Object Matters 4: Chris Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture, University College London

This monthly seminar series based in Dublin, Ireland,  is organised by the National College of Art and Design, the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media and University College Dublin, and convened by Dr Lisa Godson (NCAD/GradCAM) and Dr Joanna Bruck (UCD).

The next  ’Object Matters’ seminar,  to be held on Monday February 20th at 5:30 pm in Newman House. The speaker will be Chris Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. His research has largely focussed on popular photographic practices and the consumption of Hindu chromolithographs in central India, and his talk on Feb 20th is entitled ‘Anna Hazare and the ‘media fold’: a material culture approach to popular politics in contemporary India.’

Attendance at the seminar is free, but booking strongly advised – please email lisa.godson@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

Chris Pinney Biography:
Pinney’s publications combine contemporary ethnography with the historical archaeology of particular media and include ‘Camera Indica: the Social Life of Indian Photographs’ (1998); ‘The Coming of Photography in India’ (2008) and ‘Photography and Anthropology’ (2011).  Pinney’s current photographic xeno-epistemic digital-cyanotype project ‘Notes on Indian History’ is an attempt to document India’s colonial and postcolonial predicaments, and includes images taken at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal in April 2010 as part of the ‘Bhopal:Blueprint/Endplan’ series.  He has also been working on a British Academy funded project ‘Power From Below: Dalit Modes of Political Performativity’ which is examining the visual ethics and politics of Dalit goddess possession. He is currently interested in cultural spaces which conventional social theory has tended to neglect: ‘more than local and less than global’, and spaces of cultural flow that elude the west. In addition to ongoing projects with an Indian focus (for instance, a filmic record of two central Indian Dalit intellectuals) he is also working on visual dimensions of cultural encounters from 1492 to the present, and thinking through Kracauer’s later work and the question of ‘multiple temporalities’. Current book projects include ‘Zoom: Seeing and Believing in Colonial and Postcolonial India’ and ‘Lessons From Hell’ (concerned with popular Indian depictions of punishment). During 2007-09 he was Visiting Crowe professor in Art History at Northwestern University.

Object matters 4 flyer

Object Matters 3:
‘All Arts Are Mechanical’: Investigating the Common Ground of Craftsmanship in Renaissance Italy
Dr Marta Ajmar (Research Department, V&A)

Monday Jan. 23rd 5:30 – 7 p.m. Newman House, 85-6 St. Stephen’s Green
Free, but please book by emailing Joanna.Bruck@ucd.ie or lisa.godson@gmail.com

This is the third in the monthly seminar series ‘Object Matters: interdisciplinary perspectives on material culture’ organised by the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM), UCD School of Archaeology and the Humanities Institute of Ireland.

Convened by Dr. Joanna Brück (UCD Archaeology) and Dr. Lisa Godson (NCAD/GradCAM)

All welcome!

Attendance is free but places are limited so please book by emailing Joanna.Bruck@ucd.ie or lisa.godson@gmail.com

‘All Arts Are Mechanical’: Investigating the Common Ground of Craftsmanship in Renaissance Italy

The Renaissance marks an important point in the debate about the arts and their relative status. While, arguably, a hierarchical canon of the arts is consolidating, prioritizing the ‘liberal’ arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, alternative models of thinking are also brought forward, proposing, for example, an ecumenical notion of the arts on the basis of their common ‘mechanical’ nature. Contemporary artisanal practices complicate things further, revealing not just a process of circulation of design, knowledge, skills, tools and language, but also a culture of closure and separation, secrecy and competitiveness, while displaying an often playful approach to the relationship between the ‘liberal’ and the ‘mechanical’. This paper will explore the relationship between these different epistemologies and experiences of the arts and attempt to put them in meaningful conversation.

Dr Marta Ajmar (Research Department, V&A)
Marta Ajmar (MA, PhD, Warburg Institute) is Acting Head of Graduate Studies on the History of Design Postgraduate Programme run in partnership by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art and leads the Renaissance MA strand within it. She was Lead Scholar for the cross-disciplinary research project The Domestic Interior in Italy, 1400-1600 (supported by a Getty Collaborative Research Grant) and co-curated the major V&A exhibition At Home in Renaissance Italy (2006), co-editing the accompanying book. Her research interests lie principally in the design and material culture of Renaissance and Early Modern Italy and the Mediterranean world. She has published on the domestic interior, gender, eroticism, sociability, the material culture of childhood and ‘global’ objects. Recent publications include: ‘The Global Renaissance: An Investigation of Cross-Cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period’, in Global Design History, eds. G.Adamson, G.Riello and S.Teasley (Routledge, 2011), (with Luca Molà); and ‘Geography and the Environment’, in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family, eds. S. Cavallo and S.Evangelisti (Berg, 2010) and ‘“The Spirit is Ready, but the Flesh is Tired”: Erotic Objects and Marriage in Early Modern Italy’, inThe Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, ed. S. Matthews-Grieco (Ashgate, 2010).

Her current research projects include a new V&A exhibition project exploring the conceptualization of the mechanical arts and its relationship with artisanal practices and epistemologies in the Italian Renaissance; a three-year collaborative project supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Grant on early modern health and wellbeing (Healthy Homes, Healthy Bodies, with Prof. Sandra Cavallo and Dr.Tessa Storey, Royal Holloway, University of London); and a collaborative research project on the history of materiality (with Dr.Richard Checketts, University of Leeds and Dr. Victor Buchli, UCL).

Saturday Talks Series: Talking Objects

Taking place on the second Saturday of January, February and March, this series of talks is designed to showcase fascinating new research on objects within the National Museum collection. All talks will be given by graduates of the MA Design History & Material Culture at the National College of Art and Design. All talks will take place in the National Museum of Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks. Please meet at 12.15pm at Main Reception.

All talks are free of charge. For further information contact bookings@museum.ie or Dr Anna Moran, morana@ncad.ie (Coordinator of the MA Design History & Material Culture, NCAD)

14th January 2012, 12.30-1.00pm
‘Every Man his Own Doctor’: A Social and Material History of the Irish Domestic Medicine Chest, c.1800–c.1840
Emma O’Toole

11 February 2012, 12.30-1.00pm
‘Green-Coated Irishmen’ –The National Army Uniform from 1922 to 1939
Hannah Mullan

10 March 2012, 12.30-1.00pm
Limerick Gloves –A Curious Case of Leather Craftsmanship, 1780–1840
Liza Foley

Talking Objects(2)

Lost in Lace Conference
3 February 2012, 10 am - 4 pm

This one-day conference will draw on the themes explored in the exhibition Lost in Lace. A panel of artists, architects and scientists will consider how they have been inspired by the aesthetics, techniques and cultural associations of lace.

Speakers will include keynote Gijs Bakker, exhibition curator Lesley Millar MBE, artists Michael Brennand-Wood, Kathleen Rogers and Kira O’Reilly and architects CJ Lim and Patrick Arends. The conference will be chaired by Crafts Magazine Editor Grant Gibson.

Tickets £40 / Concessions £30

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Water Hall
Chamberlain Square
Birmingham, B3 3DH (map)

Click here to book.

Find out more about Lost in Lace here.

The final part of the Per Cent for Art Commission relating to the refurbishment of the Dublin City Council flats on Bride Street, Bride Road, Ross Road and Nicholas Street is a book Heirlooms and Hand Me Downs by Chris Reid.

The beautiful book is a history of the last one hundred years as told through the memories of people who live or have lived in a small corner of the Liberties in Dublin 8.

‘If Chris Reid’s project is important as a model, it is because of the way it ventilates histories from within, brings them to the surface in public space and proposes that the chosen fragment of an interview – with a sense of voice and place – stand for a whole constellation of narratives that have meaning and value.’  Professor Declan McGonagle.

For more information contact Ruairí O Cúiv, Public Art Manager, t. 01-222-8589

Writing Design: Words and Objects edited by Grace Lees-Maffei is published this month by Berg. It has been developed from the 2009 Design History Society annual conference Writing Design: Object, Process, Discourse, Translation hosted by the TVAD Research Group at UH, and has enjoyed support from the Design History Society Research Award. In the book, an international group of authors asks: How do we learn about the objects that surround us? As well as gathering sensory information by viewing and using objects, we also learn about objects through the written and spoken word – from shop labels to friends’ recommendations and from magazines to patents. But, even as design commentators have become increasingly preoccupied with issues of mediation, the intersection of design and language remains under-explored. Writing Design provides a unique examination of what is at stake when we convert the material properties of designed goods into verbal or textual desc-ription. Issues discussed include the role of text in informing design consumption, designing with and through language, and the challenges and opportunities raised by design without language. Bringing together scholars and practitioners working in a range of fields, Writing Design reveals the difficulties, ethics and politics of writing about design. Professor Jeremy Aynsley (Royal College of Art) describes the book as ‘essential reading for anyone interested in the historical and contemporary circumstances by which words describe design, and design defines language.’ Professor Penny Sparke (Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise, Kingston University) says ofWriting Design ‘Now, for the first time, a group of scholars have set out to reflect on that longstanding practice and to make us think more deeply about the complex relationship that exists between words and things.’

Call for Papers
Workshop: ‘Dress, Textiles and Heritage’
University of Wolverhampton
13 June 2012

The University of Wolverhampton invites proposals for papers that explore the collection, display, conservation and all other uses of dress and textiles in heritage settings, including museums and historic houses, in Britain and beyond. Both theoretical and practice-based papers are welcome. Proposals by museum professionals, conservators, historians and all other interested scholars are equally welcome. Themes of interest include – but are not limited to:
•       The uses of textiles in recreating and restoring historic interiors
•       The collection and display of dress, from haute couture to everyday dress
•       The historic development of dress and textiles collections
•       The use of dress in re-enactment
•       The role and development of ethnographic and specialist collections
•       The conservation of historic dress and textiles
•       Exhibitions and displays beyond heritage settings
•       The ‘consumption’ of dress and textiles in heritage settings

To submit a proposal, please send title and abstract of c.300/400 words to Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk by 15 February 2012.

A small fund is available to help cover speakers’ travel and fees. To find out more, and for any other information, please contact Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk

Or see: http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in6086/histextiles.html

The workshop will be held in Millennium City Building, located on the University of Wolverhampton’s City campus, just 10 minutes’ walk from Wolverhampton’s bus and train stations.

Dr Laura Ugolini
Reader in History
Joint editor, Textile History
School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications
MC Building
University of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
WV1 1LY
E-mail: l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk

Lecture: LAN ARCHITECTURE
Monday 12 December, 6.30pm, NCAD 

AAI LAN LECTURE 12 DEC 2011-1

‘Archaeology and Aesthetics: the Presence of Late Neolithic Art’
Dr. Andy Jones, University of Southampton 

The second ‘object matters: interdisciplinary perspectives on material culture’ NCAD/UCD seminar will be held on Monday November 28th at 5:30pm in Newman House.

It will be given by Andy Jones, who is Reader in Archaeology at University of Southampton. Prior to this he was a fellow at the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, Cambridge, and a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin.

In his current work, Andy is exploring the sensual and visual aspects of material culture, and is especially interested in how this links
with the mnemonic character of artefacts. His books include ‘Memory and Material Culture’ (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and ’Colouring the past: the significance of colour in archaeological research’ (Berg, 2002).

The seminar is free, but places are limited. If you would like to attend please email lisa.godson@gmail.com

Object Matters Flyer