MIRIAD

The Newsletter of Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design
Spring 2013

All change at Righton: upstairs, downstairs, stirring

up dust, letting in light, losing and gaining space

NEWS

Old building, new spaces, new offices, new people

o longer will visitors to MIRIAD be

confronted by the infamous and
eccentric numerical keypad with
two number sixes, and an entryphone that
isnt connected to anyone. MIRIAD has
moved upstairs, knocking down some walls
on the way.

The ground floor of the Righton Building is being

transformed into the entrance of Hollings Faculty
as it moves from Fallowfield to a refurbished
Cavendish South.
The gloomy rooms at the
front of the building have
been abolished, creating
a space that echoes the
previous ground floor foyer,
site of many a supervisors
meeting.
The space will be lit both by

the roof lights and by the original windows, with their

stained-glass lozenges.
Beyond the glass wall, the kitchen at the rear , and
the handsome staircase have been retained. Staff
offices have moved upstairs. Room 114 has become
a research students study space.
To create additional space for postgraduates,
MIRIAD has been allotted shared quarters on the
fifth floor of the Chatham Building.

MIRIAD launches student-led digital journal

With the theme
Towards the Edges of
Perception, MIRIADs
new journal is inviting
contributions from
practice-based
researchers.

See Page 9

The MIRIAD Spring 2013 newsletter was edited by Alison Slater and Ralph Mills
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Righton as it was...

ohn Hyatt and Jim Aulich

were determined that
the ambience of the ground
floor Righton foyer, a place
to meet, study, debate, relax
and network, a place that
encouraged serendipity, would
in some form be replicated after
the upheaval. The opened-out
space will allow light into what
had been a suite of dull rooms,
and overlooks the greenery of
Grosvenor Park.

Millinery to MIRIAD

ightons Drapery Store was established in 1905,

on the corner of Cavendish and Ormond Streets.
Cavendish House was faced with white glazed
bricks and moulded buff terracotta decorations, the
building was designed to let as much light as possible
into its interior. A.D. Righton displayed his name in
grand bas-relief terracotta above the entrance. Inside,
the gallery around the atrium is supported on cast
iron columns and arches, the columns being topped
with Corinthian capitals. Cavendish Street, now
truncated by the Ormond Building, was then a busy
thoroughfare. Instead of dodging manic cyclists, one
would have dodged trams trundling past Chorltonon-Medlock Town Hall (now the Holden Gallery)
the Regional College of Art (still the Art School),
Rightons then next-door neighbour, the tall-spired
Congregational Chapel, and Pauldens Department
Store. The building on the opposite side of Cavendish
Street, now part of Ormond, was the headquarters of
Chorlton Poor Law Unions Guardians.

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Cavendish House, home of Rightons drapers shop

Courtesy of Manchester Libraries,
Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

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...and as it almost is...

Amid the paint cans

and ladders, the front
windows of the Righton
building reappear.

Designing Our Futures

An update

esigning our Futures offers research degree students and early career researchers
funded opportunities to develop professional, research and life skills. Some of the
projects are in full swing, others are still open for people to join.
See the website for current opportunities: http://dof.miriadonline.info/
Some of the highlights are:
The Code Creatives project is looking for people who would like to do a placement with an arts or
commercial organisation. It is also looking for people who would like to work with a coder in residence at
MIRIAD.
The DARE (Digital Arts Research Exchange) project is launching an online journal and is offering
opportunitiefor involvement in all aspects of this, from writing to editing to designing. It is also offering
placements with partner organisations.
The Design for Desertification project which takes place in Portugal has a call for papers for an
international conference in Portugal in June.
The Design for Writing project is inviting applications for participation in seminars and a workshop at the
Arvon Foundation.
The Design for Communities project based at the Biospheric Foundation in Salford is running workshops
about working with communities, from May to July.
For more information contact Myna Trustram (m.trustram@mmu.a.cuk)

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MIRIADs new Research Degrees Associate

Myna Trustram:
The museum in the mind

o sooner had Dr. Myna Trustram sat

down at her desk in Professor Jim
Aulichs office than she was packing
her files into boxes for an abrupt move
upstairs, and she was soon seen gamely
working on the other side of strands of keep
out tape amongst the temporary chaos of
the remodeling of Righton.

Institute, and studied

psychoanalyticbased theories about
what happens in
organisations for an
MA in organisational
consulting.

It was while reading

around what was
For now that Melanie Horton is living the clichd
regarded
as
a
Aussie dream (according to her Facebook status, see
social science that Myna discovered that none of
p16) in South Australia, Myna has taken over the role of
the literature looked at art and cultural organisations,
Research Degrees Associate and has quickly become
including museums. This realisation set her on the
a familiar face at MIRIAD.
track of the psychodynamics of museums, looking at
the relationships between individual and institutional
Much of her time at MIRIAD is focused on the
collections, asking questions such as Why do we
minutiae of Designing our Futures, the AHRC-funded
have museums? and positing their role as places
PARCNorthWest initiative that was launched in 2012 and
where we might use objects to connect with elements
is now producing its first outcomes (the first of many).
of ourselves including loss and mortality. And in this
My role involves anything from arranging insurance
age when museums stores are
to influencing future development;
chronically over-stuffed, do we
residencies, seminars, research
Researching the
gain reassurance just knowing that
and much besides, says Myna.
psychodynamics of
all that stuff is merely there? What
museums
might attempts at the rationalisation
In addition, shes dealing with
of museums and their collections
an increasing number of staff
mean to those who use them or
and student development activities. However, Myna
who are just happy they exist? Her work will resonate
stresses that I really want to be regarded as a first
with a number of MIRIAD researchers.
port of call to whom students can bring issues that
dont need their supervisors attention, someone they
So, after a long time entangled with local government,
can ask for help or simply ask for information.
including six years at Manchester Art Gallery, where
she became very familiar with the issues and
When the Righton dust settles, Myna will be spending
arguments around the Mary Greg
one day a week on her own research, in which she is
Collection, Myna is finally back in
looking at objects, collections and museums from a
academia, and shes very happy
psychological point of view.
about that! Being in a university is
very different, she explains. For
Myna gained her PhD at the University of Bristol in her
me theres a freedom I havent
20s, researching marriage and the Victorian army, which
encountered in other workplaces.
led to a book, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and
Im also happy to be in MIRIAD,
the Victorian Army (CUP 1984). She then spent the next
with its wide range of people
couple of decades working in museums, as a curator
doing very different things across
and eventually a consultant. Her final role in a museum
disciplines.
was at Manchester Art Gallery where she worked
with the Renaissance in the Regions programme in
Her feelings after five weeks? I
a partnership of six museums. It was the interactions
love it!
between these collaborating/competing partners
that fed a growing interest in the ways organisations
Is Melanie missing us?
functioned. She discovered the work of the Tavistock
See page 16.

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Engagement...Play Serious

AHRC Cultural Engagement Fund

I

n early 2013 the AHRC awarded the university 60,000 for a number of 12 week projects designed to promote and
further develop opportunities for postgraduate and early career researchers to gain experience... outside higher
education.
The objectives of the scheme were to strengthen engagement and knowledge exchange between a universitys arts and
humanities research and its wider cultural and civil milieu; and to support the broader skills development of high-calibre
recent doctoral graduates particularly in relation to working with partners to support the wider impact of research.
Three former MIRIAD students were successful in obtaining support for the projects they proposed: Dr. Gavin MacDonald
with FACT, Liverpool; Dr Melanie Horton with the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide and Dr Alison Slater with
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
If the results from this years Cultural Engement Fund are deemed a success the AHRC assures us the scheme will be
continued in 2014, so keep your eyes skinned.

Play Serious

If

the gloomy, subterranean, low-ceilinged, white-tile-walled space

that is Manchesters 2022 venue resembled a convenience
rather than a gallery, then it was surely appropriate that one
of the artists taking part in Play Serious in September 2012 was
showing toilet roll holder dolls as an element of her work. That the
Victorians clothed piano legs we know to be a myth, but it is a terrible
contemporary truth that people hide lavatory paper from the gaze of
the innocent and those who might be inflamed by the sight of naked

Ralph Mills was there

paper, and it is good to comment playfully on this
behaviour.
My dozen or so fellow participants were a
creative and original bunch, and I enjoyed
meeting them all and sharing their work and their
thoughts, with play and seriousness matching
the fitful light seeping into the basement.
There was Anarchist Ale from the
bar to match what was billed as an
explosion of art, critical insight and
creative activity.
The venue was hidden down a
narrow alley. Once there, and having
purloined a table and an electricity
supply, I was glad that Id brought
plenty of blu-tak, which the tiled walls
necessitated.
I had to duck out of the second day,
but not before I had the pleasure of
meeting some established MIRIAD
researchers, which was great. RM

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Inside photography...pictures of things

Clinton Cahill

2nd Year PhD (Design)

Trinity College Dublin, June 2012

Conference Paper: Imag(in)ing The Wake: graphic mimesis in the reading and visual adaptation of Finnegans
Wake. South Atlantic Modern Languages Association (SAMLA) & the Society for Critical Exchange, Durham
NC, November 2012
Panel: Joyce and Visual Culture
Conference paper: Drawing on Water: graphic reading and the Interiority of the visual in Finnegans Wake.
I am currently a full time Senior Lecturer on the BA(Hons) Graphic Design and Taught MA in Art and Design
courses at MMU.
Member of PPR Practice, Process and Reflection, art and design practice-as-research group supported by
MIRIAD
Inside Photography: ten interviews with editors, collaborative book project with David Brittain (ongoing)
Visual Discourses, international collaborative project with Dr. David Haley (MMU), Dr. Colleen Morris &
Stephen Pascoe (NMIT, Australia),

David Penny
David exhibited the photographic works Dutch
Painting and two new slide projection pieces as part
of the international group show A Lecture Upon the
Shadow at Shanghis ART gallery in Shanghai (JulyAugust 2012). The show travelled to the Open Eye
Gallery, Liverpool in December.
In August 2012 David exhibited the ongoing project
the Ship and the Nose at Sheffield Institute of Arts.
The work is a development of a project made in
residency at Manchester Central Library with the
Photography Research Group. Using found objects
and unwanted ephemera left behind during the
librarys renovation, the work rebuilds a collection

interim exhibition

of media, developing a narrative thread, producing

a potential journey that the Ship and the Nose has
come to represent.
David has produced a visual essay, Pictures
of Things and Things that are Pictures: Artistic
Research and its Document as Artists Book which
has been included in the publication Photography
and the Artist Book, published by MuseumsEtc.. The
volume features a number of essays from a range
of international artists, writers and academics from a
conference that took place in November 2011 at the
Manchester Artist Book Collection.
http://www.davidpenny.info

Interim is the working title of a

MIRIAD student-led practice-inprogress exhibition to be mounted
at the Paper Gallery, Mirabel Street,
Manchester in October/November
2013. Curated by Laura Guy and
Simon Woolham, the bijou gallery will
display the work of research students
Sarah Baker, Sara Davies, Howard
Dean, Lokesh Ghai, Jan Fyfe, Sarbjit
Kaur, Ralph Mills, Liz Mitchell, Ela
Niznik, Mary Stark, Derek Trillo and
Simon Woolham.
See www.miriadonline.info for news.

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Come Play with Me...displacement

Sarbjit (Sabbi) Kaur

Sabbi helped organise and participated in the Play
Serious event in Manchester, September 2012.
Play Serious came about through the PARC NorthWest (Practice as Research Consortium NorthWest)
23rd May 2012 event Opportunities for Postgraduate Researchers and Early Career Researchers.
It was aimed at practice based/led/as early career
researchers, the postgraduate community and supervisory teams of all HE Institutions which make up
the PARC NorthWest Consortium (http://parcnorthwest.miriadonline.info/consortium/).
Sabbis Play Serious portfolio: http://playserious.
info/portfolio/sarbjit-kaur/

Ela Niznik

Final year MA by Research, Sculpture

Sabbi led a series of creative workshops, Come
Play With Me, that gave participants a chance
to brush away cobwebs and give the left side of
their brains some play time. She invited research
students whether doing a practice led/based MA or
PhD or not, to come join us to sketch, cut, stick and
mould and give your imagination a workout.
In October 2012, Sabbi had an article published on
the Sikh Nugget web site, which describes itself as
The premier website on Punjab and Sikh heritage:
(http://www.sikhnugget.com/2012/10/questions-thatunbalance-me-exploring.html). She also appeared
in the Sikh Spectrum programme broadcast on the
Sikh Channel talking about her MA and its impact
on the Sikh community: in November 2012. (http://
www.sikhchannel.tv/default.aspx)

MA by Research

Ela Niznik is in the process of completing her MA

by Research at MIRIAD. The focus of her research
is on displacement and how this can relate to
fragmented identities.
She will conduct a practice-based investigation to
examine how belongings, remnants of place and
memories of home can narrate the resettlement of
Poles in the UK following WWII. She completed her
BA in Creative Practice at MMU in 2012.
Ela hopes to incorporate or Up-Cycle fragments
from the site into her ceramic works as means of
fossilising collective memories and the history of a
place.

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Illusions...gardens...dimensionality...girl teens

Charalampos Politakis
In November 2012, Charalampos presented his
paper Fashionable Illusions at the international
conference Scaleless-Seamless? Performing
a less Fragmented Architecture and Education
organised by the European Network of Heads of
Schools of Architecture (ENHSA), the European
Association for Architectural Education (EAAE) and
the Departments of Digital Design and Building
Construction, MSA Mnster School of Architecture,
Germany. (More information (http://scalelessseamless.org/)
Politakis, C 2012, Skeletal Apotheosis of the
Human Body, Rethinking the Human in Technology
Driven Architecture International Conference,
Chania, Crete, Greece, August 2011, in Rethinking
the Human in Technology Driven Architecture
International Conference, European Network
of Heads of Schools of Architecture (EAAE)
European Association for Architectural Education
(ENHSA), Transactions on Architectural Education
No 55, 447-455.
Charalampos exhibited at the contemporary
music and visual arts festival Reclaiming the Past,
Regaining the Real festival // beta version, at the
About cultural space & gallery in Athens, Greece,
25th September to 14th October 2012. Earlier in
July 2012, he took part in the three-day International
Video Art Festival MIDEN, held in Kalamata,

Jan Fyfe

1st Year PhD

Photographic investigation into dimensionality and

perspective
Jan took part in Denmark - On the Margins group
exhibition at Doverodde Book Arts Festival in May to
August 2012.
She has worked as an Assistant Lecturer to BA
Photography students. And run bookbinding
workshops for all undergraduates.
Jans work was selected by Ann Braybon to
showcase Source MA/MFA Graduate Photography
Online 2012 in a special supplement in the Autumn
2012 edition of Source magazine.

Greece, one of 216 artists chosen from over 1500

applicants.
Charalampos took on two Graduate Teaching
Assistant assignments in 2012. Early in the year
(January-February) he taught Adobe InDesign CS5,
Adobe Illustrator CS5, Adobe Photoshop CS5 to
2nd & 3rd year Landscape Architecture students.
Shortly afterwards (April-May) he gave tutorial
sessions based both in studio and in the computer
suite to help 3rd year BA Landscape Architecture
and Graduate Diploma Landscape Architecture
students with their exhibition preparation.

Joy Uings

6th Year PhD (P/T)

Gardens and gardening in a fast-changing urban

environment: Manchester 1790-1850
Joy is approaching the end of writing up her
research and is also working with Cheshire Gardens
Trust on the transcription of a Caldwell Nursery
archives.

Samantha Colling

3rd Year PhD Student (Film and Media)

April 2012: PCA/ACA conference, Boston:

Cinderellas Pleasure: the double coding of girl teen
film.
May 2012: 8th European Feminist Research
Conference, Budapest: Cinderellas Pleasure: the
double coding of girl teen film.
September 2012: 1st Global Conference: teenagers
and contemporary visual culture, Oxford: Music
video aesthetics and girl teen film.
Media: National and Global, seminar tutor.
Book chapter: Music video aesthetics and girl teen
film in forthcoming edited collection Sugar and
Spice: Global cinemas of Girlhood
Peer Reviewer: MECCSA - Networking Knowledge
Steering group - Teens and Contemporary Visual
Culture Project.

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Desertification...urban drawing

Ana Rosa Hopkins

Nov 2012 21st Century Rural Museum, Palacio das
Artes, Porto, Portugal
Nov 2012 Cabedal, Plataforma Revolver, Lisbon,
Portugal
October 2012 Meanwhile See This, Castlefield
Gallery, Manchester
Sept 2012 Rogue Open Studio, Rogue Artists
Studios, Manchester
2012 Neo:artprize 2012, Gallery 22, Bolton
February 2012 Part of the Programme, Finnish
Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland
Research trip: Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal, research
trip as part of the Design for Desertification research
project to document conversations with local people
and explore local customs and the visual landscape
to inform and generate new material for my practice.
Collaboration: selected to take part as visual artist in
the 21st Century Rural Museum itinerant exhibition
over two years.

Howard Read

1st Year PhD (P/T, Drawing / Cities/ Urbanism)

Work selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012.

http://jerwoodvisualarts.org/3511/Jerwood-DrawingPrize-2012/311
From its beginning, the Jerwood Drawing Prize has
championed the breadth of contemporary drawing in
the UK. From a submission of almost 3,000 entries,
the selectors have brought together an exhibition
of 78 works from 73 artists. The shortlist includes
established artists as well as relative newcomers
and students fresh from art college.
The selected works are exhibited at JVA at Jerwood
Space, London from 12 September - 28 October
2012, and will then tour to venues across the UK
including the new Jerwood Gallery, Hastings and
mac, Birmingham in 2013.
I attended the inaugural conference of iAUV
International Association of Visual Urbanists at the
British Library , London. October 8th 2012.
Drawing Research Network Conference,
Loughborough University:
Conference theme - Drawing Knowledge.
September 10th 11th 2012 .
Drawings included in the DRN 2012 juried digitally
Projected virtual drawing exhibition.

2nd Year PhD by Practice, Art and Design

Work: recently nominated as Director Fine Art
for Instituto Plano Cultural, (Brazil, Germany,
Switzerland, UK) creating new opportunities for post
graduate Fine Artists and cultural collaborations and
exchanges. neo:artprize 2012 winner, Bolton, UK.

Tacit

Towards the Edges of Perception

(continued from page 1)

an imperative to grow new organs, to expand

our sensorium and our body to some new,
as yet unimaginable, perhaps ultimately
impossible, dimensions (Jameson, 1991: 80)

he theme of our first issue explores practice-led

arts research which pushes at the boundaries
of knowledge, the senses, and human
perception. It reflects upon the aims of tacit itself,
which is dedicated to exploring and showcasing
research situated in emergent fields.
Papers/practice could focus upon work that:
challenges or subverts sensory perceptions
explores the edges of perception in ultrasound/
infrasound
questions how language shapes perception and
understanding
explores how the body can respond or adapt to
stimulus
crosses multiple media/senses (ie, ekphrasis,
synesthesia)
explores optic/auditory illusions, hallucinations,
physical tactile illusions affecting the body, etc.
Digital journal Tacit invites submissions of work
that interrogates emergent practice-led research,
especially where it is enabled or informed by digital
technologies. We are particularly interested in work
which utilises the potential of digital publishing
(including film, audio etc), or the ways in which the
digital changes the nature of arts research.
Editorial policy aims for a mixture of academic
writing*, reflective accounts and artworks that
demonstrate the range and debates within the field
of study. We will give equal weight to practice-led
research, accounts of it, and academic papers with
a basis in the practice-led field. Our editorial policy is
one of quality in relation to our themes, and will not
hold bias against or for text/practice.

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Remember your garden

Simon Woolham has recently been on an exchange

at the Kunst Academie in Dresden, Germany, where
he spent a week installing works and presenting
his practice and research to Students, Lecturers
and Curators in Dresden. Simon was chosen from
a pool of Artists, exchanging with other PhD
Researchers and students from the Kunst
Academie, who will be in Manchester in
September.

Simon Woolham

1st Year PhD

Simon also has a solo exhibition at 20/21

Arts Centre in Scunthorpe where he will
be presenting new work and a written
commission that explores narratives,
exchanged with Simon from the employees
who work throughout the Arts Centre and
fellow employees about the building and its
workings. This will be presented throughout
the opening weekend, which coincides with
the literary festival throughout Scunthorpe:
http://www.northlincs.gov.uk/leisure/arts/2021visualartscentre/exhibitions
One of Simons ongoing, live works on
Facebook, Remember Your Garden?
which will be a part of his practice and research,

asks participants to post descriptions related to

remembering childhood gardens and intimate
places and an incident that happened there. The
intimate, collaborative process, through the drawing
that Simon presents, opens up a dialogue about the
representation and re-imagining of these places.
Theoutput can be found at: https://www.
facebook.com/pages/Remember-YourGarden/361672137192835

In December Simon will also be part of a curated

touring show called Edgelands at the Bluecoat
Gallery in Liverpool, which will form part of Simons
research, watch this space.

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Ordinary things

Liz Mitchell

1st year PhD candidate

My research considers materiality and memory in the

museum. For nearly 20 years I was a curator at Manchester
Art Gallery. As researcher, I am now investigating one of
its collections; the Mary Greg Collection of Handicrafts of
Bygone Times and Dolls and Dollshouses. A sprawling
mass of domestic objects, amateur crafts, toys and
miniatures, the collection has spent much of its museum life
in storage.
A recent collaborative research project, Mary Mary Quite
Contrary (2009-2011), undertaken with staff from the School
of Art, began to explore the untapped potential of this
collection through creative practice. My research seeks to
extend the remit of this initial project, analysing the shifting
value and status of the collection during its museum lifetime
and its evocative appeal for contemporary audiences.
Presentations:
The Intimate Glimpse: Familial Narratives and the Mary
Greg Collection at Siblings, University of Manchester
and Manchester Art Gallery, 23 March 2013. This
conference examined the implications of Juliet Mitchells
psychoanalytical theories of the sibling relationship for
artistic and critical discourse.
Believe me, I remain: the finest cotton threads spun on
the mule at Encounters, a Morgan Centre Interdisciplinary
Conference, University of Manchester, 3-4 July 2013. Encounters can be personal and intimate, fleeting and
serendipitous, conflicted and provocative. This conference takes the theme of encounter as the starting point
for interdisciplinary dialogue.
Publications:
A Question of Value: Re-thinking the Mary Greg Collection (with Sharon Blakey) in Collaboration through Craft,
ed. Ravetz, Kettle and Felcey (Berg: 2013). Arising from a paper given at the international conference Pairings:
Conversations, Collaborations, Materials, Manchester School of Art , May 2011, this book essay discusses the
creative journey and outcomes of the collaborative project Mary Mary Quite Contrary.

Maud Goldberg

2nd Year, MRes Practice-led, Installation Art / Architecture

Giving a presentation/experiment/symposium, Maud took part in Play Serious in Manchester in September

2012. She provided a document/critique for Imprint event (Manchester/Newcastle) and took part in the Imprint
Group exhibition in Newcastle (October 2012).
She will be taking part in group exhibitions in Alvanley Woods (May/June 2013) and Artists Access to Art
Colleges, University of Chester (June/July 2013) as well as mounting a solo/group exhibition in Newcastle.
Maud has been accepted for the Graduate Student Experience Tutor pool at MMU. She was appointed to an
Artists Access to Art Colleges residency, University of Chester (November 2012 to June 2013).

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Small things
Ralph is studying the phenomenon
of miniaturisation in material culture,
specifically as exemplified by smallscale mass-produced everyday
ornamental objects from the recent
past. His working title - Objects of
Delight: The Nineteenth Century
Mass-Produced Miniature. These
objects, although occurring on
archaeological sites, have been
little studied, yet apparently played
an important part in peoples lives,
in that they were manufactured in
large numbers, desired, acquired and
displayed at the heart of homes, often
above the hearth, on the mantelpiece.
As part of material assemblages,
they form part of the material
memory of the lives of
working-class people
and the places in which
they lived. Ralph is
an adherent of Sven
Lindqvists ethos of
Dig Where You Stand,
which attaches value to
the history of ordinary
people rather than elites.
He is also inspired by the
revealing of social issues by
the documentary witnessing of
photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier,
who explores the connections in decline and loss
between people and abandoned places.
Ralph took part in the Play Serious event,
Manchester, September 2012. (http://playserious.
info/portfolio/ralph-mills/). He presented a paper,
0.99 archaeology: Small Things Considered, at the

CHAT (Contemporary and Historical

Archaeology in Theory) conference
in York, in November 2012 and will be
presenting at the Performative Mischief
symposium in Loughborough and the Good
Things and Bad Things conference at Nottingham
Contemporary/Nottingham Trent University in June
2013.
Web site: http://www.firesofprometheus.org

Ralph Mills

1st Year MPhil/PhD

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Desertification...curation...advertising war

Cristina Rodrigues

Design for Desertification

Cristina Rodrigues reports that the Design for Desertification project has
received significant publicity in the Portuguese media. Our project is now
known all over Portugal, thanks to all the debates, interviews, newspaper
and the International Seminars and Exhibition last year, says Cristina. One
of the most important ones is the Publico newspaper, she writes, because
its considered the best Portuguese newspaper. Investigadora acredita que
o abandono do interior est a contribuir para crise econmica (Researcher
believes that the abandonment of the interior is contributing to economic
crisis www.publico.pt/Sociedade/investigadora-acredita-que-o-abandonodo-interior-esta-a-contribuir-para-crise-economica-1506568). Cristina has
also been interviewed several times for the TSF radio station, for example
on combating climate change (www.tsf.pt/PaginaInicial/Vida/Interior.aspx?content_id=1852391) and took part
as a special guest in a political debate for the same station, in a show called A mesa do canato: The table in
the corner. She was also interviewed for the RTP TV show called Portugal em Directo Portugal Direct which
focuses on Portugals rural areas.
DfD.Design for Desertification: http://creativeruralcommunities.wordpress.com//

Laura Guy

1st Year PhD Contemporary Art History & Curatorial Practice

Forthcoming curatorial projects at International

Project Space, Birmingham (April 2013) and Tate
Liverpool (Autumn 2013). Previous co-curation
and programming as part of Inheritance Projects
at Nottingham Contemporary (Feb 2012), The
Hepworth Wakefield (Jun 2012), MK Gallery (Jun
2012), Peckham Artist Moving Image (Sep 2012),
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Oct 2012),
SARAI, New Delhi (Dec 2012).

Leanne Green

2nd Year PhD

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (MIRIAD/

Imperial War Museum)
Advertising War: War Publicity and the First World
War
Teaching: Associate Lecturer in MMU Art and
Design
Additional work: Lecture for Institute of Historical
Research Seminar Series, Advertising War: Charity
Imagery of the First World War, Imperial War
MuseumWorkshop talk, LR Bradley and the War
Publicity Collection
Prizes and Awards: AHRC Skills Development
Award for interdisciplinary conference in 2014.

Presentations at The Lit & Phil, Newcastle with

the North East Photography Network & University
of Sunderland (Oct 2012) and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art (Nov 2012).
Review article: Chateau Despair by Lisa Barnard
in Source Photographic Review (Forthcoming
- Spring); Review article: Car Crash Studies by
Nicolai Howalt in Source Photographic Review
(Forthcoming - Spring); Audio-interviews for Source
Photographic Review (online - Feb/March 2013).
Visiting Lecturer, BA Photographic Arts, University
of Westminster, University of the Arts London and
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. Associate
Lecturer in Manchester School of Art, MMU.
Research trip to New Delhi and Chandigarh, India
supported by Vision Forum, Linkping Universitet
(Dec 2012)
MA in the Photographic Image, Durham University
(completion Sep 2012); MA in Culture and Media
Production, Linkping Universitet, Sweden
(completion Dec 2012); Vision Forum Associate,
Linkping Universitet (2009-12); Consultant for
Contemporary Queer Artistic Practice in the UK
Symposium, University of Sussex Centre for Sexual
Dissidence

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Material memories

Sara Davies

MA by Research Part Time

Reconstructing Home Memory in the

Scandinavian Diaspora
Sara Davies is in the first stages of her research
project currently building the interior of a
Scandinavian barn in her studio, reconstructing a
part of her ancestral home in Great Britain. She
is exploring how images, symbols and memories
function within the Scandinavian Diaspora in
the North West of England using installation,
photography, text and collage. Sara is currently
investigating the possibility of exhibiting a book
documenting the process at the Gustav Adolf
Scandinavian Church in Liverpool, a centre for
Scandinavian immigrants.

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Film as fibre
An investigation into the
filmstrip as textile material
Exhibitions:
March 2013 - Selected Scenes
from Star Wars light installation
using woven super 8mm film
shown at Film Material Soup
one day takeover event in
response to the exhibition
Misdirect Movies at The Royal
Standard, Liverpool
February 2013 A Series
of Darkroom Experiments
exhibited at Kraak Gallery in
an exhibition by OneFiveEight
Collective

Mary Stark

January 2013 From Fibre

to Frock, a 16mm black and
white looped film installation
exhibited at Critical Costume, a symposium at Edge
Hill University

projection, and Handmade Emulsion: Creating

Black and White Film Stock From Scratch at
Nowhere Artist Film Lab, London

December 2012 Selected Scenes from Star Wars

light installation using woven super 8mm film shown
at Mono No Aware Expanded Cinema event in at
Light Space Studios, New York
October 2012 Four feature films woven together
video exhibited at the Knit and Stitch show touring
London, Harrogate and Dublin
September 2012 MA
Photography with Distinction
from Manchester School of
Art and woven film installation
exhibited in the Holden Gallery

1st Year PhD part-time

Featured artist in Contemporary Practices:

Where are we now? chapter and photographer
for international hardback publication Kettle.
A & McKeating. J, Hand Stitch Perspectives,
Bloomsbury, London published October 2012
Mary is an Associate Lecturer on the BA (Hons)
Textiles in Practice and Photography programmes at
Manchester School of Art

February 2012 Cornerhouse

Micro Commission supported
by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation,
Thats Entertainment, a
woven super 8mm feature film
exhibited at Kraak Gallery,
Manchester
May 2012 and March 2013
- Participant on Expanded
Cinema & Optical Sound, a
course led by Guy Sherwin,
working with Steenbeck editing
tables, 16mm film printing,
camera-less filmmaking and

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www.miriadonline.info

Wanda Zyborska
Wanda took part in One Person Seven Hurdles, a collaborative performance with
fellow artists of TOGYG: the artists Andrew Agace, Jaci Atkinson, Jo Alexander,
Lisa Hudson with Jelili Atiku from Nigeria in August 2012 at The Old Goods Yard
in Treborth, Bangor, North Wales, UK.
Early in 2013 Wanda won the Royal Cambrian
Academy Open Exhibition Prize 2013 with her
sculpture Presence II (right).
She also took part in KUNST ALTONALE
HAMBURG 2012, an installation featuring
international artists that followed the highly
acclaimed Venice Vending Machine during the 54th
Venice Biennale.

A note from the Antipodes

t is with great sympathy that we report the trials and tribulations of Melanie since she left
MIRIAD in December. We hear that she has now arrived in Australia following a gruelling
journey through Asia. It turns out that her all-expenses-paid airfare wasnt all she had
hoped for and instead required an additional two months of overland travel on buses, trains,
kayaks, tuktuks, bicycles and even an occasional hitchhike.
On arrival in Oz she discovered that the blazing sun made her entire winter wardrobe
obsolete and repeated cooling dips in the sea a daily necessity. She misses drinking warm
beer with colleagues in the Salutation and sharing a busy office with her boss. Her lack of
an office in Adelaide means that she regularly has to work at home or find a shady spot in
the Botanic Gardens, though her research so far has shown that ample material exists for
an in-depth study of the citys cultural life.
Melanie tells us she is prepared to support other researchers who wish to visit Adelaide but
warns they must be prepared for certain day-to-day discomforts such as outdoor amenities
(eg. cinema, dining, shopping) and a variety of strange fauna that can make a swim in the
sea or stroll in the park somewhat disconcerting.
MH

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