Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Sunderland
Rank: picturing the social order 1516-2009 - An exhibition about the class system
Rank: picturing the social order 1516-2009' NGCA exhibition dates 15 May - 11 July 2009
Rank consists of a touring exhibition initiated, researched and curated by Robison and edited publication with catalogue entries and introductory essay by Robinson.
The research question may be defined as how artists have imagined and pictured the social order and body politic of which they are part by identifying its defining differentials and inequalities. The publication and exhibition are the first to examine the methods by which, over a long historical timeframe, artists have depicted their society as an aggregate of people, and its constituent groups and factions. They span historical and contemporary objects from Anglo-American sources. Its originality lies also in its interdisciplinary nature and the synthesis of academic research across, human geography, sociology, and politics.
The exhibition included major loans from Tate, the V&A, British Museum, British Library and leading private lenders, of works by artists from Gerhard Richter and Jenny Holzer to WP Frith to Thomas Hobbes’ frontispiece for ‘Leviathan’. The exhibition included new commissions at each venue by Mark Titchner, Ruth Ewan and Rory Macbeth.
The artworks stand alongside images from other disciplines with the principal aims of: cross-comparing ‘fictional’ images to ‘factual’ findings of governmental and academic research; creating a new form of curating in which the subject matter (of social hierarchies) are cross-compared to the hierarchies of image type and media from painting and drawing to printmaking and reproductive media. The social position of the (original) anticipated audiences is compared to the ideology apparently espoused in the image itself. The curatorship allowed cultural assumptions about the orthodox relationships between artistic value and social value to be queried. The publication featured essays from Polly Toynbee, journalist; Gordon Fyfe, sociologist (Keele); and Prof. Keith Wrightson, historian (Yale).
The exhibition toured to NGCA, Leeds Art Gallery and Grundy Art Gallery, and was seen by 116,000 visitors.
