The art of calligraphy, with its elegance, precision and expressive power holds a celebrated place among the arts of China, Japan and the Middle East, and is much studied as a result. Western calligraphy using the Latin script, by contrast, is relatively neglected within academia. However, given current academic interest in both drawing research and... Continue Reading →
Recently I "guerilla-installed" (the second version of) my 2010 concrete poem 'Six Signs' in the market opposite the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, Taiwan. This series of word-images using illuminated exit signs grew from my experiments with the limits of poetic language at the University of Ulster in the 1990s. There I... Continue Reading →
World Endangered Writing Day 23rd January 2024 2.30pm – 11.45pm GMT All events are free Register at https://wewday.webflow.io/ The Calligraphy Research Group is an official partner for “World Endangered Writing Day” on 23rd January 2024, organised by the ‘Endangered Alphabet Project’ (EAP). This day of events will celebrate the world’s minority and indigenous scripts and... Continue Reading →
My article 'Drawing Breath' has been published by the journal Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice. Buckingham-Hsiao, Roland (2023), ‘Drawing Breath’, Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, 8:1, pp. 95–106, https://doi.org/10.1386/drtp_00108_1 AbstractThis project describes and discusses the performance piece Drawing Breath (2022), which combined ethnographic research into traditional Chinese calligraphy with experimental art practices to produce a drawn visualization... Continue Reading →
I am greatly interested in questions of epistemology: how we know things and the boundaries of what can be known. As a (non-theistic) Quaker Chaplain to the University of Sunderland, I have recently explored these issues in a performance series entitled Praying to a Dead God. The title came from an online article discussing the... Continue Reading →
I have published two books of visual poetry recently. Erased Words: in tempore belli (written in time of war) with Paperview Books, based in Leiria, Portugal, and Songs of Despair and other poems with Trickhouse Press based in Dundee, Scotland. Erased Words, in tempore belli I am genetically 13% Tatar, probably Volga or Crimean, and... Continue Reading →
I have been concentrating on finishing my research recently but am participating in a group exhibition at the Art Centre Washington entitled Earth Requiem. "Earth Requiem is an ambitious exhibition and series of events organised by The Sunderland Indie, presenting creative responses to the climate crisis. Through painting, sculpture, photography, film, music, poetry, dance, performance,... Continue Reading →
I am very interested in calligraphy as a physical, as well as an intellectual, practice. One important aspect of this is the notion of performance. This might refer simply to the process of giving a thought concrete form, that by realising a poem or phrase in one's head, one 'performs' it. Or it might mean... Continue Reading →
I am currently showing a sketchbook entitled My Dying Father (2019) at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle, UK. The show has been put back from 2020 due to the Covid-19 restrictions in force in the UK. It is currently installed but until galleries and museums reopen, on-line only. 3D virtual tour of... Continue Reading →
Wrote this yesterday, in solidarity
Calligraphy Research 