Themed Events: The stuff that’s left behind – material history, methods and making – 4 June 2024 2-4.30pm at Grand Parade, G4
The School of Art and Media has many colleagues researching and making work in this area already, and it would be good to bring them together, as well as encouraging new researchers to consider the approach. In basic terms, the theory of ‘material histories’ is that objects offer windows into the past, illuminating the people, cultures and societies that used them; it asserts that examination of these objects can yield insights as important as those derived from analysing written texts. The notion, then, is not to set the written canon of Western Literature against a laundry list, in Terry Eagleton’s famous comparison, but to perceive that the garments recorded as needing cleaning and repair prompt equally significant findings.
Afternoon Team will be provided so please RSVP to mathistgroup@gmail by 28th May 2024 so numbers can be secured for catering.
This event will feature both presentations on the group members’ work with items from material history. Some objects will be circulated for careful handling and discussion, while there will also be the opportunity to participate in collage making:
Sue Breakell, Director of the University of Brighton’s Design Archives
FHK Henrion: Archive, Place, Memory – Sue Breakell
My presentation will discuss a new film-making project, with Dr Harriet Atkinson (SHSS), about graphic designer FHK Henrion (1914-1990), whose archive is held at the University of Brighton Design Archives. Interviewing Henrion’s children in the house where he lived and worked for 50 years, using archive material as prompts for discussion, the film will bring to life material histories of Henrion as a designer in his world. It will also acknowledge and rehabilitate the role of others whose lives are not so clearly readable in the archive, but who are critical to a professional designer’s success, such as office staff and family members
- Steph Harrison, PhD student
Lantern Slides – Steph Harrison
Lantern slides such as these were used in the days of the silent film, long before trailers, so that cinema owners could advertise forthcoming features to their patrons. According to the exhibitors’ booklet issued for South of Suva, another Mary Miles Minter feature from 1922, these slides originally cost 15 cents apiece. A full set of eight colour lobby cards was available for 75 cents, and two half-sheet posters were 70 cents. These items of ephemera originally cost less than the price of admission to the films they were promoting, yet they have survived when the films themselves are lost, and their value to the film historian now is incalculable, reliant upon them as we are to decipher the plot of the film and the promotion of the star when the film no longer exists.
- Lisa Hood, PhD student
British Film Magazines – Lisa Hood
British film magazines of the 1940s were slight publications compared to their American counterparts running to around twenty pages and printed on inferior paper. Still, they contained the usual listings, reviews, interviews and readers letters. However, more covertly they served as conduct literature. This presentation will discuss how the combination of words and images, editorial and advert combined to impress upon female readers contemporary feminine ideals
- Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Professor of Film History
Hollywood Movie Magazines – Tamar Jeffers McDonald
This presentation will discuss my research on American movie magazines from the 1930s, investigating how these apparently frivolous publications actually tapped into contemporaneous social and political issues, managing by turns to create, perpetuate and challenge topical assumptions about gender and identity.
- Vanessa Marr, Principal Lecturer in Visual Communication
Feminine Niceties – Vanessa Marr
This presentation explores a body of work created in response to post-war, mid-twentieth century magazine advertising aimed at women. The application of these advertisements through embroidery translates society’s expectations of women into tangible objects, highlighting the ridiculous nature of their claims.
- Marie McLoughlin, Honorary Fellow in the School of Art and Media
Bill Gibb (1943-1988). The first storyteller designer – Marie McLoughlin
Bill Gibb, a hugely successful designer in the 1970s, is almost forgotten now. In fact, he was the first of a particular type of British designer at the end of the twentieth century, a group which included John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Galliano said, ‘British Designers are storytellers, fairytale tellers, dreamers and I think this was really the essence of the romance behind Bill Gibb.’ This presentation will examine Gibb’s early development by examining his application portfolio for both St Martin’s and the Royal College of Art. Both are held at the Aberdeen art Gallery archive. Items from Central St Martin’s archive were also reviewed, both for examples of his later work and to look at illustrations of folk dress he may have used. This research has informed a chapter, ‘Bricolage and Historicism in the work of Bill Gibb’ for a forthcoming book on Gibb, Bill Gibb: Reviewing His Fashion Legacy in the 21st Century, edited by Shane Strachan and Josie Steed, (Bloomsbury 2025).
.Objects will be circulated for careful handling and discussion.
See PDF of event:MHG Poster pdf v2 Jun 24
Posted by Karen Gainsford