Exploring London/in the Field in Cardiff

 

                         London is one of the greenest cities in the world from Exploring 20th Century London

 

Our Level 4 undergraduates are currently 'in the Field' exploring various places around Cardiff, researching them in groups made up of students from all our different art and design disciplines. They will soon return and engage in creating physical outcomes to their investigations back in their practice studios. I think they may be interested to see how many different aspects there are to a city and how these present visually on this rather fab website.

 Exploring 20th Century London

Phase I of the Exploring 20th century London project is a partnership project between four museums in London:

• Museum of London (MoL)
• London Transport Museum (LTM)
• Jewish Museum, London
• Museum of Croydon

The project’s aim is to make the collections held by these museums more accessible, but to do so in a way that links the objects in the collections with the broader history of London. All objects and images featured on the site speak of the real events and experiences of twentieth-century London.
The content covers different types of objects: from Routemaster buses to architectural designs; from 1970s platform shoes to oral history recordings; from paintings and artworks to family photographs. It also includes a mass of supporting information.
more information about this project here

Martha Rosler's Library

Martha Rosler Library
1 August – 9 November 2008
Stills Edinburgh, 23 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh

The book collection of the American artist Martha Rosler is perhaps the perfect embodiment of her radical vision - and an archive of the marginalised American left. It has travelled the world -here's its  journey.

 

 

 

 

e-flux, New York, 2005-2006, Frankfurter Kunstverien, 2006, Museum for Contermporary Art, Antwerp, 2006, unitednationsplaza, Berlin, 2007, Institut national d'histoire d'art, Paris, 2007-2008, Stills, Edinburgh, 2008, Gallery at the University of Massachussets, Amherst, 2009 eflux describe how the library came to be mobile

Martha Rosler's Library holds books on economy, political theory, war, colonialism, poetry, feminism, science fiction, art history, of children’s books, dictionaries, maps and travel literature as well as photo albums, posters, postcards and newspaper clippings . On exhibition they could be studied at will.
Martha states in thsi video that

"the practice of an artist is based on ideas and criticism and thinking and philosophy and science"

three cheers for that
                                      

 

 

Now back at rest the library is in the process of being catalogued and can be searched here. There are over 7600 books in the Martha Rosler Library; they can be viewed  by their title, author, or at their original location on Martha Rosler's shelves. A keyword search for Feminism finds 555 titles.

 Rosler’s website here describes her work thus '(She) works in video, phototography, text, installation, and performance. Her work deals with the separation of the public and private sphere, exploring issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment'.
She has published 17 books of photography, art, and writing, in several languages. Her essay book Decoys and Disruptions, was published by MIT Press in 2004. Publication of her three-part series, “Culture Class; Art, Creativity, Urbanism,” based on the Third biennial Hermes lecture that she gave in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, in 2010, was recently completed in the e-flux Journal, followed by “From Gentrification to Occupation: The Artistic Mode of Revolution.”

A cheery start

Here at Cardiff Met we offer an MA in Death and Visual Culture and for staff and students of that course and all others interested in the subject here is a link to the wonderful Wellcome Institute Collection covering  their current exhibition 'Death: A self-portrait' which runs until 24 February 2013. Events associated with the exhibition including discussion days and a day of films about death are listed here

'(The) exhibition showcases some 300 works from a unique collection devoted to the iconography of death and our complex and contradictory attitudes towards it...  including art works, historical artefacts, scientific specimens and ephemera from across the world. '

On show are rare prints by Rembrandt, Dürer and Goya , anatomical drawings, war art and antique metamorphic postcards; human remains , Renaissance vanitas paintings and twentieth century installations celebrating Mexico’s Day of the Dead, ancient Incan skulls and a chandelier made of 3000 plaster-cast bones by British artist Jodie Carey.

The website also offers links including one to  'Stories from the Day hospice' a blog by Chrissie Giles who throughout the summer of 2012, spent time at the day hospice at Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, running a creative writing group. In a series of posts she reflects on her experiences there and showcases some of the writing produced by group members.

  You can also view three extraordinary skulls (two Mexican, one Japanese) from every angle as they revolve on screen.

A book 'Death a Picture Album' accompanies the exhibition.