Abstracts and Biographies | Art and Skies
Welcome to the Tate
Dr David Brown
Abstract
Dr David Blayney Brown introduces the Art and Skies Seminar with a short discussion of artists’ depictions of the
sky in Tate’s collection. Sketchbooks and works on paper to major exhibited oil paintings, and masters like Turner
and Constable as well as lesser known figures like the clergyman and amateur Thomas Kerrich, show a range of
responses from the empirical and naturalistic to the emotive and religious.
Biography:
David is Manton Curator of British Art 1790-1850 at Tate Britain. His books include Romanticism (Phaidon Art &
Ideas, 2001) and he has curated or co-curated many exhibitions, most recently Late Turner; Painting Set Free
(2014) and Artist & Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past currently at Tate. He leads and edits Tate’s online
catalogue JMW Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours.
The Aspire Programme
Gracie Divall
Abstract:
Gracie will present Aspire partners’ engagement with weather and the sky in Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from
the Meadows within their outreach and learning programmes during the Aspire touring programme.
Biography
Gracie Divall is currently Project Manager, National Network for Constable Studies at Tate, where her role involves
overseeing the five-year Aspire partnership programme. Aspire is enabling audiences of all ages to enjoy and
learn more about the work of John Constable by touring Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831 across the
UK. Aspire is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund. Gracie also teaches at Camberwell College
of Arts, and has previously worked in schools and galleries engaging audiences with the sciences through the
mediums of art and textiles.
The mutable screen of the clouds.
Dr Richard Hamblyn
Abstract:
Clouds have often been cast as the enemies of astronomy, obscuring vital observations of eclipses or planetary
transits; at the same time they have long provided a magical screen onto which dreams, ideas, myths and legends
have been projected. This talk considers clouds in both these guises, as impediments and magic lanterns, using a
range of historical examples from Benjamin Franklin to the modern flogo.
Biography:
Dr Richard Hamblyn is a lecturer in the department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London.
He is the author of The Invention of Clouds, which won the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted
for the Samuel Johnson Prize; The Cloud Book (2008), Extraordinary Clouds (2009), and Extraordinary Weather
(2012), all published in association with the Met Office. He is currently completing a volume on clouds in nature and
culture for Reaktion's 'Earth' series.
The Skies of Constable and Turner
Prof John Thornes.
Abstract:
John Thornes is the author of the book John Constable’s Skies. He is currently working with ‘Aspire’ at Tate Britain
to examine the sky and solar geometry of Constable’s ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ which has recently
been acquired for the Nation. This talk will discuss this work and also compare Constable’s skies with those of his
contemporary Turner and also look ahead to the skies of Monet’s London Series.
Biography:
John Thornes is emeritus professor of applied meteorology at the University of Birmingham. He is currently working
part-time for Public Health England as a Principal Climate Change Scientist. Current research includes looking at
the impact of severe weather on the NHS Ambulance Service and assessing the air quality of enclosed railway
stations such as Birmingham New Street.
The Poetics of Clouds.
Penny Newell
Abstract:
Why is the metaphorical landscape of poetry so often peppered with clouds? From the 14th century poem, ‘The
Cloud of Unknowing’, and early theological mysticism of clouds, to Wordsworth’s emotive Romantic hieroglyphs of
loneliness, and the more recent obfuscations of Derek Walcott’s collection White Egrets, poetry has allowed clouds
to pervade every poetic register, and to occupy and define many poetic forms and styles. Where the artist looks to
the skies, it seems, the poet looks to the clouds. This talk will explore the rich history of clouds in poems. Looking
to the forms of the skies, as many poets do and have done, we will ask: Why are poets drawn to clouds? How do
clouds become poems? And in what sense are clouds poems, or even, are poems clouds?
Biography:
Penny Newell is a poet and PhD researcher based at King’s College London, where she is writing her thesis on the
conceptual history of clouds. Her work has been published in Platform: Postgraduate Journal of Theatre Arts (Royal
Holloway), Excursions (University of Sussex) and Performance Research (Routledge/Taylor and Francis). She has
co-produced a BBC York Radio Programme on Clouds, and has spoken at various academic and public events.
Robert FitzRoy and The Weather Experiment.
Peter Moore.
Abstract:
Luke Howard and John Constable's work on clouds in the early 1800s was part of a much larger meteorological
enlightenment that was happening at the time. The chief figure in this movement was Robert FitzRoy, Charles
Darwin's captain on HMS Beagle, founder of the Met Office and inventor of the weather forecast. In this talk Peter
Moore tells the story of FitzRoy's lifelong quest to decode the skies.
Biography:
Peter Moore is a writer and journalist. His latest book, The Weather Experiment: the pioneers who sought to see
the future tells the story of the meteorological enlightenment of the 19th century and the life of the founder of the
Met Office Robert FitzRoy. The Weather Experiment was a BBC Radio4 Book of the Week, an editors’ pick in The
New York Times and a Sunday Times Bestseller. He teaches in the creative writing department at City University
London and writes about history, environment and culture for The Guardian.
Skies and Photography
Mark Edwards
Biography:
Mark Edwards (born 1965) studied his MA in photography at De Montfort University, Leicester graduating in 1997.
He lives and works in Norwich and is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art and Humanities at University
Campus Suffolk.
Edwards works with a large format camera to make detailed photographs with a long exposure of the landscapes
that surround his home in East Anglia. Influenced by historical and contemporary landscape photography, writing
and painting, Edwards focuses on the simple beauty of both natural and man made things, making work that is at
once personal and universal.
Recent solo exhibitions include The View from Here: New Landscape Photographs by Mark Edwards, Holbourne
Museum, Bath and Norwich Castle Museum (2011-12); Mark Edwards: Landscapes, Liangzhou International Photo
Festival, China (2008); and Disturbances, BCA Gallery, Bedford (2005) and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
(2005).
Selected group exhibitions include Double Take: Photography & the Garden, Hestercombe Gallery, Somerset,
Monument, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich and Le musee des beaux-arts, Calais (2014); Places and
Landscapes, The Waterfront Gallery, Ipswich (2014) Revealed: The Government Art Collection, Birmingham
Museum and Art Gallery and Ulster Museum, Belfast (2012-13); The Ground of Which We Walk: Andrew Vass &
Mark Edwards, The Waterfront Gallery, Ipswich; Island Stories: Fifty Years of Photography in Britain, Victoria and
Albert Museum, London (2012-13); Travelling Light: Government Art Collection selected by Simon Schama,
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2011-12); Identity, Hereford Photography Festival (2010) and The Forum, Norwich
(2009); Forest Dreaming, Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Exeter; The World, Abridged, Kettle’s
Yard, Cambridge (2005); Tempered Ground, Garden Museum, London, (2004); and The Sleep of Reason, selected
by Gerhardt Stromberg, Norwich Gallery (2000).
Edwards’ work is represented in major public and private collections including: V & A, Government Art Collection,
The Hyman Collection, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, East Contemporary Art
He has been awarded numerous Arts Council England Awards and in 2002 received an award from Commissions
East. In 2007 he was one of 150 artists, architects and designers commissioned to make a word for the V&A’s 150th
Anniversary album.