Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Dundee
Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition, Exhibited at Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh, 12 Nov-18 Dec. 2011
The AHRC funded research project Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition (total of £529K), and follow–on grant (£23,000), involved Modeen working with six academics in Comparative and English Literature, and Psychology; three from Dundee and three from Univ. of Canterbury, Kent. The project used psychological, critical and creative methods to study how readers respond to visual aspects of poetry. Modeen’s research prioritised cross-disciplinary collaboration and her expertise was essential in the areas of poetry and image, artists' books and prints, and digital poetry. Modeen’s curatorial input linked creative methodologies with those of other team members.
As a commissioning curator for the project, Modeen (CI) brought 44 artists and poets together (including Valerie Gillies, Helen Douglas, and John Burnside); who were commissioned to respond singly and collaboratively to address strategic priorities of reading and viewing dynamics: these included strategies of slowing reading within an artist’s book; disrupting reading through visual interventions; challenging material forms with textual representation, as in a wooden case with verse etched onto glass shelves, for example. A further group of 50 people volunteered for perceptual and interpretive experiments. Modeen also collaborated as the artist/book designer/maker, directly with poet Kathryn Gray, in the artist’s book, Uncertain Territories.
Four Scottish exhibitions were held: a pilot version in the test space at Visual Research Centre (Dundee); the Scottish Poetry Library; Moray Arts Centre (Elgin); and the largest at the Royal Scottish Academy (Edinburgh). The RSA exhibited over 120 works. These exhibitions were central to the wider public impact of the project, and commissioned works were distributed to public collections at the end of the project.
An associated publication: Modeen, Mary (Ed.), Poetry Beyond Text, Univ. of Dundee, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9568371-0-3. 56pp. Her 10,547 word essay in the publication defined the role of creative practice within a broader research field.
