Following the lecture by Esther Reeve, of Sheffield Hallam University, the next lecture in this series was presented by Dr Juliet McDonald of the University of Huddersfield, which was entitled "Displaying the Head of Victory".
Dr MacDonald outlined her research which is based on the original Leeds city War Memorial. Originally this statue was situated in the Victoria Gardens in Leeds, and was designed by the architect Henry Charles Fehr (1893 to 1961), and was unveiled in 1922. The original statue was probably a sculpture modelled on Nike the God of victory, but also included additional statues on the sides, which were figures that represented Peace and also a 'British' sculpture of St George slaying the dragon.
The history of the figure of victory and where it was subsequently positioned, provided a very interesting and chequered timeline. The relocations of the statue and the monument could be mapped to the Post world War one political and global changes over the next 100 years up to our present time. Eventually, the whole monument and statue, (not including the stone/concrete base that remains at the Headrow in Leeds), was abandoned and dumped. This led Dr MacDonald to highlight one of the inscriptions which was "Invictus Pax", which in Latin means "unvanquished in peace"
The statue represented in Dr MacDonald's mind, an object for "visceral bereavement", and she explained that grief requires an object to focus upon in order to be an affected point of attention.
The final installation presented by Dr Juliet McDonald is indeed the figurehead of the statue of victory within the gallery, and has been entitled "victory in the desert those quotes. This was chosen as a titled because during the 1922 period when the original memorial was unveiled, the British and French governments were engaged deeply in drawing lines and boundaries in Palestine, which included the deserts of Syria and Iraq. In contemporary sense, almost 100 years later, the conflict in those countries of Syria and Iraq continued to dominate much of the political attention of the British and French governments to this day.
The next lecture was provided by Dr Jill Townsley, University of Huddersfield, entitled "Stones"-an archive.
This extensive piece of work resonates with some of the things that Hester Reeves had discussed earlier within this symposium.
"Stones" was created in response to Bernd and Hiller Beckner's works upon conceptualism in a modern construct. For example "Tanks" (1973).
This works was about "change" within the product found in functional utilitarian buildings and industrial architecture of the every day during the 1950s 60s and 70s. It tackled the question of "the portraiture of our industrial fabric" in relation to nature, and natural, together with repetition.
In either cutters works he says "differences are superficial" and talks in terms of singularity, community, difference, archive and place. In Roremer's book (2001) regarding Bernd and Hiller Beckner's work, he says "measurement is a human construct".
In Dr Townsley's presentation of her works, she outlined that the stones were removed from a particular stream located on the Marsden estate, and the stones became an archival construct, as Dr Townsley collected a metricated 100 set of stones. By using "measurement" in various ways as each of the stones are displayed, we now have a relationship with each of them. Dr Townsley labelled this as archive 1.
The nature of the stones then changed by Dr Townsley polishing them, but instead of using their own form of polish, for example by waxing them, or some other transparent polishing technique, Dr Townsley actually used some 25 different types of nail polish, in order to redefine their content. Dr Townsley labelled this as archive 2.
In archive 3, the polished stones are placed into a clear Perspex tank. The stones are then suspended a few centimetres above the floor. In this, their new state, they can no longer be placed in the riverbed. This is an illusion to the stones being severed from their homeland.
In order to illustrate the concept of the above works, Dr Townsley selected a musical passage from the late Ivor Cutler (recorded in 1983) entitled "people run to the edge".
The narrative of lived experience sculpts our own output of thought. "Life writing" and the diegesic model, is modelling from life.
Both philosophers Faucault and Derrida, described that the word "capture" is an interesting term in the way that things are "owned". By displaying items in archives, it could be argued that certain objects are being liberated but again, this is not liberating certain other objects.
The final symposium lecture was provided by Dr Jeanette Martin, an archivist with the Royal College of art working at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
The lecture was provided on archives and the creative practice and provided three case studies, a) Jackie Irving, b) Neal White, and c) Anton Lessiman. All of whom won scholarships at the Henry Moore Institute.
The question was asked what is an archive?
In definition, this is unique material created by an individual or an organisation in the pursuit of day-to-day life; a collection of historical documents or records that are no longer in daily use.
Example the artist, Jackie Irving provided "forgotten works" 2004. This traces the work of the artist Betty Rae, (1904 to 1965), who was a sculpture who taught at the Royal College of arts and was indeed a pupil of Sir Henry Moore himself.
Irvin produced a series "for all the lives we will never live" (2004) and also a further piece entitled "exhibition of 1957 revisited" (2005), which was taken as a series of nine reimagined photographs which were flipped and turned around to reimagine the original space.
The artist Jacob Eckstein, who provided sculpture for the BMA building (1908), was particularly of interest as the subsequent battles that Eckstein had there, as a result of placing the sculptural scheme on the outside of the BMA building, which caused a massive controversy at the time because of the statues potentially offensive to some nature, and then gain some 20+ years later afterwards a new property owner of the British Medical Association battled again to get rid of them. The whole records collection of these battles does make a great archive.
The next archive that was discussed was that of "Anton Lessiman" (1899 to 1971), which was a biography of this artist. These biography archives were presented by the Henry Moore Institute fellow, Paul Becker. It was only after the archive was exhibited that Paul Becker announced that it was a complete invention by him. Anton lessons fictitious archive was away to examine excepted histories in an original way. It reconfigures our ideas of validation. Only those individuals who are successful are remembered, the other lesser-known creatives are soon forgotten. Here it is suggested that this fictitious artists "Anton Lessiman" is one of those forgotten heroes. Becker stated at the time "sometimes famous people's work sucks up the creativity of others, like a black hole".
Conclusions:-
the archive as a thought position can be considered as a triangulation between sculpture contemporary practice and the past.
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