Green Unpleasant Land: Art, Abstraction and the Politics of Location

During the 1970s and 1980s, a network of artists working in Britain developed a mode of abstract artistic production which, rather than underscoring art's autonomy from the world, engaged with a number of pressing socio-political issues. These ranged from conflict in Northern Ireland and related questions of sovereignty and colonialism, to de-industrialisation and clashes between organised labour and Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. In an apparently paradoxical but highly significant move, artists such as Prunella Clough, Rasheed Araeen, Veronica Ryan and Rita Donagh turned to abstraction precisely because it could mediate between multiple socio-political positions. It also provided a particularly resonant mode of artistic expression for exploring the increasingly atomised relationships between place, space and identity under the pressures of emerging globalisation, the proliferation of mass media communications, and multiple conflicting conceptualisations of the 'United Kingdom'. Abstraction emerges in this context as a powerful tool which fuses artistic and political concerns, enabling an engagement with modernist legacies, but also their reformulation and reinvigoration.

My emphasis on abstraction provides a new perspective on art and cultural politics of the post-war period in Britain, in that it allows connections to be made between artists working in a diverse range of media - sculpture, painting, photography and performance - and across critical perspectives from feminism to antiracism. Existing studies tend to focus on the 1970s in isolation from the following decade, but many artists whose work had been forged in the vibrant political context of these years continued to create and to resist into the 1980s. Scholars also understandably often concentrate on clearly demarcating groups of artists and media, whether performance art, feminist art production, or the work of artists of colour. Building on these important interventions, the project 'Green Unpleasant Land' aims to show how artists working across different media and socio-political contexts all found in abstraction a compelling mode for engaging with contemporary issues and concerns.

In demonstrating how abstraction became a vital tool for exploring the locational politics of Britain during the 1970s and 1980s, my study situates the work of these four significant artists within their wider visual cultural context. I will show how their experiments in painting, sculpture and performance were closely informed by contemporaneous developments in photojournalism, experimental film, documentary practices, and activist publications and communications. In particular, the book will argue that, rather than being separate, oppositional entities, as they are often treated, concepts of abstraction and realism were closely intertwined during this period. Artists sought to develop modernism's engagement with materials and medium in newly politicised ways, and to reinvigorate documentary traditions that were increasingly seen as outmoded.

The associated exhibition 'Social Contracts,' co-curated with Dr Kirsten Lloyd (University of Edinburgh), will provide a valuable opportunity to explore the wider socio-political and artistic context from which the book research emerges, focusing in particular on revisions of documentary practice, the use of performative photography, and the combination of political engagement with the abstracting effects of technologies such as film and photography during this period. While book and exhibition will address the relationship between abstraction, documentary and the politics of location, 'Social Contracts' will look in particular at the possibilities for social relations forged through these configurations, and the way in which formulations of the artwork as document provided an increasingly important site for their negotiation.

My project has significant potential for impact beyond academic audiences. The key vehicle for this will be the exhibition 'Social Contracts: Art, Documentary and Activism in Britain from the 1970s to Now,' together with the associated event, performance and film screening programme. In the first instance, the non-academic audiences who will benefit from my research are the curatorial and museum professionals in Scotland and the wider UK who work on modern and contemporary art, particularly the relationships between art and politics. I have established strong working connections with colleagues in a number of public-facing third sector organisations in Scotland, notably the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Collective, Edinburgh; the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; and Hospitalfield, Arbroath, as well as the two proposed exhibition venues: the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and the Glasgow Women's Library. I would seek new links with important venues for photography and film in Scotland, notably Stills, Edinburgh; Streetlevel Photoworks, Glasgow; and LUX Scotland. I am currently project leader of the research group Contemporary Art in Scotland (2017-18), funded by the Tate British Art Network, and through this have forged connections with colleagues in the sector working on feminism, antiracism, decolonisation, and the connections between politics and materiality. The exhibition element of the project is designed to build on these links, and would contribute directly to current discussions around representation, visibility and activism in the sector. It would enable me to facilitate relationships between artists, curators, and museum professionals, to enhance research connections with academia.

In collaborating on the exhibition with the curator Dr Kirsten Lloyd, I would bolster research links between St Andrews and the University of Edinburgh, where Dr Lloyd is based. Dr Lloyd and I have a track record of joint project working, having collaborated in 2015 on a feminist research workshop at the University of Edinburgh, and a public performance by the internationally recognised artist Melanie Gilligan. We are both members of the Social Reproduction in Art, Life and Struggle reading group based at Collective Gallery, a group of artists, curators and researchers who have met for the last four years and are currently working towards co-curating Collective's public-facing Autumn School event programme in 2018. Dr Lloyd and I will work with stakeholders in the contemporary art community to disseminate the research beyond an academic audience, and to shape the exhibition and event programme so that they respond to their concerns.

The exhibition will enable the research to reach a public audience. The Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Glasgow Women's Library are ideal venues for the exhibition. Both have long histories of promoting countercultural and activist artworks, together with rich archives that the exhibition will draw on. They are important venues for contemporary art in the UK that have achieved international recognition, which are simultaneously deeply embedded in the artistic and wider public communities of Scotland. I will work closely with them to engage with their audiences, designing a dynamic program of events in consultation with their curators and education staff. This will enhance understanding of the relationship between art and politics in post-war Britain, together with constructs of cultural identity and belonging. This programme would extend beyond Glasgow to include satellite events during the annual Edinburgh Arts Festival and St Andrews Photography Festival in 2021. These vibrant platforms will enable us to link audiences from across the UK with the exhibition, and make a direct contribution to Scotland's cultural and heritage offering. The exhibition website will support international dissemination of the project, offering an important resource for researchers and public alike.