Research Materials: 4 objects and the scholars who study them

Friday 5th May, 2023

1-3pm, SCR, level 4, Arts 2, QMUL Campus, Mile End

The School of Languages, Linguistics and Film in collaboration with the Visual & Material Forum invites you to a ‘show and tell’ event around four objects, each in a different type of material, and each calling for a variety of methodological approaches:

Paper(s) – Adrian Armstrong (Modern Languages and Cultures)

Wood – Rukmini Bhaya Nair (Global Professorial Fellow)

Iron – Gemma Tidman (Comparative Literature and Culture)

Ribbon – Kiera Vaclavik (Comparative Literature and Culture)

The 10-minute presentations will be followed by a roundtable discussion and a Q&A around ‘research materials’ in the fullest sense.

This seminar will take place at 1-3pm on Friday 5 May 2023 as a hybrid event. Talks will be presented in the SCR of Arts 2 on QMUL campus at Mile End. It will also be possible to attend the seminar via Teams: Click here to join the seminar on the day.

Global Histories in Print and Illustration – Aratrika Choudhury (QMUL) & Ningfen Wang (QMUL)

Wednesday 19th April, 2023

3:30-5:00pm, SCR, level 4, Arts 2, QMUL Campus, Mile End

This research seminar will present the work of two doctoral researchers at QMUL, Ningfen Wang (History) and Aratrika Choudhury (Comparative Literature). From different Schools at QMUL, both researchers are engaged with histories of print culture and graphic arts in the context of larger global histories.

Ningfen Wang (School of History), Representations of Black Africans in 17th-century Etching: The Context, Techniques, and Afterlife of Wenceslaus Hollar’s Prints

In 1645, Wenceslaus Hollar produced four etchings showing bust studies of black Africans in seventeenth century European clothing. Today these prints are one of the better known visual sources of the history of race and racialisation. Scholars such as Kim F. Hall, Imtiaz H. Habib and Simon P. Newman used these prints as illustrations to their scholarly writing, however, without critically examining the context and the production of the prints themselves. This paper will address the social and cultural environments in which the artist Wenceslaus Hollar worked and lived, and his technical approach to the challenge of visualising the black African body in intaglio printing. Although they were produced in Antwerp, the conceptualisation of these prints were inseparable from Hollar’s experiences during his first English period (1637-1644) under the patronage of Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel. Two of these prints in particular were influential in subsequently shaping the representations of black African youth in early modern England as it is evidenced through the numerous contemporary copies after them. Therefore this paper will also explore ways to contextualise a printed image through themes such as the transmission of visual images across artistic mediums,  the mobility of the artist and the ability of a printed image to reach diverse audiences.

Aratrika Choudhury (School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film), Empire and the Illustrated Book: Indian Tales in the Golden Age of British Book Illustration

The imperial practice of story collection was increasingly supplemented by illustrative processes, towards the end of the nineteenth century. New editions and deluxe editions brought curious reinterpretations of the idea of ‘authenticity’. Illustrations resurrected forgotten texts, reimagined existing ones, and increased their collectability, like the 1912 edition of Lal Behari Day’s Folk-Tales of Bengal containing thirty-two colour plates by Warwick Goble. Authenticity as a philosophical concept has come to embody a multiplicity of context-specific meanings over time. I draw attention to the slippery fluidity of its definition and proceed to critically explore its functionality in the landscape of image-text interactions in illustrated books containing Indian narratives, published in Britain.

This seminar will take place at 3:30-5:00pm on Wednesday 19 April 2023 as a hybrid event. Talks will be presented in the SCR of Arts 2 on QMUL campus at Mile End. It will also be possible to attend the seminar via Teams. Click here to join the seminar on the day.

Hogarth and Europe – Alice Insley (Tate Britain)

Thursday 3rd March, 2022

17:15-18:30, Online (zoom)

A curator talk and ‘conversation’ co-hosted by the Queen Mary Visual & Material Forum and the Queen Mary Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Alice Insley (Tate Britain – Curator of British Art, 1730-1850)

In this talk, Alice Insley will discuss and reflect upon the recent exhibition Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain. William Hogarth is one of the most well-loved and celebrated British artists, known for his wit, irreverence and candour. Though often typified as a ‘true Brit’ and ‘founding father’ of British art, in the exhibition his art is juxtaposed with that of his European contemporaries for the first time, be that Chardin or Watteau in Paris, Troost in Amsterdam, or Longhi in Venice. As Alice will discuss, this allows a unique and not entirely predictable opportunity to explore the continuities, parallels and divergences in the flesh and to explore how artists across Europe grappled with the rapid social, cultural and economic changes of the eighteenth century.

Following the talk, there will be a ‘conversation’ between Alice and Hannah Williams (QMUL) to explore some of these issues in more depth.

This event is free and open to all. Register here for the zoom link: https://qmul-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckdeCorDwrG9dW-QK-3E96GuKlOhe9rcIw

Visual Arts in 1970s Barcelona – Antoni Muntadas

Tuesday 16th November, 2021

17:00-19:00, Online (register via eventbrite)

Organised by the Centre for Catalan Studies in collaboration with the Queen Mary Visual & Material Forum.

THE QUEEN MARY ANNUAL CATALAN LECTURE

For the Queen Mary Annual Catalan Lecture this year we are privileged to welcome the well- known artist Antoni Muntadas. In this personal view of the decade starting in 1970, he will be talking about the art scene in the city where he was born. It was a period of great change, from the final stages of the Francoist dictatorship to the transition to democracy. Conceptual art and counter-cultural practice became prominent.

Join us for a fascinating perspective and a discussion with one of the most famous artists still active.

Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942) is a postconceptual multimedia artist. His work often addresses social, political and communications issues through different media: such as photography, video, text and image publications, the Internet, and multi-media installations.

His projects are presented in different mediums, such as photography, video, publications, the Internet, installations and urban interventions, and have been exhibited in numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum in California, the Musée Contemporain de Montreal, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, the Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, among others.

Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-queen-mary-annual-catalan-lecture-antoni-muntadas-tickets-178152517977/

QMUL Visual & Material ‘Meet & Greet’

Wednesday 27th October, 2021

16:00-17:00, Online (Teams)

An informal online gathering to connect with visual and material researchers in the QMUL community.

The event will take the form of a ‘meet and greet’ session, in which we will ask everyone to briefly and informally introduce their research and how it pertains to the visual and material.

We will then have a larger conversation about the Visual and Material Forum and discuss ways to connect our community and continue to build it.