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The art of research

From the traditional to the progressive, researchers from the School of Art and Design are making their mark on the international stage.

“It seems to be out of fashion to produce work that’s really beautiful, but I’m kicking against that a little bit. My pieces are as technically challenging as possible but also aesthetically pleasing, and that’s how it should be for the kinds of environment I work in. The work needs to inspire people to look again rather than just pass on by. I want to engage them, but I’m not trying to turn their perception of art upside down.”

Jan Bowman, a lecturer in Woven Textiles in the University’s School of Art and Design (LUSAD), is sitting in her studio, reflecting on her work. The sunlight is catching the multi-coloured metallic filaments that are interwoven with reed and chenille in Oriental Dawn, one of the pieces currently hanging in the studio, making the whole artwork shimmer. And yes, it is truly beautiful. The piece, an interpretation of the rising sun, was produced for an exhibition of British modern crafts, held in Japan, and integrates two strands of Jan’s research – the design and production of woven spatial divides and panels, and the combination of natural and man-made materials.

“Over the years I’ve become interested in how artwork can be developed as an integral part of a space, as opposed to being just a decorative addition,” says Jan.

Her work is mostly site-specific, and she has pieces sited up and down the country, including several in NHS hospitals. “They’re mainly located in primary care centres, where there’s a lot of people movement. I try to find ways of providing a diversion for users of the hospitals. But I also enjoy the engagement with staff and patients, trying to ensure that they get something of real value out of the artwork. I begin by finding out what makes them feel comfortable and most relaxed. The conversations can go off in all sorts of directions – quite often we end up chatting about the patients’ gardens! But if that’s what makes people feel at ease then I want to reflect that in my work.”

These days of hospital superbugs, however, have posed Jan with a new set of challenges. “Because my work isn’t framed, it can’t just be washed down with disinfectant like pieces that are behind glass, and so I’ve had to investigate anti-bacterial coatings that work alongside other statutory requirements, for instance fire-proofing coatings. Although there’s been some research undertaken into the compounds that can be applied, there’s no industry standard and there still isn’t a composite that’s ideal. It’s an emerging area and a huge amount of development still needs to take place. It’s something I’m really interested in researching further,” Jan muses.

This added complication means some hospitals err on the side of caution. “Unfortunately some do play it safe and go for art that can be placed behind glass because they can maintain it more easily,” Jan says ruefully. “The hospitals that work with me are stepping out into the unknown a little, but I think it’s really important to offer an alternative to a mundane picture that people don’t notice and walk straight past.”

Jan is keen for her work to reach as many people as possible. “Anyone who visits galleries and museums is interested in art anyway, whereas in hospitals I can engage with a real crosssection of people. It’s about taking art to them.”

Her quest to make her work accessible continued when she was invited to produce a sensory screen as part of garden designer Hannah Genders’ exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show. The garden was being developed in conjunction with the Living Paintings Trust, a charity that helps make art available to people with visual impairments, through raised castings and taped descriptions of famous masterpieces like the Mona Lisa to images of Thomas the Tank Engine.

“That was a really interesting piece of work for me – to produce a sensory wall that was accessible not only to those with visual impairments, but to all visitors to the Flower Show. It was amazing how visually impaired people viewed the garden through the artwork, how accurately they were able to form an image of what it was like. “It did mean I ended up with another coating challenge though,” laughs Jan. “Because the piece was going to be sited outside I had to protect it from Britain’s variable weather conditions!”

Accessibility was also an issue faced by Lauren Moriarty, a multimedia textiles lecturer who has carved out a career in what she describes as 3D textiles. “Once I’d made a cushion from it, people understood what that textile could be used for,” she says with a smile. “When it was just a big piece of material, they seemed to be less certain about its potential use.”

After completing a degree in Multimedia Textiles at Loughborough, Lauren studied for an MA in Industrial Design at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. She now combines lecturing with running her own design company, through which she has developed a range of products including lighting, window panels and a range for the home furnisher Habitat.

“My work, and my research, is concerned with functional decoration – how it can be integral to a product. When I was studying product design it felt that the object was designed and then a bit of decoration, a flower or something, was added at the end, almost as an afterthought. But I really think that undervalues what decoration is.

“In the textiles industry decoration tends to be much more of a focus, it’s at the core of the work. But then when you’re developing textiles, you often feel you’re making the raw materials for someone else to buy and use for something. I’m trying to combine the two by creating the textile to use in one of my own products.”

In developing her work, Lauren undertakes several stages of research. “I work with a variety of materials including wood, metal, plastics and rubber, so I have to see how each handles. I can have an idea for a product in a particular material, but when I start work it perhaps does something completely different to what I thought it was going to do. Sometimes that works to my benefit though, as it takes the project off in a completely different direction.”

A lot of Lauren’s projects relate to illusion, so she’s also had to research how the brain perceives things. “And of course I also do lots of drawings,” she adds. “That’s how we were taught at Loughborough, that drawing was really important, so that’s how most of my work begins.”

Professor Marsha Meskimmon, the head of LUSAD, agrees. “Drawing is embedded throughout the School and is the foundation stone for all our arts programmes. It’s used before our students move on to produce specialist textiles, for instance, and it’s perhaps the area of research work that LUSAD is best known for internationally,” she states.

The drawing research group was in fact one of the first established, back in LUSAD’s pre-university days as the College of Art and Design. With a diverse membership, including illustrators, fine artists and animators, its focus is to consider and promote contemporary drawing practice.

“Fifteen years or so ago, digital technologies were emerging, and that took drawing away from the manual activity we traditionally believed it to be and into the whole new digital arena,” explains Marsha. “That was really the spur for research into drawing.”

One of the research group’s best-known activities is TRACEY – an online journal through which material about contemporary drawing research is published. It was established back in 2000, in part to address the lack of opportunity at that time to publish the considerable activity associated with drawing that was happening around the world. Now regarded as the leading international journal on drawing, it seeks to question preconceptions and to encourage potential.

Senior Lecturer Phil Sawdon and Dr Jane Tormey are two of TRACEY’s editors. “TRACEY isn’t about the history of drawing, nor do we try to define what drawing is. It’s about what’s happening now,” explains Phil. “We invite people to talk about drawing, and to facilitate that we’ve identified some themes – at the moment we’re asking for submissions on what people consider to be good drawing, and therefore what bad drawing might be.”

The intriguing name of the journal is derived from a play on words. “It’s a bit tongue in cheek,” explains Jane. “The word ‘trace’ is quite a common term when talking about drawing, and the first image used for the journal was of a girl dancing who was tracing on the floor with her foot, so it’s also a reference to that.”

TRACEY remains the primary vehicle for disseminating research about contemporary drawing and is attracting submissions from all over the world. As in other areas of society, input is increasing from Asia – a development which has also opened up opportunities for fine artist Dr Johanna Hällsten, who specialises in an emerging discipline known as environmental aesthetics.

“This comes from a need to look at the whole of the environment we live in, not only in the traditional terms of the aesthetics of the art object, but also having an aesthetic understanding and appreciation of both manmade and natural environments. It’s about challenging our perception of the world using all our senses, not just sight, and how we relate to our surroundings spatially and through movement,” explains Johanna. “It’s still a new area of research. The core researchers in the field are currently in Finland and America, but they are starting to emerge in the UK.”

All of Johanna’s work is site-specific. “I want my work to be sited within the real environment, not necessarily in galleries,” she says. “A lot of public art, which people claim is site-specific, has just been commissioned to make somewhere look more attractive – there’s no direct connection to the site. It’s important that the site is always at the centre of my work.”

For her Sounds Like It project, Johanna worked with botanists at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and the Kunming Institute of Botany in China to research the process by which they collate data and explore the similarities and differences with the way she herself works.

“Kunming has a great biodiversity and staff from Edinburgh are working with the botanists in China to classify and write about the country’s flora. I wanted to challenge the ways they work and at the same time question my own methodologies. As a result both the botanists and I have adopted new ways of undertaking our research.”

Johanna’s work manifested itself through a web site, together with photography, audio clips and objects sited in both the Edinburgh Gardens and the Kunming Institute. “Everything I put in Edinburgh was taken from China and vice versa. For example I put a ceramic model of a bird that doesn’t exist in China into a tree in the Kunming Institute. I also took photos of some water lilies, which had been collected in 1889 by British botanists and were on display at the Edinburgh Garden, and I put them back in a water lily pond in China. I wanted to get the gardens’ visitors and employees to question their surroundings.”

Johanna believes that in terms of its theoretical thinking about its environment, China is way ahead of some western countries. “Researchers over there are bringing forth a lot of new and interesting work. Now the theoretical issues have to be put in place,” she concludes.