Ms Ines Rae

Lecturer in Creative Media (Photography)

Qualifications

MA Social History of Art, University of Leeds
BA Fine Art, Brighton Polytechnic

Professional membership

Member of the Higher Education Academy

Roles on external bodies

2015-19  External Examiner, BA Photojournalism, Southampton Solent University

Teaching interests

Teaching and research is in the area of contemporary photographic practice. I have a particular interest in the role of women within representation.

Ines contributes to the BA(Hons) Media Arts and BA(Hons) Creative Media programmes in the areas of Collaborative Practice, Documentary and contributes to the Critical Theory programme and Dissertation Supervision.

She has also supervised postgraduate students with interests in feminist art practice, class cultures and documentary photography practices.

Staff serving as external examiners

External Examiner for BA(Hons)Photojournalism at Southampton Solent University 2015-2019

Research interests

Awarded Arts Council England funding from Developing your Creative Practice scheme May 2021 for Portrait of a Woman

Current work in progress is Portrait of a Woman. At my mothers death I inherited photographs and letters which pointed to an interesting family history. At the work’s centre are the memories of life in Basque Spain in the 1930s embedded in particular stories passed down to me by my mother. There is a potential detective story here as my mother is invisible in this history because she is illegitimate. 

Trained in Fine Art, Rae’s work uses photography and text to explore representation, femininity, consumer culture and the everyday.

Rae's research aims to analyse the labour of femininity in a contemporary photographic culture where this still remains largely invisible. A Real Work of Art uses a model of image-making which is largely dialogic and interactive in its involvement of participants. This piece established a lot of the groundwork for subsequent research, especially in terms of methodology. central to this is the relationship between photographer and subject. A Real Work of Art explores the business of surface appearances through portraits of women whose job it is to crete a facade. The work visually describes a number of retail sites as consisting of both consumption and production.

Publications include Kurl up n Dye, a monograph published by Wild Pansy Press with an introduction by Simon Grennan and incorporating photographs and typography investigating the vernacular in British high street culture. A feature on the book was recently on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour. The research has led to a number of conference papers and articles exploring the photographic image in terms of the vernacular, cultural anthropology and material culture.

www.inesrae.com

Research degrees awarded to supervised students

2008 MA by Research, Sean Cousin Pentimento: A re-evaluation of the integral polaroid

Grants & contracts

2021 Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice for Portrait of a Woman £10,000

2008 Sandbox Sabbatical (internal Uclan award) £7858

2007 Arts Council England £11482 for In-between Spaces

2005 Arts Council England £9043 for Settling In

2005 Arts and Humanities Research Council, Small Grants in the Creative and Performing Arts £5000

2001 Arts and Humanities Research Council, Small Grants in the Creative and Performing Arts £5000

Creative practice & artistic projects

Research Projects

A Portrait of a Woman/Retrato de mujer - work in progress

The project takes its name from a photograph of an unknown woman.
I inherited photographs and letters which pointed to an interesting family history 

At the work’s centre are the memories of life in Basque Spain in the 1930s embedded in particular stories passed down to me by my mother. There is a potential detective story here as my mother is invisible in this history because she is illegitimate.

Remembering the City; On memory, experience and the urban landscape

My interest in memory work has developed from a smallproject called ‘Memory City’. The project investigates the relationshipsbetween personal memory, everyday experience and public space. Its focus is on narratives of security andinsecurity, anxiety and confidence, and belonging and alienation in the urbanlandscape. Using a sequence of themed workshops the project focuses on: thepleasures, risks and dangers of city life; mobility and the cosmopolitan city;and cultural landscapes of the city. The aim is to see how people use theirmemories to construct their understandings of public space in the present.

Funded by Sandbox/Uclan 2009. 

With Claire Corrin and Daniella Watson ‘Inbetween Spaces’ Funded by Arts Council England (£13,000) Completed 2007 (Lead Applicant: Rae)

Inbetween Spaces (2007), explores ideas of marginality on several billboard sites around Manchester and Salford. The bus tour explored the marginal and overlooked in the urban fabric through the rehearsed performance of a tour guide.

With Simon Grennan and Alan Ward ‘Kurl up n Dye; an exploration of the vernacular in British high street culture’ Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (£5000) and UCLan (match funding) Completed November 2006 (Lead Applicant: Rae)

In Kurl up n Dye there is a nod to the motifs and pictorial strategies from which other photographers work: There is a long tradition in using photography to document and explore aspects of British popular culture and sometimes with a nostalgia for disappearing worlds. But there is a point to be made here about the stories that don’t get told, or that need a differently skewed vision. Perhaps as Diane Arbus felt when she made the image of an interior of a barber shop there is always another way of seeing a place. 

The shop names and typefaces signal economic status,class and taste beyond the frame. The humour in the shop names is self-directed, belonging entirely to the independent trader – to the lower rent, non-corporate, “other mainstream” undertaste that laughs at the aspiring by making deprecating laughter part of the pleasure of aspiration itself. The people and places in Kurl up n Dye understand the operation of glamour’s oxymoron in their lives, making use of the knife-edge between image and reality.

 In 'Kurl up 'n' Dye', I think we are squarely in the sights of glamour.Or perhaps, Rae has her sights set on glamour. Either way, we seem more than anything to be looking down the barrel of a gun, which is curious, seeing as the images in ''Kurl up 'n' Dye' ' have been made within the pleasure industry,at the salon. Nobody seems to be having much fun in the peopled interiors that contribute to the work. The salon facades also appear either dreary or shabby.The conventions of documentary photography are assaulted by Rae in 'Kurl up 'n'Dye', not discarded or ignored, so that the private views, the intimate views and the set-up images still seem motivated by a desire to reveal social relationships…

Simon Grennan in Kurl up n Dye 2006 

 With Jo Lansley, Manchester Metropolitan University ‘Settling In’ Funded by Arts Council England (£11,000) Completed April 2006 (Lead Applicant: Rae)

Settling In explores ideas of home and performativity.Using a tradition of artist-led initiatives the research aimed to reassess the diversity of artistic practice funded by the Arts Council in Manchester and to introduce new artists and work to the region, particularly female practitioners. The exhibition was intended as a comment on the corporate extravaganza that is the British Art Show.

Taking home as it’s starting point Settling In explores how we move within and experience this most intimate of spaces – the home becomes a metaphor for the creative process, a locus for female activity, as well as a place of secrets and self, of rituals and routine. 

Reports & invited lectures

Conferences organised

Mapping; The Land/Water Summer Symposium July 2013

Other academic activities

Links