Art House – Home of Dis/Content – Panel Discussion

Join us in the Gallery for a panel discussion inspired by everyday objects, how we interpret them, and the power of making!

Panel: Carole Griffiths, Dr Paula Chambers, Dr Peter Blagg

Chair : Helen Sargeant

The Panel will discuss the importance of making and how the visible process of art practice can be informed by domestic and found objects. Do such processes trigger empathy through material, object, and subject? Are our everyday domestic experiences important in relation to art and culture? If we allow ourselves to the time to see how things are made does our connection with objects then become more intimate?

Some key points which will be addressed will include;

• experiences in making.

• Collecting and selecting objects which trigger themes.

• importance of the material in relation to both themes and making.

• discussing domestic experiences and everyday objects as a form of inquiry.

Supported by a British Sign Language (BSL) Interpreter.

Free refreshments

This event is funded by Leeds Inspired

Chair: Helen Sargeant

Helen is an artist, curator and producer based in the UK, her collaborative practice explores the representation of the maternal body. She presented at The Missing Mother conference, The University of Bolton and published in Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from the Pandemic, Andrea O’Reilly and Fiona Joy Green (eds.), Demeter Press, 2021. In 2020 Helen founded Maternal Art, an organisation that promotes and publishes work by artist-mothers internationally. Through this project, she also edited, produced and published Stay At Home, the first edition of Maternal Art Magazine a response by 24 artist to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Carole Griffiths : Lead Artist

Carole is a sculptor and lecturer. She studied sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art, and received her M.A. through Leeds Metropolitan University. Carole’s art has been shown at a number of locations in the United Kingdom, including Canterbury, London, Bradford, Halifax, Leeds, Sheffield, Derby, and York. She is also a member of two collaborative groups: The Unlocked Collective, and the Yorkshire Sculptors Group. Carole is a PhD candidate in the Visual Arts at Coventry University

Carole’s work identifies with the intensity of the domestic experience through material and formal reconfigurations of particular kitchen utensils including whisk and pestle and mortar. The use of such objects as a starting point gives the viewer the object familiar. Through transformations connections and disconnections of materiality and concept, her intention is to open up a contemporary debate about our relationship with ‘objects’. There is an inclusive and sensory response related to the performative language of making, the language of functionality, and then the language of sculpture.

Dr Peter Blagg

Dr Peter Blagg is a working artist and educator who teaches the BA (Hons) Graphic Design and Illustration degree programs at Leeds Arts University. Peter finished a practice-based PhD in 2020, during which he created a series of research-based pop-up exhibitions at locations like The National Science and Media Museum and Leeds City Art Gallery. His work investigates the connection between design communication and The Uncanny. Considering how seemingly innocuous parts of the design may alienate their users. He is fascinated by commonplace objects, functionality, hybridisation, doppelgangers, absurdity, and mass production. All of this is investigated through the use of discovered things as sculptural materials.

Dr Paula Chambers

Paula Chambers is an artist, academic and arts educator. She has exhibited widely including most recently, ‘Working Girls’ at The Whitaker, Rawtenstall, and ‘Not at Home’ at The Art House, Wakefield. Paula is Subject Leader for Sculpture on BA(Hons) Fine Art at Leeds Arts University and has presented at national and international conferences on feminism, contemporary art and the domestic. She has chapters published in Feminist Visual Activism and the Body, and in Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms, and has had articles published in Performance/Research Journal (special issue On The Maternal) and in JourMS.