Centre for Media, Art & Design Research and Engagement
Full Member Profiles
Raz Barfield
My work considers the fundamental philosophical questions of human existence, experience and temporality, and of individual and social memory and structures. My research focuses on these themes through practice investigating personal and universal communication and symbolism, including written language, signs and pictographic forms. The tensions between the inner and outer worlds of experience, the disjuncture between physical and pictorial manifestation, and the philosophical aesthetic contradictions between physical and digital media are interrogated through art objects produced via digital, analogue and hybrid processes, in which quasi-archaeological investigation reveals, maps and questions meaning, narrative, and the ontological status of the digitally-assisted artwork.
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Jonathan Carson
My creative practice explores the 'stuff' that surrounds us. I'm interested in the everyday things that form an increasingly complex part of our lives, objects that are as much an expression of taste and choice as they are a backdrop to our existence. Harvested from the glut of popular culture, I'm interested in narrating an alternative life for the, often decorative, ephemera I find. For me, the language of decorative styles is inherently married to the complex psychology of our relationships - a chandelier becomes a vehicle for its owners dissatisfaction with life, a curtain serves as a thin veil over the darkness of a relationship gone bad. In changing an existing article or creating something new, I undertake a re-examination of things we feel we know, courting my audience's engagement with the familiar, but sometimes sinister, sometimes absurd, etiquette that structures our lives.
Dr Anna Catalani
Dr Anna Catalani has recently joined the University of Salford as Lecturer in Museum and Heritage Studies. Anna holds a MA and a PhD in Museum Studies, both from the University of Leicester. Her doctoral research was concerned with the interpretation and representation of non-Western religious material culture in Western museums. Specifically, it focused on Yorùbá traditional religious material culture exhibited nowadays in museums in the United Kingdom. Anna’s current research interests are in the fields of museum and heritage studies, material culture (including the material culture of fashion), collectors and collections, identities and diaspora, the role of museums in the construction of identities, public history and community involvement. Anna is an ordinary Member of the Museum Association, a voting member of the ICOM and a Member of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society.
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Dr Caroline Davey
Caroline Davey a Reader in Design, Innovation and Society. She is Co-Director of the Design Against Crime Solution Centre and a Principal Investigator in the EPSRC Sustainable Urban Environments consortium VivaCity 2020. Caroline was a partner in the AHRB Doctoral Research Training project with University of Sunderland and Manchester Metropolitan University, and also in the EPSRC InSITU project. Caroline’s research has examined Socially Responsible Design—the use of design and ‘design thinking’ to address social problems and benefit society, and she initiated (with Andrew Wootton) an international conference track on this subject at the European Academy of Management conference, Munich.
Brendan Fletcher
Brendan Fletcher works as an artist ad writer. Fletcher creates vacuum formed plastic wall reliefs - for gallery and site-specific projects - that draw upon the history and visual language of abstract painting. The work conflates an abstract icon and a commercial logo to explore ideas surrounding contemporary devotion. Recent exhibitions include, Nice to Meet You, Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, California, (November 2005), Terrain: Contemporary British Abstraction, Museum of Non Conformist Art, St Petersburg, 9 September 2004), and Chorus a site specific installation/soundscape for Gorton Monastery, Manchester in collaboration with American composer Kevin Malone, (May 2004). His work derives from an abstract painting practice and his principal interests lies, in the 'expanded field' of contemporary abstract painting.
Dr Mathias Fuchs
Mathias Fuchs is an electronic artist, musician and media critic who utilises computer game engines to creatively deconstruct game stereotypes and to translate images, texts and sound objects into spatial structures and navigable virtual environments. From feminist cities and virtual knowledge-spaces to an arena of metamorphosing identities. Mathias Fuchs has been widely exhibited at galleries and festivals including Ars Electronica Linz, Kiasma Helsinki and London’s Millennium Dome and is a member of IGNM (Internationale Gesellschaft Neuer Musik), the IGDA (International Games Developers' Association) and the Ludic Society.
Lawrence George Giles
Lawrence George Giles works in the field of digital photography. His current research interests have focused upon the panoramic format as a medium to extend both physical and temporal space as a means to investigate our relationship with time, memory and place. His recent work Time and Tide has been extensively exhibited throughout the UK and featured in the Observer Sunday supplement in June 2004. Lawrence Giles has been successful in gaining support from a wide variety of sources including AHRC Research Leave funding, Arts Council England Touring Grant and Regional Lottery Funding. In addition he is a Director of Redeye, the Northwest Photography Network and was short-listed for the prestigious art05 award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.
Charlotte Gould
Charlotte Gould has developed a number of web-based interactive environments that explore user identity and the notion of a floating narrative. She is currently developing location specific work in which the user becomes an active participant in the narrative and explores methods of user driven content. Through this work she encourages creative urban play and looks at the way the audience can experience the urban space through telepresent technology. The results of this research have been presented in a paper ISEA2008 the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Singapore.
Prof Paul Haywood
As a practitioner Paul Haywood has diverse interests. He mostly collaborates with other artists, designers, educators and community governance professionals and volunteers. He has a continuing interest in 'live' performance and installation through a more regular engagement with social intervention, regeneration and public art projects. In recent years he has developed a range of approaches to the use of art processes to encourage pedagogic engagement. Over the past five years he has maintained a steady involvement in projects that employ creative research in public planning and development of the built environment. Paul Haywood has been working with various partners and individuals to extend their role as social facilitators and activists. One of his core interests is to question the logic and rationale of urban redevelopment. He shares an interest in hidden histories, social memories and 'derelict' landscapes that have resulted in a range of entirely 'process' led investigations of site or place.
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Sam Ingleson
Sam Ingleson has worked in the School of Art and Design since 2000 and is part of the Community Engagement team within the School. Her currently role is as KTF Project Manager, responsible for management and co- delivery with Paul Haywood of an AHRC funded Knowledge Transfer Fellowship ‘Supporting Arts and Enterprise Skills in Communities through Creative Engagement with the Local Area’. Guns to Goods is one of the projects she is currently working on; The Guns to Goods project brings together multiple agencies whose shared aim is to support young people in leading campaign initiatives that will improve their life experiences and opportunities. Guns to Goods makes use of Art, Fashion, Design for Manufacture and Enterprise skills, transferred from the University of Salford and its students, to address and counter issues of gun ownership and gun related crime affecting communities in the Inner South Manchester Area. Sam has worked as an artist delivering workshops in schools and community settings since 1998, leading to working primarily as a project manager, trainer and consultant and also been an Artsmark Validator for Arts Council, North West for the last 3 years and an Arts Award Advisor. In response to working in Arts Education with Schools the Community Engagement Team have developed a new Work Based Learning Postgraduate Course for teachers, MA Creative Education on which Sam is the Programme Leader.
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Mick Lockwood
Mick Lockwood is a new member of the group and is currently undertaking research in the area of Location Based Media in collaboration with BTexact. He has recently completed the Mapchester project developed for the Futuresonic Festival 06 and has presented these results in a paper at WonderGround, the 2006 Design Research Society International Conference in Lisbon.
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Moira Lovell
Moira Lovell is an art photographer working with staged documentary portraiture. Underpinning her practice is an investigation into the threshold between how we think we appear and how we are actually perceived by the camera. Lovell's exploration of this in-between space has lead her to work with a variety of communities such as school themed clubbers, female footballers and former coal miners. Her current work We Still Stand (2009/12), supported by the National Media Museum Photography Bursary, is an aftermath photography project which explores a seminal event in the history of British industry and politics - the 1984/5 Miners Strike, a near civil war that left an indelible mark on the nation's consciousness. Lovell has photographed individuals and groups of former coal miners and comrades at night on the sites of their former colliery and picket grounds 25 years after battles were fought and lost. The photographic encounters build an uneasy portrait of something 'that-has-been'.
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Rosie Miller
Rosie Miller works collaboratively with fellow artist Jonathan Carson as Carson & Miller. Their practice is driven by an interest in narrative, particularly their need to tell and re-tell stories. Recent work has seen Carson & Miller working with museum collections, and using the book and the game as methods of collaboration.
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Jill Randall
Jill Randall makes sculpture and installations investigating the stories and histories behind objects. Much of the work is site-specific, and has included large-scale public art projects involving collaborations with architects, landscape architects and engineers. The work investigates the nature of time through the dual preoccupations of archaeology and alchemy, and recent projects have involved collaborations with scientists and industrial processes. For example the Irwell Sculpture Trail Residency at the Magnesium Electron factory and a residency at Woolaton Hall, Natural History Museum in 2005. The practice addresses the 'charged' object, and the continued relevance and significance of objects in the 21st Century. Personal research investigates the notion of the sublime in contemporary sculpture, and artists as alchemists. The work is conceptually driven, but exploits specific qualities and associations of materials, currently metals and found objects, and often involves the recycling of materials invested with history through their past use.
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Prof Paul Sermon
Paul Sermon has developed a series of celebrated interactive art installations that have received international acclaim. Through a sustained research funding income he has continued to produce, exhibit and discuss his work extensively at an international level. Since 2007 he has produced eleven new gallery installation artworks and exhibited both new and existing installations on fourteen occasion, visit Paul Sermon's website www.paulsermon.org for more information. Paul Sermon was a nominee at the World Technology Awards and holds a number of external appointments that influence research policy. Since 2004 he has been an AHRC Peer Review College member, member of the NWDA funded North West Art & Design Research Group, chair of Media Arts Network www.ma-net.org and advises on various international journal and conference editorials. External collaborations include the AHRC funded REACT (Research Engine for Art and Creative Technology) research community and collaborative postgraduate training with MMU.
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Robert Shadbolt
Robert Shadbolt graduated from the RCA in 1984. Since then he has sustained a diverse and varied career working for clients in editorial, advertising, design, the web, publishing, textiles and ceramics. Over the past ten years the computer has added to range of materials he can use in that he is able to draw together the many strands of his work combining painting, drawing and photography and his archive of found material. He also runs the Illustration Pathway at Salford University. Here he is able to explore with the students the potential of illustration and drawing in the world today; a recent project examining the way we draw the human head produced almost 6000 images, you can see some of the results on his flickr stream. His work still predominantly relies on drawing which means he's on a constant search for the perfect drawing implement. He used to buy pens and get advice from Philip Pool (1909-1999) the legendary pen expert of Drury Lane, London. Time is now spent trawling eBay looking for nibs and pens like Sommerville's Alfred and the Pelican Graphos. He currently works on a project which explores the Fornasetti Themes and Variations as inspiration. Replacing the face of Lina Cavalieri with the face he draws on an reoccurring basis, the smiling contented face with eyes closed; which probably derives more from illustrators like Savignac, Paul Rand and Saul Bass, although the more he looks the more he sees the face almost everywhere.
Dr Qian Sun
Dr Qian Sun - I am actively involved in research in design management, and have worked on a broad range of projects, including an AHRC-funded "Design 2020" project which explores the future of the UK design industry in coping with the uncertainties of 2020, an EU-funded "Asia Link" programme which aims to foster sustainable educational links between EU and Asia via collaborative curriculum development in Design Management, the British Council's "Prime Minister's Initiative for International Education" (PMI2) concerning student employability and entrepreneurship, and the School's "D2B" International Design Management Conference. I have both an MSc. and Eng. Degree in Industrial Design. My PhD explores Strategic Marketing Management issues in relation to Design. It was funded by a prestigious Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) and completed in 2006.
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Prof Allan Walker
Allan Walker, Head of School of Art and Design, is an artist with an established record of senior research leadership. His current series ‘If Kurosawa Made Westerns’, based on plastic toys from the 1970s, references cultural syncretism from the traditions of East Asia. His work is included in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York;Machida Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Collaborations include exhibitions in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, Co-founder of Croindene Press with Denis Masi and EYECON: Digital Print Research Publishing with Prof. Naren Barfield of the RCA. Other research interests include cross-cultural pedagogy and policy and he was specialist advisor to British Council Scotland, a co-applicant with Creative Scotland for a successful £600k Paul Hamlyn Foundation bid (2011) and a member of several national committees. He is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and Strategic Review Group.
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Theresa Wilkie
Theresa Wilkie works in the field of photography, with a particular interest in practice in the context of theory and history. She is engaged in community participation through the use of the visual as a means to produce and interpret heritage. Theresa has recently collaborated with Plot, an artist and writers collective, on the photographic artist’s book Brookhouse: Walking the Walls (2011) and has spoken and written about her work in a number of settings, including presentations in Poland, Hungary and the UK. She has contributed essays to a number of exhibition catalogues. Theresa’s chapter in recording leisure Lives: Everyday Leisure in 20th century Britain (2012) links the work Brookhouse to Humphrey Spender’s Worktown (1937-38) photographs for Mass Observation. In 2011 Theresa convened the symposium Photography & the Artist’s Book as part of the 6th Manchester Artist’s Book Fair and following on from this she has co-edited and contributed a chapter to the book Photography & the Artist’s Book published by Museums Etc (2012). Theresa is Director of Design & Culture and Senior Lecturer in Critical & Contextual Studies in the School of Art & Design.
Prof Alex Williams
Alex Williams has worked extensively across three key areas related to design and new product development (and in collaboration with Chinese organisations) including implementing change within organisations, with particular reference to new product development and design, design management and market segmentation and consumer analysis. The recipient of a recent AHRC award ‘Design for the 21st Century’ and in collaboration with the University of Lancaster researching the challenges facing UK design consultancy and the design industry over the next decade. The project will establish potential scenarios, strategic directions, and a blueprint for the shape of the sector in 2020.
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Andrew Wootton
Andrew Wootton is Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Design Against Crime Solution Centre and a Principal Investigator in the EPSRC Sustainable Urban Environments consortium VivaCity 2020 (www.vivacity2020.org). He has produced practical guidance material for industry on equality and diversity (Mix Matters, 2006) and Design Against Crime (The Crime Lifecycle, 2005; Guidance for the Design of Residential Areas, 2003; Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework, 2005). Andrew focuses on Socially Responsible Design—the use of design and ‘design thinking’ to address social problems and benefit society and has initiated a creative design consultancy Design Thinking.
