A team from the University of Sussex went to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff to celebrate Super Science Saturday in October 2019. We had an amazing time; nearly 300 people came to participate. We looked at image-making technologies, from wood engraving and photography to digital media. Participants worked with archival images from scientific…
Celebrating Wood Engraving with the V&A and the Society of Wood Engravers
N.B. The two events described here are linked, but either event can also stand-alone if you wish to attend just one of them. 1. Curating relief printmaking, 23rd March, 2-4pm An unusual tour of Making an Impression: the Art of Relief Printmaking, in which co-curators Annemarie Bilclough and Katharine Martin reflect on the impossible task…
On Draughtsp’onship and Women Artists, by Bethan Stevens
raughtsponship, or, ‘one small step for a pon; one giant leap for ponkind’ For International Women’s Day we’re proposing a new word: p’on. The word grew from a text conversation between Madeleine Hallward and Isabel Seligman and myself, and we hope it’s a useful addition to the language. For me, the need arose while writing…
Dalziel Project
Click here for information about the Dalziel Project’s new book, and here to read the project’s research output in Textual Practice. The Dalziel project would not be possible without funding from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), as well as the generous support of our project partners, The British Museum and Sylph Editions. In particular,…
Responding to Collections
BACA students joined us once again for two online events of talks and creative activities with a group of experts and artists. Each activity involved working with archival material, or thinking about how archival material might be used as a creative prompt. Have a look below at the activity instructions from each contributor if you…
Unlocking the archive
I have been very fortunate spend recent months curating Beyond the Archive, an online of critical and creative writing drawings and prints by Year 7 students of Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA). This group is undertaking a series of structured workshops (to resume when the school re-opens) devised by teachers Lauren Howfield and Emily Jewell,…
Creature Discomforts: Poetic and Visual Responses by Plashet School
These poems were written by students from Plashet School, in East Ham, London, in response to some of the strange and amazing hybrid beings they created in the collage activity, during the summer term’s schools workshops. They really capture some of the fascination, and fearful mystery, that the natural world can hold for us. TIME…
Stranger Things: Collages by Cosmo Callesini, Dorcas Mimbulu and others (BACA)
These collages were created by students from Brighton Aldridge Academy, during the summer 2019 schools workshops. Participants were challenged to create human-animal hybrid figures, using illustrations from across the Dalziel Archive. Human-animal hybrid figures appeared frequently in Victorian popular culture, especially in children’s fiction, and theatrical entertainments, such as ‘freak’ shows. Workshop students also wrote…
Things Weird and Wonderful, by students from Plashet School
Among the many thousands of illustrations produced by the Brothers Dalziel, images of animals abound. Everything from frogs, cockatoos, and koalas, to starfish and sunflowers, are represented, reflecting the Victorian love of Natural History, and the many popular periodicals, dedicated to the subject, published throughout the nineteenth century. During the Summer 2019 series of workshops,…
The Lost Story, by Bara’a Mohamed and anonymous
This gothic short story was written by two students from the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA). For more information on their project, click here. The illustrations they have used are unidentified wood engravings by Dalziel after Arthur Hughes, Dalziel Archive Vol. XXVII (1870), British Museum reg. no. 1913,0415.188 ‘No!’ the old frail beggar wailed desperately.…
The Lost Story, by Katie Gandey and Regan Leggett (BACA)
This wood engraving is one of six beautiful ‘lost’ illustrations in the Dalziel Archive. They feature two children as the protagonists, and include an uncanny monk, a pack of wolves, and haunting images of darkness and exploration. We have not yet discovered what book or magazine story they illustrate. The research team would love to…
Beyond the Archive: Creative Engagements from Plashet School, BACA, Priory School, Blatchington Mill and North Notts College
During the 2019 summer term, the Dalziel Project ran a series of workshops with schools in Sussex and London, introducing 150 new students to archival research, and complementing their curriculum learning through creative tasks in English, History, and Art. The one-day sessions took place at Plashet School in East Ham, London (27th May); Blatchington Mill…
Remembering Marie Duval: Simon Grennan’s Drawing in Drag, reviewed by Elle Whitcroft
Elle Whitcroft is a PhD student in the English department at the University of Sussex. Her research looks at late nineteenth and early twentieth century newspaper comic strips in the US and UK, focusing on childhood, dreams and racism. Here, Whitcroft reviews Simon Grennan’s Drawing in Drag by Marie Duval, available now at bookworks.org. Remembering Marie…
Contemporary Printmakers in the Dalziel Archive: Neil Bousfield
Click images above to explore gallery As part of the Dalziel Project, contemporary printmakers have been collaborating with researchers, exploring the archive in the British Museum (see more here). This has generated new work in dialogue with the Dalziels. Bethan Stevens recently wrote about this in Printmaking Today, focusing on the recent Dalziel-related work of Neil…
Contemporary Printmakers in the Dalziel Archive: Peter S. Smith
As part of the Dalziel Project, contemporary printmakers have been collaborating with researchers, exploring the archive in the British Museum. This has generated new work in dialogue with the Dalziels. Bethan Stevens has written about this in Printmaking Today, focusing on the recent Dalziel-related work of Neil Bousfield, Louise Hayward, Chris Pig and Peter S. Smith: you…
Exploring Materiality and Immateriality in Victorian Wood Engravings, by Carey Gibbons
Carey Gibbons recently completed a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art: The Limits of the Body in Victorian Illustration: Arthur Hughes and Frederick Sandys. Gibbons’s research crosses disciplines, engaging with the illustrations of Hughes and Sandys in relation to their accompanying texts and Victorian science, religion, and gender constructions. She recently curated an exhibition at the…
Contemporary Printmakers in the Dalziel Archive: Louise Hayward
Click images above to explore gallery As part of the Dalziel Project, contemporary printmakers have been collaborating with researchers, exploring the archive in the British Museum (see more here). This has generated new work in dialogue with the Dalziels. Bethan Stevens recently wrote about this in Printmaking Today, focusing on the recent Dalziel-related work of Neil…
Contemporary Printmakers in the Dalziel Archive: Chris Pig
Click images above to view gallery As part of the Dalziel Project, contemporary printmakers have been collaborating with researchers, exploring the archive in the British Museum (see more here). This has generated new work in dialogue with the Dalziels. Bethan Stevens recently wrote about this in Printmaking Today, focusing on the recent Dalziel-related work of Neil…
‘Menagerist (Highgate West Cemetery)’, a poem by Isabel White
UCA Showcase: Photographic Responses to Dalziel
Here we present a selection of students’ work produced in early 2018 as part of our ongoing collaborative project with UCA Rochester. The images are taken from both developmental work and from final pieces, all of which engage with the Dalziel Archive photographically. Students used photography in mixed-media reproductions and reinventions of Dalziel engravings (John…
Time Takes its Toll, by Jemima Woolnough
Earlier this year, young artists at UCA Rochester developed responses to the Dalziel Archive as part of our continuing collaboration. They researched the Dalziel Archive and the Alice to Alice: Dalziel 1865–71 online exhibition and produced new works of art responding to its themes–particularly temporality and sequence. Jemima Woolnough created a sculptural-photographic project, constructing a…