Rowan Bailey

Herder's Sculptural Thinking

The written language of thought is often difficult and inaccessible. Herders formation and use of sculptural lexemes shows how we can be rigorous and creative with our thinking. Philosophical writing should be read in an inventive manner. Herder triggers, provokes and enthuses, because he treats philosophy as if it were sculptural, that is, he allows a space to be generated for the reader to imagine philosophy as a sculptural practice, and through this process present new ways to read and write with the tools of formation.

Concrete Thinking for Sculpture

This article proposes to explore the variegated plays of concrete as a travelling concept through four specific examples, viewed from the locality of the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle in 2015. It will be argued that ‘concrete’ makes possible a triangulated reading practice in, of and for sculpture. The first example looks to the use of concrete, as a material, in some of the ‘technical’ experiments of Henry Moore, from the 1920s-1930s. The second example is the only public concrete sculpture by Barbara Hepworth on record, entitled Turning Forms. This is a kinetic work which was commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The psychic registrations of form-in-concrete will be explored through the aesthetic reception and understanding of these works. The third example examines the interplay between abstraction and concretion in a work of structural engineering: the Arqiva transmission tower on Emley Moor. This structure is a working utilitarian model of the telecommunications industry which took hold in the 1960s and 1970s. It is also a sculptural monument in a landscape of other design ‘types’. The fourth example considers the recent display of Lygia Clark’s Bichos at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, in 2014-2015. Bicho Passaro do Espaco (‘Creature Passing through Space’) (1960) reveals a particular translation between concrete thinking and concrete experience. These examples call upon the semantics of the concrete as a thought process and will track a journey into a region marked by three interconnected points: the concrete specificity in the material works selected, the broader field of concrete forms within which the sculptural may sit and the philosophical/aesthetic language of concrete for sculpture.

Crafting Stories in the Domestic Archive

Abstract The Knitting and Crochet Guild archive, Holmfirth, west yorkshire hosts a vast array of handmade items, including clothing, artifacts, yarns, and samples, as well as tools, pattern leaflets, booklets, and magazines. this article explores how the collection was used as a starting point for engaging students in new experiential encounters with the archive, as both a concept and as a container for material histories of the past. two theoretical frameworks of investigation provide an intertwining methodology for reading the project: the first operates as a feminist narrative of intervention in the history of textile craft making, and the second considers how the “thought-images” of walter benjamin provide a tool for thinking through student responses. it is argued that as a repository of the home crafts, lee mills provides historical materialism with the experiential investigation it needs for a critical pedagogy of the present.