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Gina Wall

Research Statement

I am a practice-led researcher who works within the landscape. Through my practice I explore the relation between photography and text, often playing in the interstice opened between the two. I have an interest in the physical and photographic encounter with landscape as a kind of spectral experience which is informed by Derrida’s assertion that photography is essentially spectral (Derrida, 1998: vi) and that the present is never pure (Derrida, 2013: 39). This has led to a preoccupation with time and landscape, developing an awareness that particular landscapes lend themselves to experience and interpretation as places of competing temporalities. Early work which investigated the inscribed landscape as a kind of text has been developed to capture notions of the hauntological landscape, a landscape which is haunted by the incursions of the past and the anticipation of future(s) yet to come. Running alongside these interests is a fascination with northern places and while acknowledging that the very term north is problematic due to its constitutive haunting by south (Wall, 2013: 241), I continually find myself drawn to the sparsely populated landscapes of Northern Europe. Recent field work undertaken in Iceland alerted me to the very physical manifestations of the violent inversion of striagraphic geological time (volcanic explosions and lava flows) and underlined the fact of the landscape in process. It took this visit to Iceland’s (excessively) living landscape to remind me that regardless of where we are, the landscape is always already in process. Following A.N. Whitehead I began to think of landscape as happening which in turn encouraged me to think about our experiences of and with landscape as lively event encounters (Wall, 2014: 141). Additionally, recent pedagogical research investigates the support of creative practice in a dispersed institution, which I argue, demands that we comprehensively rethink the university. I explore the merits of a porous university which enables learning to occur in place and across the institution. I reimagine the ‘leaky’ university/art school in terms described by Clémentine Deliss as ‘an architectonics of mobility’ (2009: 126).

Reference List

  • Deliss, C. (2009) ‘Roaming, prelusive, permeable: Future Academy’ in S.H. Madhoff (Ed) Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT
  • Derrida, J. (1998) Right of Inspection, Trans D. Wills New York: Monacelli Press
  • Derrida, J. & Stiegler, B. (2013) ‘Spectrographies’ in The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory M. del Pilar Blanco & E. Peeren (Eds)New York and London: Bloomsbury
  • Wall (2013) 'Ghost writing: photographing (the) spectral north' Visual Studies, vol 28, no. 3, pp. 238-248
  • Wall (2014) ‘Encounters with Iceland’s eventful landscape: a series of photographic occasions’ in Relate North 2014 (Eds) T. Jokela & G. Coutts Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press

Employment

  • 2016- Deputy Head, School of Fine Art, Glasgow School of Art
  • 2002-2016 Curriculum Leader, Moray School of Art, University of the Highlands and Islands
  • 1998-2002 Lecturer, Moray College, University of the Highlands and Islands

Publications

  • Wall, G (2015) ‘Future thinking: Imaginative expectations for the leaky university’ Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice vol 3, issue 1, pp.6-10 10.14297/jpaap.v3i1.153
  • Wall, G (2014), ‘Encounters with Iceland’s eventful landscape: a series of photographic occasions’ in Relate North 2014 (eds) Jokela, T and Coutts, G Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press ISBN: 978-952-310-989-6
  • Wall, G (2013), 'Ghost writing: photographing (the) spectral north' Visual Studies, vol 28, no. 3, pp. 238-248, 10.1080/1472586X.2013.830002
  • Wall, G (2013) ‘Invisible Scotland(s)’ in Invisible Scotland: Revealing a Process of Interdisciplinary Discovery ed. Modeen, M. Elgin: Moray School of Art Press ISBN: 978-0-9576428-0-5
  • Wall, G (2012), 'Interdisciplinary Research: Practising the In-Between' International Journal of Art & Design Education, vol 31, no. 3, pp. 276-285., 10.1111/j.1476-8070.2012.01763.x
  • Wall, G (2010), 'Writing the world: photographing the text of the landscape' Excursions, vol 1, no. 1, pp. 123-142.

Exhibitions

  • 2016 Taiteen ja tieteen kiertokulut/Art and science of cycles, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi
  • 2016 Beautiful World, Academy Gallery, Moray School of Art, for the 23rd Moray Science Festival (exhibitor and curator)
  • 2015 Relate North, Kimura Gallery, University of Anchorage Alaska, USA
  • 2014 Between Places, Academy Gallery, Moray School of Art (exhibitor and curator)
  • 2014 Haunted Landscapes, AiR (Academy for Innovation and Research), Falmouth University
  • 2013 Tenging Norður/Relate North: Norræna húsid, Reykjavík, Iceland
  • 2012 Cultural Encounters: Gallery Valo Arktikum, Rovaniemi, Finland
  • 2012 Wall, G, Fisher, B & Pollard, I, Seeing Things Differently: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/exhibitions/seeing-things-differently/
  • 2012 Selected artist, 115th Annual Open Exhibition of the Society of Scottish Artists, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh http://www.s-s-a.org/ssa-annual-2012/
  • 2012 A Dissimulation of Birds, a collaborative investigation into birdsong and place, ASCUS Project Space, St. James Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • www.adissimulationofbirds.wordpress.com
  • 2011 Landscapes of Difference: the Gallery, Glenfiddich Distillery, Scotland
  • 2005-2012 Landscape and the practices of inscription, Department of Philosophy, University of Dundee
  • 2005 Landscape and the practices of inscription, The Foyer Gallery, University of Dundee
  • 2003 IV03 International Exhibition of Digital Art, London
  • 2002 IV02 International Exhibition of Digital Art, Brunei Gallery London
  • 2001 Photography @ the Belmont, curated by Peacock Visual Arts
  • 2001 ArCADE III Invited Artist: International Exhibition of Electronic Prints, Glasgow School of Art
  • 2001 photo[graphic], suite of images shown in parallel to ArCADE III, Glasgow School of Art