Student Led Activity – Lasting Impressions Study Day 28th June 2019

 

Student Led Activity – Lasting Impressions Study Day 28th June 2019

In June 2018, the Lasting Impressions brand was born. At the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, CDP students Abbey Ellis, Valentina Risdonne, Katherine Clough, and Carolyn Alexander hosted their first study day which focused on the institutional role of the replica within museums and heritage. After the success of this event (https://www.ahrc-cdp.org/student-led-activity-lasting-impressions-29th-june-2018/), the Lasting Impressions team were determined to make the next iteration bigger and better. The 2019 student-led study day explored the ‘object-ness’ of copies through a consideration of their own unique materials and manufacturing processes. As well as challenging notions of value in relation to reproductions (especially concepts of ‘(un)originality’ and ‘aura’), the day invited its attendees to consider how the making of reproductions constitutes its own form of knowledge construction, questioning how changes in materiality through the reproduction process impacts upon the form, function and meaning of objects in museums and beyond.

Behind the scenes

Following a similar format to last year’s event, the 2019 study day kicked off with a tour of the host institution. Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum kindly provided a venue for Lasting Impressions 2019 and as part of the study day, participants were given the opportunity to tour the neighbouring Oxford University Museum of Natural History before doors opened to the public. The behind-the-scenes visit was led by CDP student Elaine Charwat and as part of her tour, Elaine was able to give an insight into her PhD research, which focuses on the use of models and casts in natural history and their role as carriers and catalysts of knowledge.

The Speaker Programme

After Elaine’s tour, the Lasting Impressions team welcomed further guests for a morning session of conference-style presentations from PhD researchers, museum professionals, practicing artists, and photogrammetrists. The programme was immensely varied, with papers focused on lessons learned from experimental archaeology, reconstructing past museum exhibitions, charting the histories of plaster cast collections, the cultural value of the copy and much more. The speaker programme was rounded off by a captivating keynote speech by Dr Sally Foster of the University of Stirling, who gave an insight into her work on the island of Iona’s concrete St Johns’ Cross replica. Dr Foster’s keynote skillfully pulled together the themes discussed in the earlier panels, leaving the audience convinced of the value of replicas as authentic objects in their own right.

Pop-up Exhibition

The excellent speaker programme was complemented in the afternoon by a pop-up exhibition, giving attendees the opportunity to interact one-on-one with practice-based PhD research into reproductions. One of the star exhibitors was CDP student Carolyn Alexander, who brought along a selection of objects based on lost or damaged material from the Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh Building. All of her reproductions could be touched, handled, and picked up by participants, inviting them to contemplate our attraction to materials and the lure of the original. Another excellent contribution came from CDP student Beth Hodgett, who put together a handling session of photographs of the 1939 Sutton Hoo archaeological excavation. The historic photographs came from archive of the early twentieth century archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford, which forms the subject of Beth’s PhD. Through her interactive display, Beth was able to unpick some of the connections between the materiality of the photographic archives and the narratives of the excavation, to the great interest of the Lasting Impressions audience.

Other exhibition highlights included imitative artworks presented by Tom Railton, a virtual tour of the plaster cast collection at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Glyptotheque, and the opportunity to handle a 3D printed replica of an ancient Egyptian nose exhibited at the nearby Ashmolean Museum. If that wasn’t enough, the exhibition also played host to a varied range of poster presenters, touching on topics as varied as epigraphic squeezes and self-replication in Renaissance Italy to the use of colour for natural history models and reproductions as teaching tools.

Lasting Impressions 2019 was a great success, in so small part due to the fact that it was a truly international meeting of minds. The team were delighted to welcome contributors from across the UK as well as speakers and poster presenters from as far afield as Croatia, Belgium, Dublin, and Latvia. As always, the event also reached many more people online, using the hashtag #lastingimpressions19. Convenors Abbey, Valentina, Katherine, and Carolyn would like to thank the AHRC’s Student Led Activity Fund for making Lasting Impressions 2019 possible.

 

 

 

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