Unfolding the Archive (Group Exhibition)

Unfolding the Archive, an exhibition of new work by the international artists’ group Floating World, is the result of a collaboration between the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) and the F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio in partnership with the NCAD Gallery at the National College of Art & Design. The exhibition takes its title from the tangible starting point for engagement with an archive – the simple act of unfolding – and the practice of appraisal, valuation and interpretation that is inherent in this process.

Visualising Spaces: The Illustrated Map as a Mode of Communicating Fact, Fiction and Feeling

Communicating thoughts, facts and narratives through visual devices such as allegory or symbolism was fundamental to early map making and this remains the case with contemporary illustration. Drawing was employed then as a way of describing historic narratives (fact and folklore) through the convenience of a drawn symbol or character. The map creators were visionaries, depicting known discoveries and anticipating what existed beyond the agreed boundaries. As we now have photographic and virtual reality maps at our disposal, how can illustration develop the language of what a map is and can be? How can we break the rules of map design and yet still communicate the idea of a sense of place with the aim to inform, excite and/or educate the ‘traveller’? As Illustrators we need to question the purpose of creating a ‘map’: what do we want to communicate and is representational image making the only way to present information of a location? Is creating a more personal interpretation a form of cartouche, reminiscent of elements within the Hereford Mappa Mundi and maps of Blaeu, and can this improve/hinder the communicative aspect of the map? Looking at a variety of historical and contemporary illustrated maps and artists (such as Grayson Perry), who track their journeys through drawing, both conventional journeys and emotional, I will aim to prove that the illustrated map is not mere decoration but is a visual language providing an allegorical response to tangible places and personal feelings.

Return to Hanging Rock: Lost Children in a Gothic Landscape

Using the philosophical position of phenomenology this article examines the ways in which ideas of wildness combine with Australian Gothic tropes such as the white colonial lost child and the bush as a haunted locale to compose key features of an Australian Ecogothic. Joan Lindsay’s enigmatic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) has prompted scholars such as Lesley Kathryn Hawkes to describe how in Australian literature for both adults and children ‘the environment is far more than a setting or backdrop against which the plot takes place’ (Hawkes, 2011,67). On St Valentine’s Day in 1900 three young Australian girls and their teacher disappear from a school picnic at the ancient site of Mount Macedon in Victoria. The analysis, which focuses on Lindsay’s posthumously published chapter eighteen (1987) examines how elements of the material, sensing world combine with the mythological or sacred to connect the human protagonists with the gothic landscape they inhabit. The resulting intersubjectivity problematizes colonial ideology and unsettles notions of national identity. Using the philosophical position of phenomenology this article examines the ways in which ideas of wildness combine with Australian Gothic tropes such as the white colonial lost child and the bush as a haunted locale to compose key features of an Australian Ecogothic. Joan Lindsay’s enigmatic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) has prompted scholars such as Lesley Kathryn Hawkes to describe how in Australian literature for both adults and children ‘the environment is far more than a setting or backdrop against which the plot takes place’ (Hawkes, 2011,67). On St Valentine’s Day in 1900 three young Australian girls and their teacher disappear from a school picnic at the ancient site of Mount Macedon in Victoria. The analysis, which focuses on Lindsay’s posthumously published chapter eighteen (1987) examines how elements of the material, sensing world combine with the mythological or sacred to connect the human protagonists with the gothic landscape they inhabit. The resulting intersubjectivity problematizes colonial ideology and unsettles notions of national identity.