Category Archives: Panel Discussion

Seminar Paper; Mediating Design, a case study in diversity

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Modes of Mediating Applied Art and Design
7th Tallinn Applied Art Triennial
Soprus Cinema
Vanna-Posti 8, Tallinn, Estonia
21 April 2017

This is an edited version of a paper I presented amidst Art Deco splendor in Tallinn. While the city was still waiting for spring the reception was warm, and the audience and fellow speakers contributed to a lively discussion around the role of media in the mediating art and design. I’d like to thank Triin Jerlie and Keiu Krikmann for inviting me to speak, and the organising committee of the Tallinn Applied Art Triennial and the British Embassy Tallinn for funding my trip. Look for another post about Tallinn, the city-wide Triennial and the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design.

This paper is still in the form of a ‘talk’, but also constitutes work-in-progress that will inform the last chapter of my doctoral thesis on the future of design museums. In May, I presented a longer version to University of Brighton MA Art and Design History students as part of the module, Critical Reflection, at the invitation of my colleague, Megha Rajguru, and that version of the talk provided an opportunity to explore changing definitions of ‘interpretation’. The images are from my PowerPoint presentation, and either taken from the Internet or using my Apple iPhone 4S.
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From the Archive (and now); Destroy, punk and DIY

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So an email arrived inviting me to the launch of Punk.London at Oxford Street’s 100 Club, and I have to admit it didn’t totally intrigue me. Instead in gushed cloudy memories of a dark, sweaty cellar and an uncomfortable din, which I must have endured (it feels like) a hundred times over a couple of decades. But a closer look at the invite revealed this to be an occasion for nostalgia, a celebration of a 40-year anniversary marking London’s punk moment and the start of a movement, a subculture in fact, the long-tail of which has affected both attire and attitude.

Screen Shot from Punk.London website, designed by Brody Associates, inviting D-I-Y participation in a city-wide cultural event

Screen Shot from Punk.London website, designed by Brody Associates, inviting D-I-Y participation in a city-wide cultural event

“Subversive Culture” is the strapline (pardon the bondage-tinged pun), which it is claimed has fuelled creativity (now the Creative Industries) ever since. Over the coming year a host of venues will stage events big and small, backed by the Greater London Authority (GLA); shouting about London’s past punk credentials must have tourist-attracting potential. With an identity and online hub branded by Neville Brody (still demonstrating punk attitude by being “notoriously abrasive”, according to Digital Arts), for me the most innovative element is an prompt to organise your own event; tagged “D.I.Y.” the page offers links to branding and fundraising advice, via the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

Regardless of designated anniversaries punk is perennial, and it doesn’t need much of an excuse to hit the headlines. In 1998 I reviewed an exhibition, Destroy: Punk Graphic Design in Britain, and because it isn’t available on the magazine’s website I’m re-posting it, see below. Yes it was cheeky of me to declare punk to be the only “memorable cultural event in the 1970s”, but that’s a clue to my age. I may have been “witness” to the “heyday of punk” but only just; the article is unapologetically London-centric, too, hardly surprising as I was still at school and London was home. What isn’t mentioned is that I was a lender to the show too, having amassed a substantial collection of vinyl due to a fascination with indie record shops. I sold most of the best bits (the vultures were already circling at the Private View) as I became nomadic, leaving London in April 1998, and had neither the means (no turntable) nor inclination (changing musical tastes) to listen again.
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Catch the moment; Composite, LDF and the British Council talk design

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Composite
Two Columbia Road
2 Columbia Road, London E2
20 to 25 September 2011

“Composite is both verb and noun, an action and an outcome, a process and a finished product. Within it are roots and hints of other words — compose, composition, posit, position, site and compare — all of which relate to art, architecture, fashion and design. This exhibition brings together a disparate group of creatives who’ve crossed those borders, gone beyond all comfort zones. Often working in collaboration, they’ve mutated their practice to produce hybridised, surprising solutions.

Questioning traditional processes, reusing discarded materials, exploring overlooked technologies, composing disparate elements, exposing the artificial, celebrating the mundane; these are just some of their tactics. The end results, the works on show, are diverse but they share two things in common, a degree of intricacy and ‘a way in’. They’re not exclusive, instead we’re encouraged to engage and play, inspect and manipulate, delve and re-arrange. Complex, interactive, considered, non-precious; this work is of its time. We live in a composite world.”
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Conference; data day at the museum

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Teamwork and Strategy in the Museum... Lewis Chessmen, Scotland, 12th-Century, British Museum. Photograph by Andrew Dunn. Sourced from WikiCommons/Creative Commons.

Teamwork and Strategy in the Museum… Lewis Chessmen, Scotland, 12th-Century, British Museum. Photograph by Andrew Dunn. Sourced from WikiCommons/Creative Commons.

What does data have to do with me?
British Museum
Great Russell Street, London WC1
5 June 2015

One of the bonuses of working on an AHRC funded doctorate is being able to attend conferences, workshops and seminars that introduce me to subject areas which at first sight might seem tangential to my core subject, but as my research actually crosses disciplinary boundaries I shouldn’t be too surprised when they prove to be incredibly useful. Signing up to the AHRC mailing list and taking notice of emails sent by University of Brighton Doctoral College alerted me to such opportunities. Events that fit this category include a two-day workshop, hosted by Northumbria University Newcastle and Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums, on the subject of “Digital Histories: Advanced Skills for Historians” (reviewed here), and “Using Museum Archives” supported by the Museums and Galleries History Group and the British Museum Collaborative Research Studentship Programme (also, to be reviewed).

I was particularly impressed with another British Museum event, “What does data have to do with me?” and am writing this up in detail because it signposted numerous projects that I wouldn’t otherwise have been aware of. The packed programme featured stellar speakers including representatives from Adobe, the Arts Council, Culture24, Dallas Museum of Art (by Skype), Google, The Guardian, Nesta and News UK. Crucially, though, the day introduced a new resource within the museum…data.
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Denmark for design museums; a discussion

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Design Museums for the 21st Century; a round table discussion
Trapholt Museum and University of Southern Denmark
Kolding, Denmark
23 January 2014

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When your PhD supervisor tells you to go to Denmark in freezing January, you go; the icing on the cake was that it started snowing as we sat in the Trapholt Museum’s meeting room, with its giant picture window, and everyone went “aaaahhhh”. The Museum is housed in a playfully modern building, boasts an unrivalled collection of Danish chairs and is next door to Arne Jacobsen’s summer house (sadly I didn’t get inside, this time), so that made up for the weather. I also got to see the thought-provoking and unprecedented touring exhibition, Out to Sea? The Plastic Garbage Project, which seemed totally appropriate in a country that loves fish.

My reporting of the round table is from my notes, with additional my comments; where they are short and in the same paragraph, they’re in [square brackets].

My supervisor is University of Brighton’s Professor of Design Culture, Guy Julier, and he is also Visiting Professor at University of Southern Denmark. He’d gathered his grad students from Denmark and Brighton, along with “expert witnesses” from the museum world in Denmark and the UK, to discuss design. Guy opened the proceedings by telling us that design museums were “mushrooming”. He counted 45 European design museums with more projects for new, expanding and relocating institutions still in the pipeline, mentioning that Mexico City’s MUMEDI, tripled its visitor numbers by rebranding as a “design museum”. He talked about the tension in museums between the contemporary and history, design and design history, and that a contextual approach to design in museums was the way forward, mixing the excitement of innovation with the pragmatism of solving problems, and heritage and continuity with new technology and innovative design fields. Finally, he pointed to the Index Awards (a Danish initiative) as evidence of design shifting away from a fascination with “heroes”. […and by extension, a recognised canon?]
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From the Archive; advice from Howard Tangye

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Thinking about fashion exhibitions, and the way that fashion designers and students use museums and galleries for inspiration, reminded me to re-post this account of a round-table discussion at London’s Design Museum about Fashion Illustration, as a discipline, practice and commodity. This event was very well attended and super informative, and part of the programme around the Drawing Fashion exhibition, which I reviewed on Eye Blog, here, and reposted on this blog too, here.

Drawing Fashion
Design Museum
Shad Thames, London SE1
3 November 2010 to 6 March 2011
Drawing Fashion debate
5 November 2010

Another reason for reposting this now, is because Howard Tangye had an exhibition this month at the Hus Gallery, “Casting the Line”; the catalogue may be downloaded, here. I became an instant fan of Howard’s work on hearing him talk at this debate, and when Stina Gromark and Louise Naunton Morgan of STSQ launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the design and publication of a monograph of Howard’s work, I was happy to contribute. The resulting book, Within — Howard Tangye is proof that Kickstarter is a very good thing!

Eye Blog Fashion Illustration Debate

Thursday 4:58pm, 18 November 2010
Design Debate”
by Liz Farrelly
Originally published on Eye Blog

The nature, collectability and status of fashion illustration

On a rainy evening, a large and avid audience was treated to behind the scenes revelations, and much insight about the state of contemporary fashion drawing. Chaired by Colin McDowell, the panel included gallerists Joëlle Chariau of Galerie Bartsch and Charian, and William Ling of Fashion Illustration Gallery, who kicked off by discussing the growing market for fashion drawings, both originals and prints.

Chariau declared that finding an audience isn’t the issue, but that finding the drawings is, as so much was originally made to commission. She recounted how, when she first opened her gallery, she prompted René Gruau to search his house and cupboards for “packages” of artwork, which he had never considered saleable.

Ling admitted that the collecting market is still nascent, much like the graffiti scene was a decade ago. But, he added, “the art market is starved of beautiful, hand-drawn work…when I show a new client the work, and explain it, it’s extremely powerful.” Both revealed that they sell to a number of fashion photographers, musing that they are attracted by what drawing can achieve, that photography cannot.
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Design Culture Salon

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Design Culture Salon
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
From November 2012 to April 2013
Attended 27 November 2012, 29 January 2013, 29 April 2013

In November 2013 I participated in the first Design Culture Salon as a panel member asked to discussion, “What can museums do with contemporary design”. The brainchild of Dr Guy Julier, Professor of Design Culture and Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design at University of Brighton and the V&A, it was followed by four more in the series, until April this year.

Here’s the official description…
“The Design Culture Salons are occasional discussion events hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. They provide a space to: develop advanced debate and discussion of the complex, dynamic and pervasive role of design in contemporary society; and consolidate discussion as to how design culture, criticism, representation and practice can be further developed. Each event features an invited panel, chaired by Guy Julier, University of Brighton Professor of Design Culture at the V&A. Panelists provide brief, personal overviews of the respective event’s theme. This is followed by open discussion. These salons are supported by the University of Brighton and the Learning Department and Research Department of the V&A.”

On the excellent website dedicated to the Salon, there are previews and reflections on each event, written by Guy and his colleague, Leah Armstrong. I attended three out of the five (bad winter weather being my excuse), and I’ve left comments on the website each time. Here are my comments again, but visit the site to read them in context.
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