future                      present                     past Future button Present button Past button






Returns: Back stitch methodology as a reflective approach to artistic research

Art of Research VIII Re-Imagining conference, Aalto University, Finland
30 November - 1 December 2023



Photo credit: Anna Francis and Joanne Lee

Documentation of ongoing artistic research undertaken by the Returns collective, Andrew Brown, Joanne Lee, Danica Maier and Christine Stevens. Images are included of works created by each of the 4 members of Returns, displayed at the following exhibitions: 'Topographies of the Obsolete' (Stoke-on-Trent, 2013), 'Returns' (Nottingham, 2015), 'In Return' (Sheffield, 2016), and 're-turning' (Hanley, 2018) 

Re-Turning

Hanley

30 November to 15 December 2018

Photo credit: Anna Francis

Returns is an on-going collaboration that forms part of an international research project Topographies of the Obsolete, initiated in 2012 by Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway, which focused on the disused Spode ceramics factory in Stoke-on-Trent. The Returns project returned to Stoke-on-Trent at Airspace Gallery, including artefacts and associated stories created by groups of refugees and asylum seekers, participants in a series of workshops in Stoke and Nottingham during Summer 2018. The soundwalk OpenCity Stoke took place on the opening night as an artist-led walk and subsequently as an app.

 

Reciprocity

10 February

Photo credit: Dave Ball

An exhibition 'In Return' at Sheffield Institute of Arts (SIA) Gallery, part of Returns, an ongoing project by a group of artist researchers from Sheffield Hallam University and Nottingham Trent University, exploring the legacy of post industrial landscapes and production.

 

Returns, Nottingham

11 February - 4 March 2015

 

 

In Bonington Gallery showed a ropelight piece, comprised of a tangle of Christmas lights from the Spode site, in addition to a 20-minute soundwalk in which participants were invited to explore the gallery and its immediate vicinity. I combined recent in-situ recordings with archive and other sound, culminating in a huge explosion at the spot where a bomb fell in May 1941, effectively leaving the corner a bombsite until recently (http://www.boningtongallery.co.uk/exhibitions/returns)