Art & Digital

Project explanation

 

Part of the Museum and Gallery Studies course at the University of St Andrews is to plan, deliver and evaluate a placement work in a museum, gallery or institution around. This is a great opportunity to put the course into practice and to gain some professional experience and knowledge of the museum and gallery world.

I looked for a project where I could assist a curator in his/her daily activities. I really wanted to work with collections to learn a maximum about curatorship since I have been willing to become a museum curator for a few years now.

I came across the proposal for the University of Dundee Museum Services, and after contacting Matthew, he invited me to visit the collections and to talk the project through. The project was to curate an exhibition due to open in Spring, in one of the University's galleries, which also happened to be an information point.

I chose this project, happy to work in a small museum because the conditions are slightly different than in a national institution: Matthew has to do everything by himself and on a very tight budget, close to non-existent.

 

Curating an exhibition was a process being unveiled at the University of St Andrews since we had started to work on our exhibitions. At first, I did not really feel too stressed about having two exhibitions at the same time, but the pressure showed up during setup.

The only problem was that in St Andrews, I was in charge of only a part of the tasks (Publicity, Sponsorship, Printed Materials) and in Dundee, I had to take care of everything.

 

Choosing a theme & objects

 

My first task was to browse through the collections and very quickly, some major trends appeared, such as landscapes, portraits, scientific instruments, teaching charts and panels. I took notes and soon, some ideas started popping in my head: the (Scottish) portrait, Scottish landscapes, (studying) the nude, (depicting) the human body, painting flesh, body in movement, posing & moving.

I started focusing on nude portraits and wrote their references. Some paintings were also very interesting and I wrote them down to have a broader view. I hesitated between an exhibition about landscapes and one about portraits. I went through the mathematics and medical collections quickly, and then through the comics and teaching charts collection, which I thought were really impressive

 

My main thoughts after seeing the collections was that first, there was a huge amount of scientific objects, and second, there were a lot of past students’ works. I did not want to do an exhibition about sciences, because I really dislike this subject, and I decided it was high time to come back to academic works, either landscapes or nude portraits. At this point, I did not know yet that I would include science in my exhibition in the end.

 

I had a feeling that exhibitions had been focusing a lot on sciences, given the proliferation of scientific instruments in the collections. An exhibition on Ninewells Hospital had just been set up for instance, and one of last year's main displays was on the eye.

I wanted to come back to academic art and to show drawings made by students.

 

After careful consideration, I decided that my exhibition would focus on motion and the human body, and the scientific teaching and representation in the arts of it.

My very first idea was to only focus on nudes, but Matthew was a bit reluctant to that because the exhibition would be in the Tower Foyer Gallery, the main administrative point, where all the students walk by every day. The problem would have been that some people could be shocked to see so much nudity, which is why Matthew and I narrowed the theme to bodies and movement.

 

I started selecting objects on week 4: I went through the collections again, through my notes of the previous weeks, and I selected around 65 items.

I tried to be diverse about it, so I selected drawings, paintings, sculptures, and teaching charts.

 

• Research

 

I went on the EMU database and took each item's file. I put everything on Word documents, under the form of tables, with an image on the right and all the information I could find on the left.

I then tried to find some sub-themes for my exhibition, so that it would be consistent: I went through the artwork and noticed some recurrent themes such as movement & postures, shadows & lights, or realism, such as wrinkled bodies or pregnant models. 

 

• Narrowing the selection

 

Matthew and I went through my selection and narrowed it down to 44 objects showing movement, its study or its drawing.

Therefore, I had to delete pictures where the models were immobile. I was interested in the different representations of the body, its study and the visible muscles according to the posture of the model.

While we were narrowing the selection down, Matthew suggested we found a big painting as a standout on the wall. I found the Country Dances by Peter Collins, which I really liked for its bright colours and curved lines giving the illusion of movement.  

 

• The tale of the camera

 

There was an antique camera in the collections that we thought was used for chronophotography, but we were not sure of it. Chronophotography was used a late 19th-century method to take pictures of human beings or animals in movement. The most famous example of it was Eadweard Muybridge's photographs of the galloping horse.

I started doing some research and asking professionals about the camera.

I contacted Luke Gartlan, who teaches History of Photography at the University of St Andrews, and Marc Boulay, Photographic Archivist in the Special Collections Division. Marc Boulay directed me to other people in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

I emailed people in the United Kingdom and in France, and a few weeks later, I started receiving answers, all of them being that the camera was a photomicrograph, used to take pictures of small objects.

Therefore, I could not use that camera for my exhibition, as I thought it was not entirely in the theme.

 

• Final selection and sub-themes

 

The final selection contained 26 objects:

15 drawings, paintings and photographs, 3 books, 3 comic books plates, 1 sculpture and 2 physiology objects.

 

My sub-themes for the exhibition, which I chose when my selection of objects was getting narrowed, were:

1. The learning process: academic teaching and learning of anatomy

2. Putting learning into practice: life drawing and depicting motions

3. Measuring motions and the newest representations of movement in arts

 

I wanted my exhibition to follow this logic: learning what our bodies are made of, representing them in life-drawing and paintings, and then the scientific discoveries to measure movements, and their impact, giving way to modern techniques to represent motion.

 

• Layout in the Gallery & Setup

 

I had in total 15 items to be hung on the wall, and some drawings could be in cases. I decided to put the comics in a flat case, as I thought they were more objects than drawings to be hung on a wall.

I made a layout on paper, and of course, on the day of setup, it was modified because of things I did not think about. For instance, I wanted to put the teaching chart of the Mechanics of Movement on the right of the wall, next to the entrance, but we could not put it there because of air coming in all the time that could damage it.

I had to reverse the layout: what should have been on the right was now on the left and vice versa, but the logic behind it was kept.

Also, some pictures were to be hung above others, and again we sometimes inverted them for consistency and balance.

 

• Setup

 

The setup lasted for one day: after I finished mounting and framing everything, we fetched the photograph and the Country Dances from the stores. Matthew and Hope helped me, and when we arrived I laid everything down before hanging anything, to see how it would look. We started changing a few things because I originally placed the tall photograph next to the painting, but it seemed that we had two enormous things next to each other and a proliferation of small things on the other side. We changed the layout twice before agreeing on everything, and I was happy with the result since my logic was still there.

 

I set up the cases and in one of them; I placed the flipbook under the digital screen featuring the video. I had made a first video, wit my phone, but the format could not fit on a memory card and could not be read on the screen, so Matthew and Hope filmed it again.

 

 

Design of Communication Supports

 

I designed everything (poster and introduction panel) on Photoshop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Organisation of Events

 

 

• Muybridge and Animal Locomotion, 24th March 2015

 

An evening of short talks by David Booth, Keith Williams and Matthew Jarron exploring the pioneer photographer, his visit to Dundee in 1890 and his influence on the study of animal motion.

 

This conference lasted for about an hour and was very energetic since we had 3 speakers with PowerPoints, who where all enthusiastic and willing to include the talk in a wider theme that also included my exhibition.

About 30 people were present for this conference and seemed to enjoy it. A few of them came to me at the end and said they had really liked the exhibition, especially Dr Keith Williams.

I think this event gave the exhibition's programme a good start and gave me confidence about it. Some people chatted with me about the exhibition and how they liked it; some of them said they would come to my guided tour.

 

 

• 3D Character Animation, 8th April 2015

 

Phillip Vaughan will talk about 3D Character Animation, and demonstrate how walk cycles, run cycles and other animations sequences work in relation to Games, Film & TV. Phillip is the Course Director of the MSc in Animation & Visualisation at DJCAD and has nearly 20 years’ experience as a 3D Animator and Producer.

 

I met Phillip in late January with Matthew and we discussed having a workshop for adults focused on animation. The workshop would last for about an hour and a half and would feature 3D rather than 2D because it was easier for Phillip and it would look better on a computer. Phillip would talk for about 30 minutes and then show some mock-ups on computers.

This event attracted 13 people, and I think Phillip advertised it to his students. He talked us through the basic principles of animation and then showed us 3D designs of characters used in video games that he designed a few years ago. It was very interesting, for me as for other people.

 

 

• Exhibition Guided Tour, 9th April 2015

 

Join student curator Alix Marion for an informal guided tour of the exhibition.

 

I was to give a tour of my exhibition to explain how and why I did things as such, the purpose of the exhibition, the theme etc. This event was discussed early on and a sort of "must see".

5 people came, and I talked for about 20 minutes, telling people how the idea came to me, why I wanted to exhibit things as such and the logic behind it. They were all interested and had a few questions about the objects and the exhibition.

 

• Victorian Animation - Make your own Zoetrope, 18th April 2015

 

Take a step back into the past and discover one of the earliest forms of animation. Create your own animated sequence with a zoetrope and learn about the history of these objects in this fun family workshop. Details of how to book will follow soon.

 

As I have said before, I wanted to have a flipbook event but when I contacted Sarah Derrick from the Education department at Dundee Contemporary Art, she suggested zoetropes, since she had two she could lend me. She met with me and told me they had hosted zoetrope workshops in the past, where children could make their own and see the animated image in the end.

 

At first, Matthew and I thought of buying zoetrope kits, but it turned out to be impossible to find, or they were extremely expensive and coming from the United States of America. In the end, we decided we would have everyone make his/her own using thick coloured paper, pencils and CDs.

I looked up on the internet how to make a zoetrope and started planning the session, reserving about 10 minutes at the beginning of the workshop to talk a bit about the history of zoetropes and the early forms of animation in the Victorian era.

 

• Back to Basics, 27th April

 

Join tutor June Scott for a life-drawing session to learn more about depicting the human form. The Dundee Art Society holds regular life drawing classes for its members and has kindly allowed us to book some extra places on one of their classes.

 

Organising a life-drawing event was not as easy as I thought. It was unfortunately not possible to plan it in collaboration with the College of Art and Design, so I emailed the Dundee Arts Society. When I met them, we had two options: either to host the event as part of my exhibition in their workshop, which would have been too expensive in the end (about £90) or to advertise their existing sessions. I called the teacher and asked if she could add a few people to an existing class on a Monday night. She said she could add 5 more people to an existing session of 5-6 people, and each would pay £7 to join the class. We were then advertising the Dundee Arts Society event, and they were advertising my exhibition.

 

 

• Capturing Motion before Movies, Wednesday 29th April

 

A free talk by Professor Nick Wade exploring the various methods developed in the 19th century to simulate and understand motion, from phenakistiscopes to zoopraxiscopes.

 

After adding a few objects from the Physiology collection, Matthew asked Professor Nick Wade to give a talk about it linked to the exhibition. It gave a good closure to the exhibition and attracted quite a lot of people (about 20). Professor Wade was very interesting and engaging with his audience.

 

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