News
Liz Wells speaker at 2020 Annual Conference for Society for Photographic Education, Houston, USA
Yan Wang Preston, Ten By Ten: New Discoveries Exhibition at FotoFest Houston, USA
Jem Southam: 'Birds, Rocks, River and Islands', The Levinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth, Jan–Mar 2019
Land/Water and the Visual Arts is an international network of artists, filmmakers, writers, curators, scholars and researchers who embrace a diversity of creative and critical practices.
Operating as a forum for the interrogation of nature, culture, aesthetics, and representation relating to land, landscape and place, we generate work that addresses a range of issues, including environmental change, sustainability, journey, site and regional specificity. In addition, a forum for theoretical and methodological debate is constructed through research events, exchange exhibitions with other higher education institutions, conferences, symposia and publications.
Since 2019, we have developed the International Environmental Arts Research Network to look at crucial insights informing our understanding of current environmental issues and climate change.
Featuring Dornith Doherty, Sant Khalsa, Chrystel Lebas, Heidi Morstang and Liz Orton.
In a world shaped by Covid-19, it seems more important than ever to consider nature, biodiversity, and the environment. Seedscapes brings together five contemporary artists exploring global efforts to safeguard vital plant species from extinction. Plant diversity is rapidly declining and faces threats from global warming, pollution and war. Yet without seeds and their potential for food and medicine, we cannot sustain ourselves. Featuring photography, moving images and sculpture, Seedscapes reveals how international artists, biologists and ecologists are responding to these challenges.
The exhibition is curated by Liz Wells, professor in photographic culture, University of Plymouth.Virtual event, 26 May 2021, 14:00–15:30
Join via Zoom (Meeting ID: 932 1932 6213; Passcode: 387920)
Jessica Lennan, Dartmoor Cup Marked Stones
"I will be talking about the beginning of a new work, which is based on cup marked stones in Dartmoor and the use of clay to make imprints and casts of the cup marks. The project also marks a digression from my photographic practice and addresses questions about how to navigate and develop new approaches within a creative practice."
Jessica Lennan is a photographer and Lecturer based in the South West of England. Her work is a careful and sensitive investigation of the social environment and more specifically of the relationship between people and places. She graduated from the Ostkreuzschool for Photography (Berlin/Germany) in 2009 and completed an MA in Photography and the Book at the University of Plymouth in 2012.
Robert Darch, The Moor
Robert will discuss the importance of autobiography, memory, and place in relation to his work on Dartmoor, referencing his debut book, The Moor (2018). The Moor depicts a fictionalised dystopian future situated on the bleak moorland landscapes of Dartmoor. Drawing on childhood memories of Dartmoor alongside influences from contemporary culture, the narrative references local and universal mythology to give context but suggests something altogether more unknown. The realisation of this dystopian future is specifically in response to a perceived uncertainty of life in the modern world and a growing disengagement with humanitarian ideals. The Moor portrays an eerie world that shifts between large open vistas, dark forests, makeshift dwellings, uncanny visions, and isolated figures.
Robert Darch is a British artist-photographer based in the South West of England. He has published and exhibited widely, and his photographs reside in public and private collections. He holds an MFA with distinction in Photographic Arts and a MA with distinction in Photography & the Book from the University of Plymouth. He also has a BA with honours in Documentary Photography from Newport, Wales. Robert is an Associate Lecturer in Photography at the University of Plymouth.
Virtual event – 11 December
Jessica Lennan & Robert Darch, Dartmoor
Virtual event – 26 May 2021, 14:00–15:30
Liz Wells speaker at 2020 Annual Conference for Society for Photographic Education, Houston, USA
Yan Wang Preston, Ten By Ten: New Discoveries Exhibition at FotoFest Houston, USA
Perspectives: glacial landscapes within contemporary photographic practices
21 April 2021, 8am–11am (UK) 9am–12pm (Sweden) 9pm–12am (New Zealand)
How do we intervene photographically in the Arctic and Antarctic regions? The polar history has many examples of photographers and artists travelling to the Arctic region and Antarctica. Due to environmental change, the last two decades has seen a rise in Art & Science expeditions to these regions. During this event we will unravel various artistic research approaches by some of our network researchers who have worked specifically with glacial landscapes. We will encourage a discussion around the purpose of these practices and highlight why it may be of significance to our understanding of climate change, and how we can further act on positive actions.
Dr Simon Standing and Dr Kayla Parker, 24 February 2021
Contemporary British Housing – Dr Simon Standing
Architecture and urban development continue to hold a major fascination for me. In a new photographic series, which I'm referring to as Contemporary British Housing, I explore a fascination with the way in which a particular form of housing development has been appearing in the British landscape. A number of major developments have emerged in the late 20/early 21 century that draw on periods of architectural history and new planning and construction ideologies such as the New Urbanism movement. Within these developments there is a sense of accelerated place-making that I find fascinating, and at the heart of which are individual homes built in a variety of architectural styles from across the centuries, arriving in a matter of months.
Surveying the Laira - Dr Kayla Parker
A presentation by artist filmmaker, Kayla Parker, about her recent explorations with filmmaker and sound artist Stuart Moore, on foot and by kayak, of the Laira, the upper tidal estuary of the River Plym, on the south west coast of Britain.
Over the centuries, discharges from the tin mining and china clay works on nearby Dartmoor to the north have silted up the estuarine channel so it is now only navigable by small boats at high tide. From the early part of the 19th century, successive reclamation projects have reduced the width of the Laira, with embankments along the east and west sides of the estuary shore removing the large tidal creeks at Lipson Lake, Tothill Bay and Chelson Creek, and the more recent creation of Blagdon’s Meadow, designated a Country Wildlife Site.
Parker and Moore have been making work in the area around the Laira’s southern shoreline since 2004, using 16mm and 35mm film and digital technologies, and will reflect on the precarity of this zone of land, whose existence and habitats are threatened by encroaching tidal waters and the impacts of increased human activity.
The aim of this conference was to expand on and question how art can contribute to understanding contemporary environmental issues and challenges.
Artistic research practice has a unique capacity to offer crucial insights informing our understanding of environmental issues in the era of the Anthropocene. The reflexivity inherent in arts research along with an emphasis on expressive communication as outcome offers significant scope for bringing crucial yet complex relationships between vulnerable species, human action and climate change to wider appreciation amongst general audiences and key stakeholders.
Placing artistic interpretive methods alongside scientific interpretive methods carries some risks and challenges, particularly as artistic approaches may invite an open-ended, contemplative engagement with the scientific, sensorial and political layering of the environment, that is not typical of mainstream science communication. Ways in which arts practice complements and extends scientific insight will be centrally addressed. This conference was the first of a series of research events planned by the international research network linking University of Plymouth, Massey University, New Zealand and Valand Academy, Gothenburg University, Sweden.
Sensing Nature: Photography and Environmental Arts
Liz Wells spoke at The Rooms Museum and Art Gallery in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, to coincide with the opening of a major survey of work by Canadian environmental artist, Marlene Creates. October 16th 2019
The talk was the final stop in a trip that also included public talks at Ryerson University, Toronto, and Concordia University, Montreal, along with visits to Ryerson Image Archive and to the National Collection of Photography at the National Gallery of Art, Ottawa.
Exhibition explores beneath the surface of culture in Cyprus
Artists from the University of Plymouth are taking part in an international exhibition which aims to offer a different perspective on life in Cyprus.
Professor Jem Southam returns from a stay in New Zealand, initiated by our long-standing relationship with the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington.
During the visit, he gave the annual Peter Turner Memorial Lecture at Te Papa, Wellington; participated in the second New Zealand PhotoBook festival; taught on a photography publishing workshop; led a session on planning for a national photography archive with museums from around the country; met with post-graduate students from Massey University; and began a photographic project in New Zealand; a start of a residency with the Photography department at Massey.
His was the third artist-in-residency by staff from 'Land/Water and the Visual Arts Research Group' to visit Massey University, after Liz Wells in 2010 and Heidi Morstang in 2012. Anne Noble, Wayne Barrar and Caroline McQuarrie from Massey University, have each made work as a result of artist-in-residencies at University of Plymouth.
Discussions also took place about extending the links between the two art schools through collaborative research, events and exchanges, which has been given potentially greater emphasis since Professor Chris Bennewith became Head of the School of Art, Design and Architecture at University of Plymouth. Chris was previously Associate Pro Vice Chancellor Enterprise for the College of Creative Arts.
The honorary doctoral conferment took place at their annual University doctoral degree ceremony on October 20 2017.
Liz Wells returned to Gothenburg to participate in a Valand Academy research day on 4 December 2017.
Design lecturer invited to judge prestigious national craft initiative
Polly Macpherson, Associate Professor in 3D Design at the University of Plymouth, has been selected as one of the expert judges for the Woman's Hour Craft Prize 2017.
Rachael Allain – PhD; Above and Below the Horizon: a Practice-led Investigation into the Liminal Thresholds of the Ocean
Wayne Barrar – Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
Fedra Dekeyser – PhD; Unearth: Visual Strategies to Reveal and Regenerate Hidden Histories
Dr Laura Hopes – PhD
Kate Isherwood
Professor Tyrone Martinsson – HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Caroline McQuarrie – Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
Professor Anne Noble – Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
Dr Luca Nostri – PhD; Place and identity in Italian photography through a study of the town of Lugo
Dr Kayla ParkerMary Pearson – PhD
Dr Claudia Pilsl – PhD; Digital Porosity and its Impact on the Mediation of Networked Images
Dr Yan Preston – PhD; Yangtze The Mother River: Photography, Myth and Deep-Mapping
Professor Emeritus Jem Southam
Dr Sally Waterman – PhD; Visualising The Waste Land: Exploring Processes of Self-Representation
University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA