Soft Estate
Lead Research Organisation:
University for the Creative Arts
Department Name: Canterbury College
Abstract
Soft Estate: Exhibition Proposal by Edward Chell, under the highlight notice 'Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past'
Soft Estate is the term used by the Highways Agency to describe the natural habitats that line our motorways and trunk roads, (some 30,000 hectares of land nationally). Whilst roads play a major role in opening up land for housing and economic development, their attendant verges offer a genuine refuge for wildlife and a modern form of wilderness in the midst of intense urbanisation and agro-chemical farming. Our road network, the site of some of our most carbon-intensive activity, is flanked by Britain's largest unofficial nature reserve.
The principal subject of this practice-led research is to visually investigate these under-represented areas of roadside wilderness, both as ecological and metaphorical spaces and as reflectors of the complex and changing relationships between travel, the environment and landscape imagery within British culture. In framing this research I will draw on the English Landscape and 'picturesque' tradition of the 18th Century, which informs popular understanding of landscape even today.
While early tourists travelled to areas such as The Lakes to capture images of wild places, in today's countryside uncontrolled wilderness only springs up in the margins of our transport networks and the semi-derelict grid plans of industrialised corridors. I believe these Edgelands invite a new kind of tourist, new ways of looking and new forms of visual representation. In drawing on the landscape tradition, and capturing details of the flora and fauna of the verge, my work will engage viewers with landscapes that appear familiar and uncanny, traditional and strangely futuristic.
Equipped with a Claude Glass, the 18th C tourist would capture particular views and aesthetically tame them. Today, for instance, the rear view mirrors of automobiles have an equivalent framing effect and would inform images conjured from a contemporary perspective. Modern motorway design incorporates 'Clothoid' or transition curves, features that focus drivers' attention so that they stay alert. These have the effect of smoothing the landscape reminiscent of eighteenth century parks, where curved carriage drives managed the experience of the landscape. Motorways arguably represent the modern equivalent of the spectacular re-sculpting of the landscape undertaken by Capability Brown. This was not without its 'picturesque' opponents. Tour writer and landowner Uvedale Price rejected Brown's projects, describing them as 'levelling', Price no doubt being aware of the political ramifications of the term.
These verges are powerful signifiers of environmental degradation, urban development and our increasing separation and alienation from the land itself and at the same time, of optimistic progress. Roads open up access to landscapes they despoil. Through drawing on the picturesque tradition in making this work, I aim to open up new ways for people to visualize and connect with these landscapes.
The resulting solo exhibition at Bluecoat Liverpool, Soft Estate, in 2013, will build on projects in which I exhibited work in Little Chef restaurants with a view to reaching a wider public and prompting reflection and debate on the travel choices we make and how these affect our environment. I am currently working towards a related parallel show across the local network of Little Chef restaurants to draw a wider audience to the Bluecoat and prompt reflection on travel and landscape. I have already established a good working relationship with writer and environmental campaigner, Marion Shoard, vice-chair of the British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC). Her expertise in the area of land access and discarded land will provide a valuable sounding board to my researches and her contribution to the Bluecoat publication will provide a 'value added' spin off to the project.
Soft Estate is the term used by the Highways Agency to describe the natural habitats that line our motorways and trunk roads, (some 30,000 hectares of land nationally). Whilst roads play a major role in opening up land for housing and economic development, their attendant verges offer a genuine refuge for wildlife and a modern form of wilderness in the midst of intense urbanisation and agro-chemical farming. Our road network, the site of some of our most carbon-intensive activity, is flanked by Britain's largest unofficial nature reserve.
The principal subject of this practice-led research is to visually investigate these under-represented areas of roadside wilderness, both as ecological and metaphorical spaces and as reflectors of the complex and changing relationships between travel, the environment and landscape imagery within British culture. In framing this research I will draw on the English Landscape and 'picturesque' tradition of the 18th Century, which informs popular understanding of landscape even today.
While early tourists travelled to areas such as The Lakes to capture images of wild places, in today's countryside uncontrolled wilderness only springs up in the margins of our transport networks and the semi-derelict grid plans of industrialised corridors. I believe these Edgelands invite a new kind of tourist, new ways of looking and new forms of visual representation. In drawing on the landscape tradition, and capturing details of the flora and fauna of the verge, my work will engage viewers with landscapes that appear familiar and uncanny, traditional and strangely futuristic.
Equipped with a Claude Glass, the 18th C tourist would capture particular views and aesthetically tame them. Today, for instance, the rear view mirrors of automobiles have an equivalent framing effect and would inform images conjured from a contemporary perspective. Modern motorway design incorporates 'Clothoid' or transition curves, features that focus drivers' attention so that they stay alert. These have the effect of smoothing the landscape reminiscent of eighteenth century parks, where curved carriage drives managed the experience of the landscape. Motorways arguably represent the modern equivalent of the spectacular re-sculpting of the landscape undertaken by Capability Brown. This was not without its 'picturesque' opponents. Tour writer and landowner Uvedale Price rejected Brown's projects, describing them as 'levelling', Price no doubt being aware of the political ramifications of the term.
These verges are powerful signifiers of environmental degradation, urban development and our increasing separation and alienation from the land itself and at the same time, of optimistic progress. Roads open up access to landscapes they despoil. Through drawing on the picturesque tradition in making this work, I aim to open up new ways for people to visualize and connect with these landscapes.
The resulting solo exhibition at Bluecoat Liverpool, Soft Estate, in 2013, will build on projects in which I exhibited work in Little Chef restaurants with a view to reaching a wider public and prompting reflection and debate on the travel choices we make and how these affect our environment. I am currently working towards a related parallel show across the local network of Little Chef restaurants to draw a wider audience to the Bluecoat and prompt reflection on travel and landscape. I have already established a good working relationship with writer and environmental campaigner, Marion Shoard, vice-chair of the British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC). Her expertise in the area of land access and discarded land will provide a valuable sounding board to my researches and her contribution to the Bluecoat publication will provide a 'value added' spin off to the project.
Planned Impact
Who will benefit?
A wide range of academics, ecologists, landscapers, environmental designers and land use policy makers. As an independent organisation, BANC has a significant role in widening debates about how we understand and use the land around us. By highlighting issues around both biodiversity, and the visual functions of these spaces, this research will have implications for transport policy makers both here and abroad.
Land managers. This project will draw attention to a nationally based hybrid landscape that covers a wealth of habitats and enclosures and would be relevant to those managing land across the public and private sectors, for example local councils, local government, the highways sector and even companies involved in reclaiming and reinstating landfill sites.
Wider public, road users in general, but in particular families and children who will see the work exhibited in Little Chef (LC) restaurants. I envisage satellite works exhibited in these locations bringing a new and unexpected cultural experience to their customers and staff, connecting the public in new ways with the aesthetic value of contemporary landscapes they regularly pass through at speed but rarely consider. The pilot for this satellite show, 'The Garden of England' Little Chef Tour in 2009, generated considerable media interest with BBC South East TV news running a feature on the project. This element could potentially bring new audiences into the Bluecoat through the platform of LC.
By exhibiting the work produced through this Fellowship at an internationally important gallery with a supporting publication, I will be encouraging the public to make connections between past and present modes of travel and the impact this has on the environment. People will have to 'travel' from LC to Bluecoat. I am working towards a curatorial strategy highlighting car travel and use of major roads.
The supporting publication 'Soft Estate' will draw on a range of disciplines to contextualise the work and in so doing stimulate discussion and debate on the associated field of ideas. Bluecoat has functioning discussion groups. Its 'resident philosophers' regularly meet to discuss themed ideas related to gallery events. Bluecoat would publish this with Liverpool University Press (LUP) who would also organise distribution. Bluecoat are currently in discussion with Cornerhouse regarding additional distribution.
There is a societal benefit through raising awareness of valuable but often overlooked habitats maintained as part of the landscape of the national road network. The Bluecoat, and projected LC exhibitions will raise public awareness of the present and future value of this landscape and encourage engagement with the related rich cultural heritage by working with Art and Literary communities, practitioners and writers.
What will be done to ensure they benefit?
Working with partner, Bluecoat, to ensure findings are disseminated to a wide audience through the exhibition and accompanying inter-disciplinary publication aimed at specialist and general audiences. Publication and distribution through LUP.
Publication/Book launch in Liverpool.
Gallery and Museum press and PR. Educational talks, events and also activities aimed specifically at schools, families and children.
Working towards presenting a paper for a BANC conference and a written piece for their magazine ECOS. I aim to further my discussions with Marion Shoard
Working towards gallery and LC marketing ensuring maximum publicity. Website/web links presence
I envisage working with LC to ensure work is seen by a wide public. (large estimated average footfall per restaurant per annum)
I am in discussion about further exhibition outcomes with Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston and Turner Contemporary, Margate, with a studio visit by their curator planned for Autumn 2011.
Dissemination through my own mailing list, media contacts and well visited website.
A wide range of academics, ecologists, landscapers, environmental designers and land use policy makers. As an independent organisation, BANC has a significant role in widening debates about how we understand and use the land around us. By highlighting issues around both biodiversity, and the visual functions of these spaces, this research will have implications for transport policy makers both here and abroad.
Land managers. This project will draw attention to a nationally based hybrid landscape that covers a wealth of habitats and enclosures and would be relevant to those managing land across the public and private sectors, for example local councils, local government, the highways sector and even companies involved in reclaiming and reinstating landfill sites.
Wider public, road users in general, but in particular families and children who will see the work exhibited in Little Chef (LC) restaurants. I envisage satellite works exhibited in these locations bringing a new and unexpected cultural experience to their customers and staff, connecting the public in new ways with the aesthetic value of contemporary landscapes they regularly pass through at speed but rarely consider. The pilot for this satellite show, 'The Garden of England' Little Chef Tour in 2009, generated considerable media interest with BBC South East TV news running a feature on the project. This element could potentially bring new audiences into the Bluecoat through the platform of LC.
By exhibiting the work produced through this Fellowship at an internationally important gallery with a supporting publication, I will be encouraging the public to make connections between past and present modes of travel and the impact this has on the environment. People will have to 'travel' from LC to Bluecoat. I am working towards a curatorial strategy highlighting car travel and use of major roads.
The supporting publication 'Soft Estate' will draw on a range of disciplines to contextualise the work and in so doing stimulate discussion and debate on the associated field of ideas. Bluecoat has functioning discussion groups. Its 'resident philosophers' regularly meet to discuss themed ideas related to gallery events. Bluecoat would publish this with Liverpool University Press (LUP) who would also organise distribution. Bluecoat are currently in discussion with Cornerhouse regarding additional distribution.
There is a societal benefit through raising awareness of valuable but often overlooked habitats maintained as part of the landscape of the national road network. The Bluecoat, and projected LC exhibitions will raise public awareness of the present and future value of this landscape and encourage engagement with the related rich cultural heritage by working with Art and Literary communities, practitioners and writers.
What will be done to ensure they benefit?
Working with partner, Bluecoat, to ensure findings are disseminated to a wide audience through the exhibition and accompanying inter-disciplinary publication aimed at specialist and general audiences. Publication and distribution through LUP.
Publication/Book launch in Liverpool.
Gallery and Museum press and PR. Educational talks, events and also activities aimed specifically at schools, families and children.
Working towards presenting a paper for a BANC conference and a written piece for their magazine ECOS. I aim to further my discussions with Marion Shoard
Working towards gallery and LC marketing ensuring maximum publicity. Website/web links presence
I envisage working with LC to ensure work is seen by a wide public. (large estimated average footfall per restaurant per annum)
I am in discussion about further exhibition outcomes with Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston and Turner Contemporary, Margate, with a studio visit by their curator planned for Autumn 2011.
Dissemination through my own mailing list, media contacts and well visited website.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Edward Chell (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
| Title | Bloom |
| Description | Bloom was a solo exhibition project where the core interests and ideas grew out of but had direct links to ideas being developed in the AHRC supported exhibitions 'Soft Estate' and 'Eclipse' and furthered an exploration of historical links between 18th and early 19th century aesthetics and taste and todays commodity fetishism and cultures of display. The exhibition was informed by the Horniman Museum and Gardens' taxonomy collection and their plants, both living and preserved but also by their recent re-discovery of four Anna Akins folios of cyanotypes in their library collection and the following helps describe some of the exhibition's rationale:- Edward Chell's fascination with collecting and classification led him to the Horniman's rare folios of cyanotypes by Anna Atkins, the 19th C botanist and pioneering photographer. In Bloom, an installation of forty new painted panels, Chell responded to Atkins' work by portraying both live plants from the Horniman Gardens and pressed specimens from the museum's herbarium. Chell's exhibit spotlights diverse narratives surrounding natural history and ecology, bringing into question the values and emotions that emerge when we make images of plants. Atkins was a scientist and while the 'sun prints' she produced are exquisite, her objective was to document and understand natural genera. Through this process Atkins created repeat motifs and patterns that resonate with the decorative arts of her time, such as Willow Pattern china, floral wallpapers and Wedgwood's blue and white Jasperware. Chell explores the tension between the scientific drive to define, understand and control, and the aesthetic impulse to capture the unruly gorgeousness of natural life. Silhouettes bring associations of memorialisation and loss. While Atkins' recorded newly discovered species, today such images are premised on conservation and the threat of extinction. An accompanying display which Chell, drawing on the museum's collections, conceived as a Cabinet of Curiosities, echoes these themes. Carboniferous fossils, 18th C ceramic plates imported from China and one of Atkins' rare folio volumes are displayed alongside Chell's ornamental pairs of car silencers, etched with roadside plants. An accompanying colour illustrated publication Bloom further unpacks these themes and ideas, with essays by Anna Ricciardi, Edward Chell and Hugh Warwick, published by Horniman Museum and Gardens in November 2015. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | Apart from the large visitor numbers and related Museum events connected to the solo exhibition opening on July 9th and open to a large and varied public seven days a week from 10 July - 6 December, the exhibition and book attracted some good and positive coverage. Reviews included the following:- The Learned Pig - http://www.thelearnedpig.org/plant-migrations/3047 Culture 24 - http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting-and-drawing/art541132-edward-chell-statement-horniman-anna-atkins Full Stop Magazine - Full Stop http://www.full-stop.net/2015/10/21/features/essays/anna-ricciardi/art-algae-the-work-of-anna-atkins/ and more recently a long review article by artist and critical writer Joan Key covering both the book and work in the art installation. See also under 'Engagement Activities'. |
| URL | http://www.edwardchell.com/bloom-horniman-museum-gardens/ |
| Title | Eclipse |
| Description | A solo Exhibition/Installatiion at the Beaney Museum and Art Gallery, Canterbury. The exhibition came about through a collaboration with Stour Valley Arts, Kent and was timed to open during the summer solstice alongside Stour Valley Arts' mid-summer Festival in Kings' Wood, 2013. The exhibition ran from Saturday June 22nd, 2013 and ran until Sunday September 8th, 2013. The exhibition comprised of sixty hand made gesso panels depicting a virtual taxonomy of some of the most common plant species found both Kings' Wood, Challock, Kent (SVA's rural work site) and the national motorway network. The works were configured in such a way as to suggest the uncontrolled nature of the way plants disperse and seed themselves, reflected in the case of the museum by placing works in between and in relation to their collections of C18th and C19th paintings, artefacts and collections of ethnographic, biological and historical material. The exhibition was accompanied by an accompanying publication and Artists' Book, 'Eclipse' that was funded by Arts Council England. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Impact | The impacts from Eclipse can roughly broken into three. 1. The exhibition. 2. The book and 3. The Gallery Talks. 1. The visitor numbers for Eclipse were huge and impact quite broad. Here are the figures provided by the Beaney - Exhibition on view for 79 days. Total visitor numbers to Beaney during that period were 130,451. 35,421 (18%) visited top floor galleries and 23,400 the Ground Floor Garden Room gallery. Visitors included 5 school groups, 3 FE/HE student groups, 25, Foreign Language Student Groups, 1 group of cubs/scouts visiting and creating work for Arts Award Explorer and one group of homeless people from 'Porchlight' working with artists in the Beaney. 2. The book 'Eclipse', published by Stour Valley Arts' (SVA) and funded by Arts Council England and was used by SVA in a number of related activities including a 'woodland' tour around the edges of Kings Wood, Challock, Kent. The book is available through Amazon and several bookshops and is distributed by Cornerhouse Books, Manchester. See: http://www.cornerhouse.org/bookstore/product/edward-chell 3. There were two gallery talks at the Beaney on Saturday 6th July, 2013, one at 11.30am - 1.00pm and one from 2.00pm - 4.00pm. These involved a brief presentation about the ideas behind Eclipse in the Beaney's education workshop followed by discussion and then a gallery tour with further questions. |
| URL | http://stourvalleyarts.co.uk/edward-chell-eclipse/ |
| Title | Public View. A 300 Year Anniversary exhibition at Bluecoat Liverpool curated by Bluecoat director Bryan Biggs and bringing together over one hundred artists who have shown at the gallery |
| Description | The exhibition features work by some high profile artists who reflect an wide range of the artists who have shown over the last fifty years. The work included from 'Soft Estate' as a large scale road dust print is 'Foxglove. Digitalis purpurea. Road Dust M5' dating from 2013. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | The exhibition has been widely covered in the press with BBC Radio 4 broadcasting its cultural affairs programme 'front Row' from Bluecoat on Wednesday 11th March. |
| Title | Sensing the Landscape. Site Specific Installation at Midney Gardens as part of Somerset Arts Week. |
| Description | Curated by Karina Joseph of Field Gallery, 'Sensing the Landscape' was supported by Arts Council England and ran in October 2015. The exhibition was a further spin of from themes established through the AHRC supported exhibitions Eclipse and Soft Estate. Joseph described the project as 'a series of exhibitions and site-specific projects across four Somerset gardens. Artists explore the sensory encounter with the garden working in film, sculpture, drawing and print. Visitors can deepen their garden experience through the variety of design displayed in both their planting and construction, enhanced by the artist's creativity'. The other artist/participants on separate sites were Kim Francis, Eleanor Lakelin and Fay Stevens. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | The exhibition confirmed my developing interests further while providing an opportunity for screening films in a larger format in an unusual outdoor location. |
| URL | http://fieldgallery.co.uk/exhibitions/sensing-landscape/ |
| Title | Soft Estate |
| Description | Soft Estate is a solo exhibition project which opened at Bluecoat on 5th December, 2013. The exhibition ran until 23rd february, 2014. The sixty panels constituting the exhibition 'Eclipse' were reconfigured to form a virtual verge within a single exhibition room along with an accompanying botanical print made using road dust. The exhibition comprised of a number of distinct pieces including large paintings on canvas, object/artefacts, text-based sign pieces, road dust prints and two short films exploring plant forms experienced as both solitary phenomena as a mementoes or shrines to lives lost while travelling, both exploring silhouette and ruin as metonyms for loss and memory embedded in both contemporary and C18th thought. The exhibition installation can be seen at http://www.edwardchell.com/ or also http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/ Bluecoat organised a series of events connected to the show including a guided edgeland walk and a themed talk by award winning 'edgeland' writers Paul Farley and Michael Symmons-Roberts on February 6th, 2014. On February 15th I presented a guided tour of the exhibition for the Contemporary Art Society (Northern Region) attended by approximately forty people. Accompanied by the book Soft Estate, the exhibition also included a small number of artists were invited to participate introducing a range of different works in order to establish a visual conversation between different and contrasting strands of the 'edgeland' topics being investigated. The artists were Tim Bowditch and Nick Rochowski, Day Bowman, Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale (The Caravan Gallery), John Darwell, Laura Oldfield-Ford, George Shaw, Robert Soden and Simon Woolham. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Impact | The impacts were many. These fell into the following categories. 1. Review coverage and blogs 2. Impact of the exhibition to the general public and artist presentation. 3. Workshop activity and talks. 4. Future commissions, exhibitions and plans resulting from 'Soft Estate'. 5. Visitor numbers 1. The exhibition 'Soft Estate' and associated publication attracted both national and international coverage that are detailed under 'Engagement Activities'. Most, though not all, of the coverage is also detailed on my personal website http://www.edwardchell.com 2. The impact to the general public was large. The day to day anecdotal reports from the gallery staff, curator and educational staff were that that the public found the exhibition both stimulating and rewarding. certainly this was reflected in the quality and amount of review coverage and the response during my three engagements directly with the public. These were at the opening in December 5th, 2013 where, along with Bluecoat's director and Artistic Director I made a short address about the project. The second engagement was a much larger gallery based talk and tour with curator Sara-Jayne Parsons on Saturday 7th December. There were around fort to fifty people attending this event and the nature of the questioning afterwards, though intensive, reflected the nature of the exhibition in opening up environmental questions. The third talk to the Northern Branch of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) on Saturday 15th February, was again very well attended (about 40) and again opened up a whole area of questioning with regards to aesthetic relationships to these edgelands. As a result of this successful talk, and a further presentation with Professor Ken Worpole at CAS in March, I was invited by the Northern CAS co-ordinator and curator Mark Doyle to become an artist member of CAS. The results of this Fellowship can now be seen on CAS's website at http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/artist-members/edward-chell/ 3. The workshop and educational activities provided by Bluecoat were exemplary and having seen some of the outputs from school based workshops in the gallery, I was struck by the quality and engagement of the work produced from paintings and objects to short pieces of writing. 4. The exhibition and tour have resulted in a generation of interest and future projects/exhibitions that I could not have fully foreseen. Firstly there is a project developing out of a related set of ideas using exhibiting with and responding to a newly discovered set of folios of Anna Atkins cyanotypes from the 1830's at the Horniman Museum, London, to start in July 2015. This will run along an exhibition curated by Liverpool's Museum of the World called 'Plantastic' which is also coming to Horniman and to which my exhibition will provide a foil. Other projects include one with Meadow Arts, scheduled for 2016, called 'DeTour' and dealing with issues around the picturesque, travel and environment. There is another commission in development for a wallpaper installation with the National trust exploring the lost 'ghost garden' of the original plant collection at Croome Court in Worcestershire. The Holburn Museum in Bath have also visited my studio with regards to a future project, possibly in 2017. This amount of interest from larger public bodies reflects a diverse and strong cultural impact of Soft Estate and Eclipse and they way these exhibitions opened up new possibilities. 5. Visitor numbers during the exhibition period were in the order of 19,500 according to Bluecoat figures. |
| URL | http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/1868 |
| Title | Soft Estate (second leg of tour) 8th March - 3rd May, 2014 |
| Description | The above was the second leg of the Soft Estate tour at Spacex Gallery, Exeter and which was reconfigured so that it could be accommodated in a smaller though equally important exhibition venue. Some works from the same eight artists were included as part of the narrative conversation, though quite a few of these works were either edited or otherwise restructured. The works from the main exhibitor remained largely unchanged. Like Bluecoat, Spacex instigated a number of events, 'gallery breakfasts' and educational projects around the exhibition and ran a symposium at Exeter University on Saturday 26th April called 'Art of the Edgelands' featuring a number of interdisciplinary investigators. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | As with the first part of the exhibition, the impacts were varied and can be described in the following ways. 1. Gallery Talks and Presentations. 2. Related educational activities 3. Small Conference/Symposium at Exeter University. 1. There two main gallery presentations. The first was for gallery staff, curator, techical staff, educational staff and the gallery's wide range range of volunteers. About thirty people attended this event. The presentation by myself lasted about 40 minutes after which there was a range of questions and answers that ranged over a whole realm of related topics. Staff and especially volunteers were eager to engage and had lots of questions. The second of the two talks took place as part of the opening event on Saturday 8th April. This was very well attended (fully booked out) and there were probably in the region of about 100 people present, practitioners, curators, other related professionals, academics and the general public. The presentation again lasted about 40 minutes but in a way that was continually peppered with questions and answers, after which a more tangible question and answer session took place. Again I noted the concrete engagement from the quality of the questions and the interest generated. 2. Spacex had an ongoing and related education program working with students both within the primary and secondary sector but also undergraduates. The impact of these activities was no doubt very high especially when these engagements also contributed to large visitor numbers. 3. The Conference/Symposium at Exeter University was fully booked and well attended. Data from the feedback sheets provided clearly indicated the public concern about how we treat these spaces and their relative importance. I was also struck by the amount of awareness and prior knowledge brought to the conference discussion. Among the academic attendees some were involved in PhD's while others were on MA programs. The attendees also travelled from a wide geographical area from many parts of the country. Questions asked included: 1. Have any themes emerged from the day that you either anticipated or found surprising? What are these? 2. Did any aspect of the theme strike you as having more importance? 3. If so, what can we learn from this? 4. Are there any aspects of the discussion that could impact on policy either at a local or national level? 5. if so, please can you describe how this might be implemented? 6. Are the worlds of creativity. visuality and ecology divergent or do you see them as having a mutually enhancing role? and 7. How do you see edgelands and borders? The conference/symposium was introduced by Christine Boyle, Project co-ordinator for the AHRC theme 'Care for the Future. Thinking Forward Through The Past' and PA to Prof. Andrew Thompson, AHRC Follow-On Fellow. I made the first keynote presentation and chaired the discussion panels following on from the speaker sessions. As with the other entry on this section on Soft Estate, the impacts are now being seen in a developing portfolio of future outcomes stemming from 'Soft Estate'. |
| URL | http://spacex.org.uk/exhibitions/soft-estate-8-march-3-may-2014/ |
| Title | Sweep |
| Description | 'Sweep' is a group exhibition curated by Roberto Ekholm exploring unusual notions of 'landscape' and how these are represented visually. The exhibition is to be held at KinoKino near Stavanger, Norway at the KinoKino Sandnes Kunst-OG Kulturhus KF. The exhibition runs from 14th April to 2nd September, 2018 and will be accompanied by a full colour illustrated publication. Three of the large paintings initially produced for the exhibition 'Soft Estate' are to be included along with some of my recent new art pieces. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | It is too early to say at the point of this submission what impacts might derive from this exhibition. |
| Title | Synthetic Landscapes, an exhibition initiated and curated by Meadow Arts |
| Description | Synthetic Landscapes' opened on Sunday 4th June running until 3rd September, 2017. The exhibition, curated by midlands based Arts Council NPO and Tate Plus organisation, Meadow Arts took place in the walled gardens and the Granary Art Gallery at Weston Park, famous both as one of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown's early landscape gardens coupled with building designed by 18th century architect James Paine, whose tercentenary took place in 2017. The exhibition explored the contested notion of what constitutes a landscape and how the idealisation of the idea in country parks like Weston Park as superb man-made manifestations might also be aesthetically and culturally critiqued as a reaction to this art historical reading. The exhibition also took place in Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery's new Music Hall venue where emerging midlands artists David Bethell explored the eighteenth century transformation of landscape through the tools and inventions of the industrial revolution combining new works, objects and a film with those of the museum collection. New works on paper by myself, not previously exhibited, were shown for the first time, along with some existing large paintings and three dimensional objects that were first shown in Soft Estate. These painted works on paper further explored the margins of our still largely un-noticed road network margins. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | The exhibition gained national coverage with a powerful review by writer Stephen Lee in the September edition of Art Monthly, writing the following within the review - 'While in the passenger seat driving along the M6 through Birmingham heading to Weston Hall, I tested out the setting for Edward Chell's Motorscapes. I imagined the wing mirrors of my car functioning like Gilpin's Claude mirrors attached to his carriage in the 18th century to frame fortuitous vistas while touring. A valley of warehouses, red cliffs and trees, a serpentine motorway: variety, roughness and an amber tint to blend tonality bring the ingredients of the urban picturesque together. In his synthetic pictures, Chell focuses on the marginalised wilderness of flora found on motorway sidings. The wild flowers that survive amid the fumes are painted with delicacy in oil paint on a surface of shellac. Chell's drawings of plants exude Claude's golden light as they congeal into diseased grotesques.' The exhibition attracted over 16,000 visitors during its run and had wide and varied press and web-based coverage. |
| URL | http://www.meadowarts.org/exhibitions/synthetic-landscapes |
| Description | In Soft Estate I explored motorway landscapes in relation to the C18th Picturesque Landscape tradition, how this informs our sense of these environments today and how this might further inform a sense of the value of these spaces especially in relation to ecologies. Methodologies: Using visual methodologies exploring both the micro and macro was highly effective and prompted a very strong response across a wide range of publics and across disciplines. The combination of visuals representing these largely unnoticed and counterbalanced worlds prompted engaged debate with a strong emphasis on the ecological and cultural value of these spaces. Using this strategy on the scale that the Fellowship allowed facilitated the production of larger scale works, objects and installations and enabled me to see the visual impact of this strategy on a scale not previously realised. This also had a significant impact and public response. The methodology of combining both exhibitions with attendant books (Soft Estate and Eclipse) was a highly effective tool to both ground the artwork and open up the discursive elements around it in a way that did not simply describe the work. Instead, the books became integral to the outcome, facilitating the unpacking of underlying ideas and proving a powerful tool for discussion. The books also provide an afterlife for the exhibitions. This combination of exhibition with embedded publication has continued to inform my practice and will no doubt continue to do so. Research Questions: The Fellowship initially shifted the emphasis of my research onto the ecological questions underpinning my visualisations. This began informing questions associated with my solo exhibition 'Bloom' that in part developed out of Soft Estate and was shown at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London from July to December 2015. These questions were concerned with extinction, taxonomies, collecting and material values, and their overlap with environmental preservation. Questions about visually combining the micro/macro worlds of plants with narrative devices used in Chinese wallpapers also informed some prospective investigations for a potential wallpaper installation for the National Trust's Croome Court in Worcestershire but this was not ultimately realised. Another area of my research growing out of the Fellowship is the visualisation of refuse, waste, dumps and consumption (urban infrastructures comparable to roads) and exploring these themes within contemporary landscape. This is feeding into a project I am developing with curator Richard Hylton with an initial proposed exhibition outcome scheduled for Autumn 2018. I am working towards producing an accompanying publication for this exhibition to further unpack the associated ideas building on the model provided by Soft Estate. Another project developing a plant theme and curated by myself - 'Phytopia' - included a group of twenty artists ranging from nineteenth century 'Nature Print' inventor and practitioner, Austrian Alois Auer (The Austrian Court State Printer) and his English copier and imitator Henry Bradbury, to others like Karl Blossfledt and to contemporaries such as Suzanne Treister, Rasheed Araeen and Ori Gersht. The exhibition opened in November 2017 at the Milton Gallery, St Pauls, touring to the Thames-Side Studios Gallery in February/March 2018 and scheduled to tour to the Glynn Vivian Museum and Art Gallery, Swansea, Wales later in 2018. This project is using a similar model to Soft Estate where the exhibition is further articulated with inter-disciplinary essay contributors to an illustrated accompanying publication. Networks and Partnerships: A number of new partnerships developed from Soft Estate with The Horniman Museum and Gardens, London and now with Meadow Arts in Warwickshire participating in the exhibition 'Artificial Landscape' held over the summer 2017 and shown at the country house associated with an early Capability Brown Landscape, Weston Park along with a related spin-off in Shrewsbury Museum. I have also built a network of reviewers from different disciplines and specialisms who have responded to the research. From the Soft Estate book launch and symposium at the Contemporary Art Society (CAS), I significantly extended my network of contacts across academic disciplines building links with The Rachel Carson Centre, Munich; the ecological charity Plantlife's verge campaign; London Wildlife Trust; BANC; Compton Verney, Meadow Arts and others. Soft Estate has brought together a wide range of academics and commentators, is still producing outcomes and enabling the solid building of future projects on its foundation. |
| Exploitation Route | The 'Soft Estate' research and exhibition significantly contributed to the growing public debate and appraisal of edgelands and their aesthetic, cultural and ecological value. The project has already impacted on research students attending the Exeter University Conference, others publishing online, both references and writing in their research portfolios. The research associated with Soft Estate is used within my university teaching, particularly at PhD level and MA, and my connections with academics from other universities and different disciplines have further broadened the scope of academic possibilities for the work. An example of this extensive reach is Cambridge University Professor Matthew Gandy's review of Soft Estate in the 'International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies' in 2016. BANC's magazine ECOS also reviewed the publication 'Bloom' the book associated with the Horniman Museum and Gardens art installation that grew out of 'Soft Estate'. Other cross-disciplinary magazines such as Leonardo also covered the exhibition and publication 'Bloom'. My research is already feeding into the development and articulation of ideas by a range of students and peers within my immediate academic community. While a few of the projected outcomes in Pathways to Impact were not met, other unforeseen outcomes came about and are continuing to develop. The Bloom exhibition and installation with The Horniman Museum and Gardens detailed above reach a wide and new audience and likewise the Meadow Arts exhibition, also detailed above, work from Soft Estate were shown along with works that were newly made for 'Artificial Landscape' (curated by Meadow Arts) and held in the summer of 2017. The work is being used by a number of writers and forming a contextual reference point within other publications. An example of this is the recent publication 'A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields' authored by Stephen prince and published 2018 (ISBN: 978-0-9574007-2-6). Chapter 18 'From The Unofficial Countryside to Soft Estate' deals largely with the Soft Estate project and it's arena of interest. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Education,Environment,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Transport |
| URL | http://www.edwardchell.com/ |
| Description | Soft Estate has had more outcomes than initially envisaged. During the research and initial production phase of the Fellowship the opportunity arose for an exhibition at the Beaney Museum in Canterbury to open at the end of the fellowship period in June 2013. This opportunity provided a point in time for a milestone exhibition to try out and evaluate a set of the works being prepared for the exhibition 'Soft Estate' at Bluecoat Liverpool in December 2013. This set, I decided, was to be titled 'Eclipse' and the resulting exhibition of these new works was curated by Stour Valley Arts (SVA) and the Beaney. While preparing written research for Soft Estate I decided that Eclipse would provide a good opportunity for producing an associated publication. On the back of AHRC funding and the new exhibition opportunity I secured another £10K from Arts Council England in February 2013 that enabled the production of this publication, also called 'Eclipse'. Working on the book became a sounding board while still producing the art works for Eclipse so integrating both the writing, production of artwork, and contextualising the two in a way that informed subsequent public discussions and presentations. The model reinforced my sense of Soft Estate (Book & Exhibition) fulfilling a similar role. The Beaney exhibition also tied to a range of arts activities organised by SVA such as their mid-summer Solstice Festival and activities connected to the publication as a kind of woodland 'identification' guide. The project also highlighted the large biodiversity of road-sites and motorway verges as these species mirrored those found in the woodland. The Beaney ran a range of related educational activities and their visitor figures for the period of the show (June 22nd - September 8th) were immense at 130,451 visitors. In terms of the findings - in this case Eclipse, the book and show - directly impacted on 3 FE/HE student groups, 25 Foreign Language Student groups, and even a group of cubs/scouts doing work for their Arts Explorer Award. Eclipse also attracted some national coverage in Artists' Newsletter with an excellent and incisive review by Anna Ricciardi, the influential bellwether taste-making website 'ItsNiceThat' and the Arts Council/Dept. of Education website Culture 24. This coverage reflects a range of cultural impact makers. Subsequent to the exhibition, the book Eclipse has been available and bought from events such as the Bluecoat and Spacex openings (2013 & 2014 respectively) and other related events such as that at the Contemporary Art Society, London (CAS) for Soft Estate and the Exeter University conference where there was much interest. Eclipse, published by Stour Valley Arts, is a case bound 108 page fully illustrated wood/verge plant taxonomy. It includes an introduction by Curator Dan Howard-Birt, an essay by celebrated historian Jenny Uglow and an interview between Dan Howard-Birt and myself. The book is distributed by Cornerhouse Books, Manchester. On December 5th 2013 'Soft Estate' opened at Bluecoat and ran until February 23rd 2014. Like the Beaney, this was well attended and the figures from Bluecoat for the exhibition period were also large at 19,500 visitors. As with the Beaney, the findings from the fellowship came out both as an accompanying book and exhibition of related artefacts. This was a much larger show both in the size, amount of works exhibited, the research parameters and the inclusion of the other invited participant artists to further the visual conversation contextualizing 'Soft Estate'. The Bluecoat ran a range of events connected to the show from an Edgeland talk by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons-Roberts (6th Feb, 2014) to an edgelands walk conducted by Colin Dilnot. Bluecoat's educational outreach programme associated with the exhibition reached a wide audience of school children and was amply evidenced in an exhibition in the adjacent Atrium gallery within the Bluecoat complex during the latter part of Soft Estate. This children's exhibition comprised of objects, sculpture and paintings (some with silhouettes of plants) with accompanying creative/descriptive texts. It was clear that children from Primary age upwards had seriously engaged with, been influenced by and understood material in the exhibition. The Bluecoat also run a well established and highly innovative education programme called 'Blue Room' working with people with special educational needs. The work produced, displayed in some of the adjacent public spaces, evidenced a strong engagement with the subject matter by these participants who had clearly understood and benefitted from the exhibition. The exhibition itself had a broad effect on the community and I have anecdotal evidence from fellow academics in northern universities of their students referencing the exhibition in both written work and in studio outputs. The two public presentations at Bluecoat - 7th December and for Contemporary Art Society (CAS) members on 15th February 2014 were well attended and received with 40 - 50 attendees at the first and about 30 at the second. They both provoked vigorous debate and questions and, partly as a result of the high quality of the CAS presentation and discussion, I was invited to be a CAS artist member. Like Eclipse, Soft Estate had an accompanying publication. The book Soft Estate was published by Bluecoat. The book is case bound, 152-pages full colour with introduction by Bryan Biggs (director) and essays by Sara-Jayne Parsons (curator) and Richard Mabey, a leading environmental commentator and activist. The book also included a fully illustrated extended essay by myself called 'Soft Estate' in which I discuss my findings. The essays tie in well with each other, Richard Mabey's essay 'Hidden Dips' also referring to the Picturesque tradition and referring to Uvedale Price as a proto-green. As with 'Eclipse', the book is distributed by Cornerhouse books, Manchester and is stocked by bookshops including The London Review of Books Bookshop, Camden Arts Centre and South London Art Gallery. The book gained good coverage (e.g. Leonardo Reviews online) and is still attracting comment with reviews scheduled for publication in the coming months with ECOS, cassone-art.com, Cultural Geographies and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies. It was selected as March 2014 book of the month by The Learned Pig, 'the online magazine on art, nature, thinking and writing'. The exhibition attracted a lot of press and other coverage reflecting a strong interest in the ideas and questions being posed by the book and exhibition. These included the Guardian Guide; the Times Higher Educational Magazine; Art Monthly and many others detailed on my website. Following on from the Bluecoat the exhibition toured to Spacex in Exeter, a major South West arts venue. Soft Estate at Spacex opened on Saturday March 8th and ran until Saturday May 3rd, 2014. Public interest was reflected in strong visitor numbers. The education team at Spacex ran 'gallery breakfasts' along with a more traditional school based program and reported a positive response to the visualisation of these sites opening up the subject for children. It was clear from my first presentation at the beginning of the exhibition that there was a strong and informed interest and a willingness to engage with and re-evaluate these sites. The questions and answers ran for about forty-five minutes and provided both a thorough interrogation of the subject and an enriching experience. Likewise, the one day symposium at Exeter University held on 26thApril, supported by the AHRC Follow On Fellow, Professor Andrew Thompson and introduced by Care for the Future co-ordinator Christine Boyle, provided a fertile arena for discussion and debate over the topics raised by the book and exhibition. What I found surprising was that there were strong ecological responses, surpassing aesthetic questions, to the visual manifestation of the exhibition work itself (for example the road dust prints really caught the public imagination because of the apparent contradictions in the material combined with the plant images depicted). This prompted questions and responses that are already shaping the ways my visualisation of these habitats might now develop. In response to the above I am also aware of the limitations in the way ecology is often visualised and that there is still a profound need to be able to make sense of these fugitive and changing habitats that both engage and challenge an ever widening public as environmental stakeholders. The questionnaire responses to the conference at Exeter University 'Art of the Edgelands' reflect this. I also found that the edgelands I explored provided serious interest to a wide section of delegates. The delegates, ranging from senior academics to postgraduate students and members of the general public, came from a diverse range of places from Birmingham and Nottingham in the north to Brighton, Farnham and Cardiff reflecting a wide geographical interest. I also organised a book launch event for Soft Estate at the London offices of CAS with a discussion about edgelands with myself, Professor Ken Worpole and Curator Sara-Jayne Parsons, chaired by Bluecoat's Director Brian Biggs. This was attended by over 60 people. Projects now developing as a result of the Fellowship As a result of the fellowship I have shifted some of the visual emphases towards the biological and ecological aspects within this terrain of research. My solo project 'Bloom' opened on the 9th July 2015 at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London and ran for five months until 6th December , in part developing from work produced for Eclipse and Soft Estate. 'Bloom' responded to a recently re-discovered set of Anna Atkins cyanotype folios within the Horniman collection and as such further developed imagery using plant silhouettes combined with the predilection for collecting. Commodity fetishism, encouraged and facilitated through our road transport networks was also an underlying theme. 'Bloom' at the Horniman also provided a platform for a fully subscribed conference, 'Museums, Artists and Universities working in Partnership', hosted by the Horniman Museum and Gardens on 17 March, 2016. Though tangential to 'Soft Estate', several aspects of the works produced for Bloom came about as a result of my initial researches into edgelands and marginal land for Soft Estate. Other projects were envisaged to which the research and works of Soft Estate provided natural visual equivalents, including an exhibition originally planned by Meadow Arts and encompassing a range of invited practitioners whose work explored themes connected to the Grand Tour and the environment. The exhibition titled 'De Tour' was originally scheduled to open in 2016 at Compton Verney's large contemporary art gallery referencing their collection of C18th artefacts and paintings and planned to tour major museums across Europe but for reasons external to the project, this never fully materialised. However, another related Meadow Arts project called 'Synthetic Landscapes' did develop and was shown for a period of three months at Weston Park in Shropshire near Telford, opening on the 4th June and running until the 3rd September, 2017. (http://www.meadowarts.org/exhibitions/synthetic-landscapes) The exhibition provided a valuable context for further exploring aesthetic relationships between contemporary landscape and eighteenth century models and used some works produced as part of the 'Soft Estate' exhibitions. I also worked on developing a large wallpaper installation for the National Trust's Croome Court in Worcestershire. Entitled 'The Chinese Room' I secured university research funding and in-kind development funding from the NT. 'The Chinese Room' was to explore the potential offered by silhouette plant forms as a visual cue for themes of 'extinction', C18th global trade and Chinese culture. The wallpaper installation was to depict plants collected from across the globe to present a 'ghost' garden, reanimating what was once England's second largest horticultural collection after Kew (described in the archive 'Hortus Croomensis') but unfortunately was never fully realised. Some further coverage from Soft Estate: New material referring to Soft Estate is still emerging. The ecological bi-annual almanac 'Dark Mountain' published an extract from Eclipse of my interview with Dan Howard-Birt with accompanying images in the section on 'Soil', pages 34 - 40 under the chapter heading 'Microcosmos' (ISBN 978-0-9564960-5-8). The British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC) reviewed my book Soft Estate in this winter's edition of their quarterly magazine ECOS. A Fellow of the Rachel Carson Centre in Munich, Luke Keogh included information and imagery from Soft Estate in his essay in the publication to accompany the exhibition at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, 'Welcome to The Anthropocean: The World in our Hands' (ISBN 978-3-940936-49-5) (pp 146-147) that opened on December 5th 2014. A range of curators continue to visit my studio (in some cases developing projects using works from Soft Estate). I have submitted my findings to the Highways Agency and The Institute of Highway Engineers and I was in conversation with the ecological charity 'Plantlife' (in relation to their Verge campaign) and who were keen to make use of my work. These organisations, their staff and contributors include national policy advisors affirming the cross-disciplinary connections I am making with these writers and professionals. With Soft Estate there were some real disappointments such as Little Chef not being able to participate while in the middle of national restructuring during 2013. They were unsure at the time about which restaurants might be affected and clearly could not commit in such a fluid moment. However, these disappointments were offset and more than mitigated by the unforeseen extra outputs such as the 'Eclipse' exhibition and book, the 'Soft Estate' tour to Spacex and the Exeter University symposium. The project continues to supply outputs and engagements. Not only was there the more recent Meadow Arts exhibition 'Synthetic Landscapes' (2017) but also from work from 'Soft Estate' was shown in other exhibitions such as Bluecoat Liverpool's 300 Year Anniversary exhibition 'Public View' (also 2017). Several works from 'Soft Estate' (to be shown along with my more recent works) are to be included in the exhibition 'Sweep' curated by Roberto Ekholm at Kino Kino in Stavanger Norway that includes a range of artists from Peter Joseph to Derek Jarman and explores novel approaches to landscape representation. 'Sweep' opens on April 14th, 2018 and runs until September 2018. New publications include the book 'A year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields' by Stephen Prince and published by A Year In The Country. (ISBN: 978-0-9574007-2-6) Soft Estate is described in Chapter 18 'From The Unofficial Countryside to Soft Estate' p146 -151. The Ebook was released 1 March 2018 with the printed book due to be released10 April 2018. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Education,Environment,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Transport |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Eclipse |
| Amount | £10,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | URN 23389307 |
| Organisation | Arts Council England |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2013 |
| End | 02/2014 |
| Description | 'Soft Estate' - An Interview with Edward Chell in 'The Clearing' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | The very timely and in-depth interview on the excellently regarded and critically evaluative blog 'The Clearing' was by one of the collaborative editors, Jos Smith. The blog states that ''Soft Estate' is a term used by the Highways Agency to describe those natural habitats that have evolved alongside motorways in this country. It is also the title of a fascinating new book with essays and artworks by Edward Chell, Sara-Jayne Parsons and Richard Mabey that explores some surprising links between the landscape gardeners and theorists of the picturesque in the eighteenth century and our present day motorway architecture. Finally, it is also an exhibition that has been touring the UK and is currently at Spacex in Exeter until early May this year. Jos Smith went along to talk to the artists behind Soft Estate, Edward Chell, at Spacex, to ask him about what drove him to reflect so thoughtfully on an aspect of our landscape that so many take for granted every day". The interview with Jos Smith covers some of the history behind the genesis of thinking behind 'Soft Estate' and goes on to develop a number of cultural and historical touchstones exciting and animating the work and ideas. It is difficult to eveluate the impact, but this is well researched and respected academic blog based with academics at Exeter University so is both a very useful research tool and has a wide range of followers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://theclearingonline.org/2014/03/soft-estate-an-interview-with-edward-chell/ |
| Description | A Vicious Sea of Moving Steel: JG Ballard and the Soft Estate |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A dissemination output in the form of blog 'The Double Negative', posted on the 5th December, 2013, the night of the opening at Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool. The piece written by C James Fagan looks at the whole phenomena of these edgelands from the perspective of the Ballardian and peoples' behaviour and asks questions about how we experience rushing through these sorts of spaces and the dystopia and dislocation involved. Author of blog: C. James Fagan The blog has a narrative exploring the bleak dystopian possibilities such as those explored by J. G. Ballard in 'The Concrete Island'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2013/12/a-vicious-sea-of-moving-steel-j-g-ballard-and-the-soft-es... |
| Description | Art & Algae: The Work of Anna Atkins |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was an article in the American online jounal 'Full Stop Magazine' by Anna Ricciard with special reference to the work of the historical photographer Anna Atkins who formed one of the cornerstones for the rationale for 'Bloom' - both the exhibition and the book. The exhibition project 'Bloom' is cited and discussed in relation to Atkins' work and provided a contemporary hinge for discussing Atkins' work in a contemporary art context. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.full-stop.net/2015/10/21/features/essays/anna-ricciardi/art-algae-the-work-of-anna-atkins... |
| Description | Art of the Edgelands |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | keynote/invited speaker |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 'Art of the Edgelands' is an interdisciplinary conference/symposium considering the significance and importance of British 'edgelands' in ecological terms, as historic manifestations and as cultural spaces ripe for artistic enquiry. Defined by environmental activist and writer Marion Shoard as a type of terrain 'apparently unplanned, certainly uncelebrated and largely incomprehensible', these thresholds herald a place where 'much of our current environmental change...is taking place', despite which. 'edgelands have become the lowest grade of landscape in UK landscape conservation terms'. The symposium had six key speakers including artists, cultural geographers (from the University of Exeter)and other commentators. The conference/symposium was introduced by Christine Boyle, Project co-ordinator for the AHRC theme 'Care for the Future. Thinking Forward Through The Past' and PA to Prof. Andrew Thompson, AHRC Follow-On Fellow. I chaired the discussion panels following on from the speaker sessions. In the words of Spacex - 'The symposium will cover the conflicting storyline contained within these contested liminal spaces. Caitlin DeSilvey explores the cultural significance of material change over time and the value things like repair. Laura Oldfield-Ford, an artist working in ballpoint, acrylic and spray paint acts as an 'agent provocateur' in the arena of urban development'. Apart from myself, the other participants to the conference were artist and academic, Joane Lee, Jos Smith (Cultura |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://spacex.org.uk/events/symposium-art-of-the-edgelands-saturday-26-april/ |
| Description | Art: Edward Chell renders motorway plants in glorious silhouette paintings |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Publicity and coverage surrounding the exhibition and book 'Eclipse' at the Beaney, Canterbury. The website 'It's Nice That' is recognised as a taste and trend setter in design and creative circles or as the site says 'CHAMPIONING CREATIVITY ACROSS THE ART AND DESIGN WORLD'. As the site says 'Editor-in-Chief Rob oversees editorial across all three It's Nice That platforms; online, print and events. He has a background in newspaper journalism and a particular interest in art, advertising and photography. He is the main host of the Studio Audience podcast. ra@itsnicethat.com See: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/edward-chell-eclipse A short pice where as the Beaney Museum described on their website '"Eclipse foregrounds contrasting tensions between the rational, scientific impulse to record and classify the natural world according to Linnaean rules, and the fragile, fugitive, ever-shifting eco systems on which our existence depends. A sense of joyous encounter with the natural world is imbued with the bitter sweet, elegiac quality of 18th Century silhouette portraits of loved ones". I continue to find that I have online referrals to my website via this article in Its Nice That. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| Description | Artist's Statement: Edward Chell on silhouettes of plants at The Beaney in Canterbury |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Short article on the Department for Education and Arts CouncilEngland funded website 'Culture24'. The piece consists of a large series of quotations from the book set in a chronological and narrative structure. Piece described as Edward Chell interviewed by Ben Miller. See: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting-and-drawing/art440427 I did note, as with a number of the publicity related materials and on-line articles, a rise of referrals to my own website via the host organisations |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting-and-drawing/art440427 |
| Description | Bloom Book Review in Third Text by artist, curator and writer, Joan Key |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The review by Joan Key was for the magazine Third Text online. This sympathetic review covered research topics emerging out of the activities connected to 'Soft Estate'. Reviewer Joan Key describing the complex relations between museums, collecting and display, described 'The artist as collaborator in scientific research' as 'a recognised contemporary figure, but Chell's analytical project is political, mining connections through the museum's history in a contemporary retrospect, as amateur in the best sense, enjoying complex associations and 'hybridities' that reveal secretive interactions of wealth and power. Bloom and its associated outcomes and reviews, emerging as it did from 'Soft Estate' has provided a valuable platform for further developing this rich range of visualisations and ideas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://thirdtext.org/bloom-joankey-review |
| Description | Car Parks and Edgelands: An Interview with Artist Edward Chell |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Interview on the Rachel Carson Center blog 'Seeing The Woods'. The RCC describe the blog in the following terms: 'Seeing the Woods is produced by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC), an international and interdisciplinary research center devoted to the environmental humanities. Its contributors include the RCC's staff and fellows, as well as external contributors from this multi-disciplinary community.' They go on to say that 'Through this blog, the RCC also strives to connect scholarship and public discourse. We believe such connections are necessary for finding solutions to local and global environmental problems.' The interview on the blog is a part of the interview between myself and Stour Valley Arts Curator, Dan Howard-Birt, that was originally published in the Soft Estate attendant project exhibition and publication, 'Eclipse'. - shown in Canterbury in June -September, 2013. The blog was posted on March 18th, 2014. Interview of Edward Chell and Dan Howard-Birt in relation to the work Eclipse which was shown at Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool and Spacex Gallery, Exeter as part of 'Soft Estate'. As the RCC stress, their remit for the blog is very wide, and while I cannot individually assess the impact, I believe that it would be significant. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://seeingthewoods.org/2014/03/18/car-parks-and-edgelands-an-interview-with-artist-edward-chell/ |
| Description | DAY_115/365: EDWARD CHELL'S SOFT ESTATES - DOCUMENTS OF AUTOBAHN EDGELANDS |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Edgelands Report Document: Case #1a A blog by A Year In The Country. A description of the book and some of the ideas connected to 'Soft Estate' would have a wide target audience including schools/students/teachers; participants in research and potentially policy makers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/edward-chells-soft-estates-documents-autobahn-edgelands-day-115365/ |
| Description | Eclipse - Edward Chell |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a substantial and incisive review coverage of the publication 'Eclipse' an added outcome from the work and research for 'Soft Estate'. The article written by Anna Ricciardi was published as part of the Artists' Newsletter round up of exhibitions and projects. Ricciardi's incisive piece captures the unusual feminine thread connected to C18th chaperoned flower collecting and open up a whole and usually hidden narrative connected to current ecologies. She describes the fact that 'Chell's practice of 'flower painting', therefore, implicitly refers to a gendered cultural history of value, class and taste. This is the point at which Eclipse becomes more than merely a charming portal to a bygone age or a pleasing juxtaposition of 18th century aesthetics and ideas with current environmental concerns. when viewed against the joyful optimism of 1960's flower power or the aspirations of a self-sufficient suburban 'Good Life' in the 1970's, for example. the elegiac, mournful quality of Chell's plant portraits feels rooted in the present day. The review can be found on the URL below. Anna Ricciardi's piece did reach a wide national audience via Artists' Newsletter and as such would have had an impact, though that is difficult to describe specifically. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.a-n.co.uk/p/4030873 |
| Description | Edward Chell Soft Estate Talk on Thursday 6th and Saturday 8th March 2014 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Two main talks in Spacex during the second leg of the Soft Estate Tour dealt with two different sets of people. The first talk on the day before the exhibition was open to the public was for the curating staff, all the voluteers and others connected to the running of the gallery. About 30 people attended this talk that was followed by a Q & A discussion session. The Second talk was for the gallery going public that is a mixture of professionals, gallery curators, academics and other interested parties. This took place on saturday 8th March from 1.00pm and followed a similar to the first except to say that there were many more people there - at least 100. The gallery was packed with people standing, acting simultaneously as opening, exhibition guide and introduction and a forum for debate about issues surrounding the exhibition. See: http://spacex.org.uk/ After both talks, many members of each of the audiences came up and talked and described how what had been said had made an impact on their thinking. Overall a very positive response. The only URL for these events is the Spacex site in the box below. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://spacex.org.uk/exhibitions/soft-estate-8-march-3-may-2014/ |
| Description | Edward Chell: Liverpool |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review in the exhibitions section of the Guardian Guide of Saturday 14th December, 2013. Review coverage of exhibition Soft Estate by Robert Clark. Clark is one of the few reviewers to pick up a slightly ironic note in the C18th penchant for picturesque plant-life. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2013/dec/13/paul-reas-exhibitions-art-shows |
| Description | Edward Chell:Soft Estate |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A strong and positive review of the exhibition Soft estate which toured from Bluecoat Liverpool to Spacex, Exeter. The review is by writer Stephen Lee and is in the April 2014 edition of Art Monthly, issue number 375. Substantial review of 'Soft Estate' by writer and artist Stephen Lee combining art historical, planning and cultural/historical narratives. For review see page 27. Difficult to assess but reviews in the coveted and well respected art journal are a good bench mark for critical engagement. Because Art Monthly has a subscription website I have been given permission to use that of the writer Stephen Lee as the URL reference for this piece. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://stephenleesculptor.tumblr.com/ |
| Description | Exquisite 19th century sun prints illuminate the Horniman's Natural History. Review article in Culture 24 Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The exhibition and book 'Bloom' were covered in the online magazine 'Culture24' and included an edited abbreviated version of my essay edited by Ben Stiller. The article included a full range of accompanying illustrations from gallery installation photographs, to individual images of my own works and those of historical photographer Anna Atkins |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting-and-drawing/art541132-edward-chell-statement-horniman-anna-... |
| Description | Interview with Bradley L Garrett & Stephen Walter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | On the Bluecoat's website, this page has a discursive interview between the two listed above. The site describes them as the following - 'Bradley Garrett is a writer, explorer, photographer and a researcher in Geography at the University of Oxford. His research interests revolve around heritage, place, urban life, ruins and waste, ethnography and participation, spatial politics, subversion and creative methods. Bradley's new book 'Explore Everything: Place Hacking the City', was just released by verso. The two protagonists discuss a range of ideas connected somewhat tangentially to the themes explored in Soft Estate Interview topic around the wide ranging possibilities for edgeland from shopping centres and abandoned places to John Ruskin's notion of 'the Pathetic Fallacy', the results would no doubt prompt speculation in readers, but impacts from such review writing are very difficult to measure or describe. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/blog/view/who-is-blogging/133sthash.UFCY1dH2.dpuf |
| Description | Joe Moran's Blog On the Everyday, The Banal and other Important Matters |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Cultural commentator, writer and academic at Liverpool John Moores University, Joe Moran comments at length on the book 'Soft Estate'. Describing the verge as the modern equivalent of the hedgerow he described 'It was the dogged, unlovely nature of the roadside - from the rare fungi and algae that thrived in the drip-zone under crash barriers to the wild flowers that flourished on the poor-quality soil of the verge - that made it ecologically important. As with other coverage, this blog covers the mundane but ultimately environmentally strategic nature of these edgeland spaces. It is difficult to evaluate impact, but Joe Moran's blog has a huge following and I have had many referrals to my own website through his blog. His blog on the 'everyday' acts as cultural thermometer and bellwether for subjects of deserving national cultural scrutiny. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://joemoransblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/soft-estate.html |
| Description | Leonard Reviews |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Leonardo Reviews is a scholarly review service published since 1968 by Leonardo, The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. ISSN: 1559-0429 The Review of Soft estate published online reached a wide audience but it is also difficult to ascertain the overall impacts from this. Impacts are difficult to ascertain but Leonardo described the book Soft Estate with the following terms: 'With it's eloquent language and sound referencing, the book makes an interesting read for professionals, academics, students and general readership alike'. The online journal has a wide multi-disciplinary academic readership. The on-line readership globally has a reach of over 440,000 readers and after having talked to the editor Micahel Punt at Plymouth University he said that the review, by Sana Murrani is earmarked for publication in their printed magazine shortly |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://leonardo.info/reviews/july2014/muranni-chell.php |
| Description | Plant Migrations. Review of Bloom in the Learned Pig Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Review of the exhibition and book 'Bloom' included an edited version of Hugh Warwick's essay - 'Plant Migrations'. The review also included installation images of the exhibition and works alongside images illustrating Hugh Warwick's essay. The review came out on 20th November 2015. The production of the book 'Bloom' helped develop a lasting and productive working relationship with a recognised and established ecological writer and commentator (Hugh Warwick) and a young and energetic critical/cultural commentator (Anna Ricciardi). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.thelearnedpig.org/plant-migrations/3047 |
| Description | Publication of interview in 'Dark Mountain' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The piece in 'Dark Mountain' (as they describe - 'an hardback biannual collection of uncivilised writing and art') published by Dark Mountain Projects, Issue 6 (Autumn 2014 - ISBN 978-0-9564960-5-8) is a an edited version of the interview between myself and Dan Howard-Birt and first published in 'Eclipse' in 2013. in the section on Soil and under the Chapter heading 'Microcosmos', (pages 34 - 40) the piece unusually illustrates the text with a ribbon of my plant silhouettes along the top of each page. Impacts in these types of case are hard to define, but Dark Mountain has a very large readership and list of subscribers. According to Dark Mountains Project - 'The online Uncivilisation network has drawn in over 1,700 people from at least 15 different countries'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://shop.dark-mountain.net/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=68 |
| Description | Review by Matthew Gandy of the publication 'Soft Estate' in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A review of the publication 'Soft Estate' (published 2013) by cultural geographer and Cambridge University based academic and Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography, Matthew Gandy for the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (Volume 40, Issue 3 May 2016. Pages 711-712). This international journal read by a wide range of academics globally provided a strong interdisciplinary platform for further disseminating the ideas central to 'Soft Estate' to a wide range of scholars and academics whose insights and ideas overlap with some of my own. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12371/abstract |
| Description | Review of the publication Bloom by Jane Hutchinson for Leonardo Magazine online. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | The Review of the publication Bloom (though the exhibition installation is also strongly alluded to) by Jane Hutchinson, of the Transtechnology Research Centre, University of Plymouth and that came out in 2016 was very informed and supportive, describing the complexities surrounding publications with compound and multidisciplinary narratives connected to art installations that the reader might not have been able to see and directly access in real space. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://leonardo.info/reviews/mar2016/brooker-hutchinson.php |
| Description | Soft Estate |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Bluecoat's website hosted a large range of related events, talks, discussions, educational workshops. See: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/search One of the related talks by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale of 'Caravan Gallery' was at the Bluecoat on Wednesday 12th February and can be found at: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/1871 At another event Colin Dinot led an Edgelands walk on Saturday 8th February that was fully booked. some details can be found at: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/1885 A related event coming out of the exhibition was a talk given by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons-Roberts on Thursday 6th February with reference to their book 'Edgelands. http://www.the The audience who attended took most of the Saturday afternoon of the 7th December, 2013 engaging in a lengthy discussion and gallery tour with the curator and a couple of the artists who were invited to be part of the exhibition project. A second talk took place on Saturday 15th February which was specifically for a group from the Contemporary Art Society (Northern region) and which was co-hosted by CAS curator and regional organiser Mark Doyle. About 30 people attended this talk - collectors, curators and interested professionals. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/1870 |
| Description | Soft Estate Exeter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Review by Robert Clark in the Guardian Guide, Saturday 15th March, page 37. Robert Clark covers Soft estate in brief in the 'exhibitions' section of the Guardian Guide. Cannot evaluate impact of this coverage. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/15/this-weeks-new-exhibitions |
| Description | Soft Estate was included in chapter eighteen of the Recently published book, A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields, authored by Stephen Prince (ISBN: 978-0-9574007-2-6) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Much of chapter eighteen - From The Unofficial Countryside to Soft Estate - is dedicated to the researches and ideas that came out of Soft Estate. It is too early to comment further on the impacts of this publication as the e-book was only launched on 1 March, just prior to this submission, while the printed copy will be launched on 10 April 2018. Here is what the book's publicity says: 'In keeping with the number of weeks in a year, the book is split into 52 chapters which draw together revised writings from the project alongside new journeyings. Connecting layered and, at times, semi-hidden cultural pathways and signposts, it journeys from acid folk to edgelands via electronic music innovators, folkloric film and photography, dreams of lost futures and misremembered televisual tales and transmissions. It includes considerations of the work of writers including Rob Young, John Wyndham, Richard Mabey and Mark Fisher, musicians and groups The Owl Service, Jane Weaver, Shirley Collins, Broadcast, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Virginia Astley and Kate Bush, the artists Edward Chell, Jeremy Deller and Barbara Jones and the record labels Trunk, Folk Police, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers. The book also explores television and film including Quatermass, The Moon and the Sledgehammer, Phase I V, Beyond the Black Rainbow, The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, Bagpuss, Travelling for a Living, The Duke of Burgundy, Sapphire & Steel, General Orders No. 9, Gone to Earth, The Changes, Children of the Stones, Sleep Furiously and The Wicker Man.' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/year-country-wandering-spectral-fields-book-print-book-preorder-ebook... |
| Description | Soft Estate: Edgelands as wilderness, or the new Picturesque. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | An article by Eddie Procter from the blog 'Landscapism' and posted on Wednesday 26th March, 2014. The piece is well illustrated and covers mainly the book. As Eddie Procter says about the blog 'Landscapism is inspired by a long-standing and widening interest in all things relating to landscape, topography and sense of place. The aim of this blog is to provide a forum to discuss and promote landscape themes and encourage greater inter-connectedness between different disciplines and areas of inter-connectedness between different disciplines and ares of interest'. Landscapism describes that 'The central argument of the book is that there is a 'connective visual experience' between the Picturesque designed landscapes of the eighteenth century and the modern motorway infrastructure, which both acts as a network to visit the fossilised National Trust world of stately homes and deer parks and also mimics the use of reveals, curves, inclines and other architectural conceits to mediate the relationship with, and views of, the surrounding environment'. the book concentrates on the publication 'Soft Estate' and while it is difficult to summarise impact quantifiably, judging from the amount of positive coverage the book has received, the impact could be assumed to be nominally high. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://landscapism.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/soft-estate-edgelands-as-wilderness-or.html |
| Description | Soft Estate: Edward Chell |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Bluecoat Gallery's website showing main advertising and details of the exhibition 'Soft estate' at Bluecoat. Posted on 6th December, 2013. The page goes on to say 'With invited artists Tim Bowditch & Nick Rochowski with Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau, Day Bowman, Jan Williams & Chris Teasdale (The Caravan Gallery), John Darwell, Laura Oldfield Ford, George Shaw, Robert Soden, Simon Woolham Soft Estate features new works by Edward Chell that explore the interface between history, ecology, roads and travel. In paintings, prints and objects, made using a variety of materials including road dust and etched car parts, he investigates motorway landscapes, linking these contemporary environments with 18th century ideas of the Picturesque'. Main description of exhibition and participants on gallery website page for Soft Estate during the exhibition. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014 |
| URL | http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/blog/view/who-is-blogging/135 |
| Description | Soft Estate: Edward Chell project on Landscapes Around Motorways |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Review of the thinking behind Soft Estate in the Times Higher Education Magazine. Titled 'Verging on the unexpected:get a glimpse of life beside the fast lane', the article by writer Matthew Reise describes how he is 'carried along by the beauty revealed in neglected parts of our landscape'. The review came out in the New Year edition of the TLS on Thursday 2nd January 2014 and also online. (see also www.timeshighereducation.co.uk) 2 - 8 january, 2014. No.2,133. Page 13. The narrative of the article covered the the events which led up to the genesis of the ideas and the creation of the work. Part narrative and part interview, the piece highlighted the extraordinary nature of the often ignored strips of 'edgeland' along the sides of our motorways. I did receive a lot of email reference and website referrals as a direct result of the the subject was broached and opened up in this article. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/soft-estate-edward-chell-project-on-landscapes-around-mot... |
| Description | Some Landscapes |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Blog by writer Andrew Ray that in his words 'explores landscape through the arts: painting, installation, photography, literature, music, film...' A sensitive and well tuned account of the book where at one point he describes the sometimes transformative experiences of driving - 'I am reminded too Tony Smith's much discussed account of the moment when he realised that traditional art could not compete with the feeling of driving along the unfinished New Jersey Turnpike, a text that became central to debates about the future of art in the late sixties'. Andrew Ray's blog 'Some-Landscapes is a well respected, researched and visited blog. The article focuses on the ecological issues within the text and references the contributions made by environmental writer and campaigner Richard Mabey. While ecological issues are highly current both in public debate, in schools and among a broadening group of academics, it is again difficult to determine exactly the impact of this writing except to say that any such impacts will no doubt be 'slow burners'. However the blog is very well researched and manages to open up the subject in interesting ways. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://some-landscapes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/soft-estate.html |
| Description | Thats How The Light Gets In |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A blog by Gerry Cordon which covers a range of topics from art and film to ideas & politics and nature and the environment. The lengthy piece of writing covers the Bluecoat exhibition in some detail and takes time to address the work of the other invited guest artist participants. However, he says that 'The main focus of the exhibition is on the work of artist and academic Edward Chell who investigates contemporary motorway landscapes - quintessential examples of the edgelands, lovingly described in the book by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons-Roberst, Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wilderness'. Exhibition overview of 'Soft Estate' and all the participants with texts highlighted from essays within the book. Difficult to evaluate impacts but the blog first posted on 21st Jauary, 2014 is well read. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/soft-estate-an-inaccessible-wilderness-mundane-and-sublime... |
| Description | The Learned Pig |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Learned Pig is an inter-disciplinary online journal connecting different strands of thinking and practice -'art, thinking, nature, writing'. Soft Estate was The Learned Pig's 'Book of the Month' in March 2014 and reflects a wide ranging interest in the book. The review is no longer online though the archive detailed in the URL below details it listing and connects to the Cornerhouse Publications page. Difficult to assess impact in this case though sales were affected reflecting an impact through the raising of ideas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.thelearnedpig.org/books-of-the-month-archive/1205 |
| Description | The New English Landscape |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Blog coverage on Ken Worpole's highly respected blog 'The New English Landscape'. Ken Worpole covered the exhibition and book making comparisons to Patrick Keiller's Tate exhibition and book 'The Possibility of Life's Survival on the Planet'. Here is a short section from the blog - 'Most of us will only ever see these marginal gardens at speed and through glass - they are not immersive landscapes in any way. Of equal emotional significance are the roadside memorials or shrines now placed to commemorate accidents and fatalities. Driving recently into Cambridge along a dual carriageway, the verges were marked by elaborate shrines at frequent intervals - an erstwhile Appian Way of crosses and cairns. Chell's exhibition and books alerts us to these new forms of cultivated (and occasionally sacralised) landscapes which have emerged almost by default, but now form part of the new English countryside'. The New English Landscape was a Leverhulme Award funded collaborative project between writer Ken Worpole and photographer Jason Orton documenting the changing landscape and coastline of Essex, particularly the coastline, estuaries and urban edgelends. The blog continues this investigation of peripheral and and contested territories and hence the interest in Soft estate. The well respected blog is read by both a wide general public, cultural commentators and environmentalists. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://thenewenglishlandscape.wordpress.com/tag/edward-chell/ |
| Description | http://www.edwardchell.com/ |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Personal website which describes all the projects, exhibitions and histories leading up to and beyond Eclipse and Soft Estate, with visuals of works, exhibition installations and links to articles and reviews. The website is well visited and numbers and types of visit can be analysed via Google Analytics.Visits from around the globe average 300 - 400 per month and normally spike during exhibition, gallery mail-outs or other media exposure. Professionals, curators, post-graduate students have contacted me directly via my web-site. I have had opportunities During the period 2011, average visitors were |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011,2012,2013,2014 |