Research fellows 2009
Each year our fellowship programme enables artists and researchers to develop their work.
In 2009 our visiting fellows included Sarah Burnage, Peter Dent, Marion Endt, Dorothea Dietrich, Dario Gamboni, Michael Dean, Simon Ford, Jeffrey Jones and additional research projects.
Sarah Burnage
University of York
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship
2009
The Practice of Sculpture in Late Eighteenth-Century England: John Bacon and his Contemporaries
Sarah Burnage is currently in the process of extending and developing her PhD thesis on ‘The Works on John Bacon RA’ into a book length study entitled The Practice of Sculpture in Late Eighteenth-Century England: John Bacon and his Contemporaries.
Starting with the foundation of the Royal Academy, the book offers a thorough interpretation of sculptural practice in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The study provides important new interpretations of the Royal Academy’s impact upon sculpture, and outlines an original narrative of British sculptural practice that is newly attentive to its diversity and contradictions.
Peter Dent
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship
2009
Late medieval sculpture in and around Verona
In the late medieval period, Verona grew to be a major political and territorial power as well as a significant cultural centre. Both Giotto and Dante benefited from the patronage of the ruling della Scala family. The sculpture produced in the city during these decades is very distinctive, but tends to get overlooked because it does not fit well into developments happening elsewhere, particularly in central Italy.
Peter Dent’s research project at the Institute consists of two parts. First, a study of a small number of pertinent sculptures in the collections of the V&A, in order to lay some of the groundwork for a projected catalogue. Second, an exploration of one of the areas that makes this material so compelling: the dramatic and often disturbing representation of Christ’s suffering body.
Marion Endt
University of Manchester
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship
2009
Objects Curious and Marvellous: Their Collection and Display in the Wunderkammer, Surrealism and Contemporary Art
Marion Endt is currently revising her PhD thesis on ‘Nature and the Marvellous in Surrealism and Contemporary Art’ for publication as a book-length study. Her project traces the itineraries of particular natural objects, such as insects, stones and corals, through periods that are characterised by a shared sensibility for curious and marvellous phenomena, based on the rejection of the Enlightenment-informed values of progress, evolution, rationality and utility. She is interested in issues of collection, classification and display, and in the relationship of art with natural history / the natural sciences.
Dorothea Dietrich
Corcoran College of Art & Design
Senior Research Fellowship
2009
Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Barn: a Documentation and Analysis of the Sculptural Development and Critical Legacy of Schwitters’ Merzbauten
Dorothea Dietrich will work on the late sculptural/architectural work of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948). The focus of her study is Schwitters’ Merzbarn in Elterwater and the surviving wall work, now at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle, to begin a critical assessment of its hybrid form as assemblage and architecture at the intersection of the organic and conceptual, and to explore its sculptural legacy in England.
Dario Gamboni
University of Geneva
Senior Research Fellowship
2009
Paul Gauguin, Sculpture and Ambiguity
Dario Gamboni will be taking sabbatical leave in 2010-11 to write the manuscript for a book-length study of Gauguin. This project is part of a broader research on Gauguin’s use of visual ambiguity and aims at examining the specific ways in which the artist’s interest in the temporal, subjective quality of perception informed his sculptural works and, conversely, what sculpture contributed to what he called a search ‘at the mysterious centre of thought’.
This monographic study of Gauguin’s three-dimensional work would like to contribute to an exploration of the specific contribution of the sculptural medium to the artistic use of ambiguity, especially around 1900 but not exclusively during this period.
Michael Dean
Artist, London
Research Fellowship
2009
Typographical Memorials to Moments of Intensity and Attraction
Artist Michael Dean will use his fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute to identify personal and national mechanisms of remembrance.
Concurrent to this vocabulary of memorial and monument in British Sculpture, he will be developing a new body of work which sculpturally delivers writings he has composed, in order to memorialise moments of intensity and attraction.
Simon Ford
Research Fellowship
2014
‘Sculpture in a Purely Abstract Form’: William Staite Murray and Modern British Sculpture
Art historian Simon Ford will explore the work of the studio potter William Staite Murray, and document, contextualize and interpret his many connections with the sculptors of his day. His aim is to demonstrate that pottery played a key role in inter-war debates about modern and abstract British sculpture.
Jeffrey Jones
Cardiff School of Art and Design
Research Fellowship
2009
The Relationship of Sculpture to Pottery in British Art from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present Day
At certain periods the interests of sculptors and potters in Britain have either overlapped or come into particularly sharp focus. Jeffrey Jones’ research will use case studies to track and interpret these relationships, in order to provide a historical context in which the work of contemporary practitioners can be better understood and appreciated.
Additional research projects
This year we supported several additional research projects, outside of our fellowship program:
Alexandrina Buchanan (University of Liverpool) will develop her research into the relationships between art, archives and exhibitions. She will investigate how archival objects are chosen and used within the forthcoming Henry Moore Institute exhibition, The Developing Process: The sculptor’s education in drawings and photography. Dr Buchanan will examine the nature of the archival trace created by the exhibition, and look at how the archive could be used to inform future practice.
Cameron Cartiere (Birkbeck, University of London) will be continuing her research project Sculpture Al Fresco: the Museum Moved Out-of-doors, examining the museological significance of private and public sculpture parks, ‘open air galleries’, interventions, and art commissions arising from the landscape environment. Dr Cartiere has conducted site visits to almost 100 parks around the globe and will be launching an online international directory of sculpture parks later this year.