Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Northampton
Thames Gateway Project: seeking new art forms for the representation of the experience of contemporary landscape.- 3 year Arts & Humanities Research Council Fellowship
The Thames Gateway Project was an AHRC Fellowship, June 2006 – June 2009. I was the sole researcher.
This cross-disciplinary fellowship was hosted by the Fine Art department at Wimbledon College, University of the Arts London in partnership with Oxford Archaeology, a large commercial archaeology unit.
It was a practice based research that focussed on developing new forms for contemporary painting in response to the changing landscape of the Thames Gateway regeneration zone, a central government initiative launched by John Prescott in 2005. Although art referencing archaeology is not new a sustained collaboration between an artist and archaeologists at work in the field is a unique aspect of the project. Ongoing dialogue with the archaeologists and guidance from the research department throughout the 3 years established a rigourous and critical context.
Research in the field was undertaken at a number of excavation sites. They included Washlands Basin flood relief scheme, Dagenham & Woolwich Teardrop, London, A2 road widening scheme Gravesend, Kent and the London Gateway deep sea container port at Shellhaven, Essex.
This project set out to challenge assumptions about landscape as enduring and to register the impact of changing landscape on landscape based painting. The research produced a large group of works titled Pit Paintings and Wall Spines. These works were shown at points throughout the research period. A final exhibition was held at APT Gallery, Deptford, situated within the regeneration zone.
The research produced new knowledge in the realisation of paintings that aim to communicate on a multi-sensory level and challenge the image-based conventions in contemporary painting. Consequentially works have been included in a number of public exhibitions related to this emerging theme in the UK and internationally.
The final report was graded ‘Good’ by AHRC peer review.
