Output details

Beneath the Skin – revealing the research that underpins the object

The exhibition curator, Maria Hanson, herself a practitioner, chose the eight participants to bring together diverse research practice and methodologies covering a wide spectrum of approaches and applications within the field of contemporary metalwork and jewellery. The aim was to present both the work and to articulate the complex and often non-linear creative journey that individual researchers take to get to the final object(s). So the purpose was to reveal the research that underpinned the displayed items and thus to make a significant contribution to the understanding of creativity and cognition.

Cunningham chose this exhibition as an opportunity to present for the first time his video recordings showing his research methods, including his gathering of sources and creative production. Through an artist’s statement, the artefacts exhibited and a video sequence, he presented the creative methodology he deploys while operating within an educational context.

The installation included a hard copy and access to a digital version of the researcher’s earlier PhD thesis. The audience could therefore interact with the multi-media display and gain insight into the researcher’s processes.

The range and quality of the three venues offered an excellent opportunity for dissemination to different audiences. These were Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery 25 March – 20 April 2011, and Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 7 October – 12 December 2012. Galerie Marzee is arguably the largest contemporary jewellery gallery in the world, and one with the most significant reputation. Selected items of the jewellery pieces by Cunningham appear in the and the 48 page catalogue for the Galerie Marzee show and in the 38 page catalogue for the Sheffield show.

Arts Council England, Sheffield Institute of Arts, and Galvenize Sheffield Festival of Contemporary Metal supported the exhibition.