolt us too, Remember days as they are now, Speech swallowed and shared in our landscapes Though Unfamiliar, We are the producers, Productivity is? Productivity is Realising productivity comes Crawling.
46
Olivia Savage PRE QUARANTINE Dis-placed and Re-placed in the Isle of Man
47
Nervous, crowded, cautious, exciting. Home lasted 10 days before the lockdown. Society was loud. They make the most of pints and sweaty bar stools, we stayed inside. Lockdown for us came early. 5 of us. 23, 23, 34, 59, 71. Numbers more important than ever. 71 Vulnerable
We wait, keep going. 71 is at risk. anxious
I am the evacuee Not for long It’s coming here
worry watching (for what?)
home love home remember home What is it? Do you have it? Do I have it? Cough. Cough. COUGH. Keep watching, you’ll never see it. Maybe you won’t feel it, that means nothing. Hope
# Days in Lockdown text,feeling continued on page 65 We keep, that
I feel hope
George Crane Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
48
Tied Down, mixed media, 150 � 70 cm
Ashleigh Harrison
Queen of Corona
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leicestershire
Okay so today I read on Facebook That us English lot are calling it Something other than Covid-19 Instead, we just say, ‘this load of shit’
Honestly it took time to adjust It certainly messed with my head And I expected it to be easy Thought I could just spend all day in bed
I have to admit it made me laugh Oh, the optimism of the British We don’t even think half of the time We just love to tell it how it is
But, to quote the idol, Britney Spears, ‘My loneliness is killing me’ I miss all my mates more than ever And of course, I miss my family
As it strikes five and BoJo comes on The nation tunes in to hear the speech Praying for some good news at last Ugh! Week after week after week!
Hopeful thoughts have kept us going Even when things have been really rough ‘Just keep calm and carry on’ they say Even when you have had just enough
Truth be told, to quote the icon Ness, There’s only one thing we want to hear, ‘The pubs can now open up their doors’ It’s time for twenty-five pints of beer!
To help you get through this, here I pose With my back straight and head held up high I serve as a friendly reminder Soon enough this sad time will pass by
Nonetheless we are carrying on Our in-built politeness serving well In secret we like crossing the road Avoiding that bitch at number twelve… Actually, when you think about it, Life is easier in many ways For example, I never expected… To skype my tutor in my PJs
49
For now, I think it is important To attempt to focus on the good Climb the load of shit that this time is And clap for NHS if you would! So there they are, my words of advice Stop moping and being a moaner (I also have gin every evening) Much love from your Queen of Corona x
You might be thinking, ‘what else is good?’ Well then, I am really glad you asked Because I know if you have worn one You felt quite cool when you wore that mask
Queen of Corona, digital collage
49
Milo Le Brocq Draco Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds 50
Rooftop Isolation – 5ACA, photograph
Sonia Yousefi Azimi Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
51
The Imaginary Window, digital illustration
Amy Myhill Dis-placed and Re-placed in Letchworth, Hertfordshire
52
My Lockdown Studio, photograph
/
Elizabeth Scoffin Dis-placed and Re-placed in Grimsby
So it goes, and so it goes‌, part of a series, lino print, 21 � 14.5 cm
53
Ruby Richards
54
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Gateshead
Plodding Through, digital illustration, 19 � 16 cm
R
Olivia Tess Russell
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
55
Sans-audience I, Sans-audience II, photographs of live performance
56 Sarah Larby Dis-placed and Re-placed in Morpeth, Northumberland
Square Root, wooden garden trestle, gloss paint, chain, 30 � 30 � 30 cm
Freyja Appleyard-Keeling Dis-placed and Re-placed in Newhey Village
57
The Attic Bedroom, digital illustration, text
e
Henry McAlpine
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Northumberland
58
Transcended Horizons, matt emulsion and Indian ink on found logs, 83 � 19 cm, 142 � 26 cm, 174 � 24.5 cm
Ruby Blanchard Dis-placed and Re-placed in North London
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Little Legs, detail, oil on canvas, 100 � 120 cm
Georgina Montague Dis-placed and Re-placed in Ironbridge
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Stomach-ache, tights, stuffing, rope, 18 � 45 � 45 cm
Catherine Morgan Dis-placed and Re-placed in Headingley, Leeds 61
The Printing Garden, wooden sculpture on screen printed board sculpture: 11.5 � 8 � 6 cm, wooden base: 130 � 85 cm
MY STUDIO IS IN A LIBRARY, I AM WELL READ ON THE CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF MY WORK.
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Abby Barker
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Dis-placed and Re-placed in Manchester
My Studio, text, continued on page 69
Georgie Strauss Dis-placed and Re-placed in London
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Window Thoughts, digital illustration
Farah Dailami Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
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Not Half, But Double, film, projected at 140 � 190 cm
Olivia Savage 12/04/2020 LOCKDOWN DAY 17 Dis-placed and Re-placed in the Isle of Man we don’t check the news as much we’ve stopped watching the conferences
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cases still going up tests are still being conducted and yet We Feel Safe we cannot see it here
we cannot feel it here
in a bubble
a state of utopia
no coughing did we really escape it? we plan our food ahead
no fever we have everything in place now
wash again
wash after wash after wash one walk
someone passing….. maybe they’ll step out for us
onto the road because that’s safer that happened today
she looks at us from the road smiles “One day we can walk together again” we may never see her again
# Days in Lockdown, text, continued on page 79
but yes, one day we will walk together again
Phoebe Hoyland Dis-placed and Re-placed in Wakefield
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Isolation Commute, photographs
Molly Higgins Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
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Stills from the film, It’s a bit boring really, 10:07
Jodie Bright Dis-placed and Re-placed in Headingley, Leeds
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Red, installation, lino prints on wine bottles, 60 � 90 cm
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MY STUDIO IS BIG ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO CREATE THE LARGE-SCALE INSTALLATION I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO MAKE.
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Abby Barker
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Dis-placed and Re-placed in Manchester
My Studio, Text, continued on page 88
Esen Kılıç Dis-placed and Re-placed 70 in Stockton-on-Tees
Mediating Dialogue, 00:56, hand-made paper, embossing with ink, 15 � 15 cm
Louisa Dee Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hull, East Yorkshire
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Les orties, 03.05.2020, oil on board, 10 � 15 cm
Fevronia Petrou Dis-placed and Re-placed in a small room in Leeds Student Accommodation 72
Stand by Memories, stucco, coffee, paper and assorted personal belongings from multiple people on canvas, 60 � 70 cm each
Stefani Zinonos Dis-placed and Re-placed in Student Accommodation in Leeds 73
Existential Angst, 3D small-scale installation, square canvas, wooden sticks,
hung with elastic strings, perspective wooden box, mirror, 80 � 100 � 60 cm
Stefani Zinonos My Experience as a Foreign Student in the UK through Coronavirus 74 The unexpected invasion of this pandemic provoked undoubted shock to all of us. Through this text, I will share my own angle as a foreign student from Cyprus studying in Leeds. Studying in the UK and far from my family and country through this kind of crisis was a big challenge for me because I could not see myself trying to cope with it. At the beginning I felt confused, I hadn’t realised how serious the problem was and how it could be spread and become our new reality. I currently live in student accommodation with four other Cypriot students and we all started to share our anxieties about the fact that our family members started to worry for us, and they asked us to repatriate. In the meantime, the Cyprus government arranged flights for Cypriot students to go back to Cyprus. Fevronia was one of my three flat mates and all of them went back to Cyprus and I stayed alone in Leeds by my own choice, because I had plans to find a job after my studies. This decision to stay in Leeds wasn’t easy but I really wanted to fight for my future plans. It took me quite a long time to adapt to the new circumstances because suddenly I didn’t have a studio to make art, I was far from my family, and I was trying to work out what it was happening. However, I didn’t give up; I created my own improvised studio in the kitchen of my accommodation, and I started after a long time of inaction to create art and get inspired again. I tried to remain positive and strong, and deal with all my deadlines. My biggest concern as an art student was to find new methods to make art, and keep struggling to explore my artistic identity, and express my feelings and thoughts through making art even under difficult circumstances. Through this situation,
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I caught myself experimenting with new ideas and other forms of art, and that opened some new pathways for me. I am sure that this experience will never be deleted from my mind and I will always remember how this situation made me stronger.
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Alice Waites 76
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Otley, Leeds
Still from the film The Gamekeeper, 4:49 available to view in full here
Lily Thomson Dis-plac
ed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
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It’s either real or real, composition including clay, paper, digital 3D model, 2835 � 2835 pixels
Marnie Moody Dis-placed and Re-placed in Watford
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Is it?, digital illustration, 2700px � 2700 px
Olivia Savage 19/04/2020 LOCKDOWN DAY 24 Dis-placed and Re-placed in the Isle of Man
79 another Sunday……another poached fried scrambled dippy chopped
lie in cup of tea natter in bed cuddle the dogs slow start downstairs for brunch eggs (for specifics, see above options) watch tv still in pyjamas hits about two o’clock should get some work done head into next room someone’s there bit of a natter head to studio typing
# Days in Lockdown, text
egg breakfast
photograph work head inside snack back to work four thirty? think it’s time for a walk stroll comment briefly on the weird situation passing others onto the road smile “One day it won’t be like this hey!” laugh, agree with them “One day” with a smile continue walking comment on the weird situation eventually back home tv on prepare dinner eat dinner discuss how you’ll actually be productive next week because you know you were a bit lazy this week downtime after your downtime laugh over the tv show natter let the dogs out head to bed another Sunday 6 cups of tea
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Fevronia Petrou Ξύπνησα βλέποντας ένα από τα όμορφα τοπία του Λιντς, ρωτώντας τον εαυτό μου τι μέρα είναι. Παρασκευή και 13. Μια μέρα που χάραξε την ψυχή μου. Ξαφνικά, 81 εμφανίστηκε ο αόρατος εχθρός που όλοι καλά γνωρίζαμε πως κάποτε θα ερχόταν και η δική μας σειρά. Ο εχθρός ήρθε ξαφνικά και μας είχε πιάσε απροετοίμαστους. Συγκεκριμένα η Αγγλία είχε τους υψηλοτέρους αριθμούς κρούσματός ανά μέρα με αποτέλεσμα να εμφανίζεται στις ειδήσεις της Κύπρου. Οι κύπριοι γονείς είχαν αρχίσει να ανησυχούν για τα παιδιά τους που βρίσκονταν στην Αγγλία γιατί ήταν μια από τις χώρες που δεν έπιασε αυστηρά μέτρα από την αρχή. Οι κύπριοι γονείς βορμαδιζαν τους φοιτητές να επιστέψουν στην Κύπρο. Μέσα μου υπήρχε η αναστάτωση και σύγχυση για το τι θα εξελιχθεί. Δεν είχα την διάθεση να ζωγραφίσω γιατί υπήρχε ένας μεγάλος πανικός. Για βδομάδες είχα επηρεαστεί με αυτή την κατάστασή, είχα πάθει κατάθλιψη γιατί ήμουν εγκλωβισμένη σε μια χώρα που δεν μου παρείχε ασφάλεια. Ακόμη ήμουν εγκλωβισμένη μέσα σε ένα μικρο δωμάτιο που έπρεπε να το δημιουργήσω χώρο για τέχνη. Έπρεπε να βάλω τα πράγματα σε μια τάξη, να σταματήσω να αγχώνομε. Eπομένως, άρχισα να κανω τέχνη οι οποία ήταν το φάρμακο και η λύτρωση μου για να σταματήσω να αναστατώνομε και για να μπορέσω να χαθώ μέσα από τις σκέψεις μου γιατί έλπιζα πως σε κάποια φάση θα επέστρεφα στην πατρίδα μου. Προσπαθούσα να τελειώσω όλες τις υποχρεώσεις σχετικα με την τέχνη πριν φύγω από Αγγλία γιατί δεν θα μπορούσα να μεταφέρω άμεσα τα πράγματα μου για να τα συνεχίσω στην Κύπρο.
Ήρθε η ημέρα που περίμενα, κτύπησε το τηλεφωνώ και μου ανακοίνωσαν ότι σε λίγες ώρες θα επαναπατριζόμουνα υπό την προϋπόθεση πως όταν έφτανα Κύπρο θα εμένα σε ένα ξενοδοχείο. Σταμάτησα την τέχνη μου και άρχισα τις προετοιμασίες του επαναπατρισμού. Έτσι για δυο βδομάδες στο ξενοδοχείο είχα κάνει τις εργασίες και τις υποχρεώσεις μου μέσω του υπολογιστή. Δυστυχώς δεν μπορούσα να κανω τέχνη γιατί δεν είχα τα απαραίτητα υλικά. Η τελευταία μέρα στο ξενοδοχείο, έμοιαζε σαν να είχαμε αποφυλακιστεί από την φυλακή. Ήταν η πιο ευτυχισμένη μου μέρα, που επιτέλους είδα την οικογένεια μου, η πανδημία της Κύπρου είχε σχεδόν τελειώσει και θα άρχιζα τέχνη με μεράκι. Είχα επιτέλους ένα χώρο που θα έκανα τέχνη χωρίς να φοβόμουν να λερώσω τον τόπο. Η ψυχική μου κατάστασή είχε αλλάξει θετικά με αποτέλεσμα να ξετρυπώσω ξανά την έμπνευση μου για να μπορέσω να δημιουργήσω.
I woke up and I wonder what day it was. Friday and 13. A day that engraved my soul. Suddenly, we knew that one day our turn would come in our country when the invisible enemy appeared. Cypriot parents were beginning to worry about their children in England because it was one of the countries that did not take strict action from the beginning. The groceries’ shelves were empty, people walk in the streets unnecessarily without being interested in the situation, causing parents to be upset. Cypriot parents were urging students to return to Cyprus. I was anxious and confused about what would happen. I wasn’t in the mood to paint because I was panicked. For weeks I was affected by this situation, I was depressed because I was locked in a country I did not feel safe in. I was locked in my small room that was also my studio space. I started making art – that was my therapy and redemption to stop being upset. I got lost 82
in my thoughts, hoping that one day I can return to my homeland. I was trying to finish all my artworks before I left because I could not immediately bring them to continue them in Cyprus. The day is coming, my phone rang, and I was told that in a few hours I would be repatriated on the condition that when I arrived in Cyprus, I would be in a hotel for two weeks. I stopped my art and started preparing for repatriation. So, for two weeks at the hotel I had done my homework and obligations via computer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make art because I didn’t have the necessary materials. The last day at the hotel seemed like we had been released from prison. It was my happiest day when I finally saw my family. The Cyprus pandemic was almost over, and I would start making art again with passion. I finally had a place where I could make art without being afraid. My mental state had changed for the better, so I was able to refresh my inspiration and I have started to create again. To sum up, I hope for a better future and it comes …
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Jess Sache Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
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Tasteless, Demure, photograph
Maddie Travers Dis-placed and Re-placed in Cheshire
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Rock Cage, photograph
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Ashleigh Jerman
Using the void of the internet to create a space that balances between public and private
A-void the internet, photograph of a digital space
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Grace Benita Dis-placed and Re-placed in Hyde Park, Leeds
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Home Life, photograph
MY STUDIO IS SET UP TO ALWAYS HAVE THE PERFECT LIGHTING TO DOCUMENT MY WORK.
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Abby Barker
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Dis-placed and Re-placed in Manchester
My Studio, text
Erin Shields Dis-placed and Re-placed in Wirral
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The Dark Continent is neither Dark nor Un-explorable, ink on paper, 29.7 � 21 cm
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Meri Croft
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Cambridgeshire
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Tiled Enclosure, acrylic on board, 16 � 16 cm
Natalie Whitney Dis-placed and Re-placed in Suffolk
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Confined behind the cat’s eyes, projection on wood, plastic, cat, 80 � 100 cm
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Betty Foster-Eardley Dis-placed and Re-placed in Another Realm
Garden of Betty Rose, drag, installation
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Zoe Hollands Dis-placed and Re-placed in Surrey
A new lease of life, rust on fabric, 150 � 100 c m
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Emily Dodd-Noble Dis-placed and Re-placed in Oxfordshire
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Informal Interactivity, ink pen on card, 15 � 21 cm
Sophie Law Dis-placed and Re-placed in Leeds
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Body Mapping, drawings on skin
Victoria Shaw 96
Dis-placed and Re-placed in Cockermouth
Working on a wish, 1000 origami peace cranes, yellow cotton, drawing pins, safety pins,
miscellaneous furniture. Dimensions of the room: 3.2 � 2.6 m
Sasha Napoli Dis-placed and Re-p
Structural Painting, mixed media on ca
laced in Kent
nvas, paper, 40 � 21 cm each 97
Erin Shields Manifesto for the New Chaotic
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The institution is obscured, the studio diminished, but it is intuition that is truly artistic. Perhaps it is an underlying condition that attaches an artist so firmly to their studio. In its buzz, whisper, and agitation, there is no lull. You are never fully alone with your thoughts. It cushions you. The silence of lockdown provides a moment of contemplation; the studio can no longer be a safety net or a haven. The internal and external are blurred. The mundane becomes existential, the spectacle is now banal. It has come to my understanding that perhaps the space that is defined as the studio, as an institution, is not what propels you forward. Whilst collective thought is inherently vital to the artistic process, the power of creative individual thought drives us into a state that is indescribable, beyond the limits of the four walls of your studio. Perhaps this ‘state’ could thrust us into a new era of creativity that is beyond what is currently comprehensible.
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The lack of institution, the disappearance of fairs, biennales, shows, residencies and anything that resembles the Art world, forces a shift. We are resting on the edge. A perpetual state of trepidation. If we fall into the unknown, what becomes of the rest of it? Let us embrace the new. The new world of the un-curatable, the secret, the dis-ordered and the unconventional; that which defies any expectations of the logical social order of artmaking. The chaos of creation takes on a new guise and shifts from the noise of convention. Instead it resides within the quietness of your space, revealing the truth of the self. The new noise is self-effacing but thunderous. Allow yourself to taste the release. This new chaos is unassuming. Let it take hold.
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Acknowledgements We would like to thank Sam Belinfante, Richard Bell, Nicola Singh and all teaching and support staff at the School. Particular thanks go to the technicians Sophie Bullen, Jubal Green, Katherine Lacey, Peter Morton, Eleanor Rambellas Roche, Aidan Razzall, David Sowerby; Fiona Blair, communications administrator and Head of School, Joanne Crawford. We would also like to thank our editors and designers Fraser Muggeridge and Michael Kelly for their generous guidance and contribution. With special thanks to, and admiration for, Griselda Pollock, whose written contribution we are incredibly honoured to have. An accessible audio reading of her piece can be found on the website below. And lastly, we want to thank all the students who participated in this project, with particular thanks to Imogen Dawe, Erin Shields, Catherine Morgan, Talia Ellis, Gemma Jones, Lily Thomson, Grace Benita, Dan Cole, Olivia Tess Russell, Olivia Savage, Hannah Woodward, Phoebe Hoyland, Georgina Montague, Sophie Gottlieb, Sasha Napoli, Lizzie Scoffin, Kathleen Lagan, Sarah Larby and Georgina Davis, who dedicated their time to the creation and curation of this book. To view more art by the University of Leeds Fine Art graduates of 2020 and to find artist contact details click here.
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