Several of my artist friends with postgraduate Fine Art degrees have expressed an interest in pursuing practice-led or practice-based doctoral research (see Christopher Frayling’s distinction, 1993). However, there is usually some misunderstanding about the nature of such research. PLR looks like tempting extension of what an artist does anyway, indeed there seems to be a... Continue Reading →
My essay "Drawn Words: Pictographs in the Chinese language and visual culture" has now been published in the journal: Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice Volume 3, Number 2, pp. 229-240 1 November 2018 Vol. 3 (2) is a special issue concerned with the relationship of drawing and language. Abstract: This essay considers the presence of pictograms – drawings... Continue Reading →
In March 2018 my PhD research was confirmed and given the green light after a presentation and question and answer session with senior academics at the University of Sunderland. The research title is: Calligraphy as Embodied Practice: a Cross-Cultural Investigation into Embodiment and Corporeality in Chinese and Western Calligraphy. I will be studying the relationships... Continue Reading →
On 15th March 2018 I participated in a "Cultural Evening" organised by the charity ICOS in Sunderland. ICOS provide assistance to people arriving in the UK from abroad, everything from providing free English classes, to applying for visas, to general cultural integration. Maggie gave a presentation about Taiwanese culture and I lead an informal workshop... Continue Reading →
My entry for the UKAPCE Chinese calligraphy competition is finally finished. I wrote a poem by Wang Zhi Huan (王之渙), a Tang dynasty poet, entitled "On Stork Tower" (登鸛雀樓). It is a famous poem in China: 白日依山盡 bái rì yī shān jìn 黃河入海流 huáng hé rù hǎi liú 欲窮千里目 ... Continue Reading →
Three new "Asemic" works of mine will be shown at an exhibition entitled FORMA E TRANSFORMA at the Archimuseo Adriano Accattino in Irvea, Italy, from 24 March - 11 May 2018. Statement Fragmentation lies at the origin of Chinese script. The first Chinese characters to develop from “proto-writing” were scratched onto tortoise shells and ox... Continue Reading →
Between leaving the University of Wolverhampton and starting at the University of Sunderland I made a series of "Visual Poems" from photographs previously taken with a Holga camera while traveling in the Far East. They were a product of the research I undertook at Wolverhampton into Eastern aesthetic principles and traditions of representation, and word-image relationships... Continue Reading →
The Dao De Jing (道德經) is a fundamental Daoist text. It dates from at least 4th century BCE and its authorship is usually ascribed to Lao Tzu (老子). Roughly it translates as "The Book of the Way of Virtue”. It is only about 5000 characters long and was probably originally written in seal script (zhuan shu,... Continue Reading →
As part of my research into the possibilities of East – West cultural exchange in written language I have been investigating the different ways binary oppositions are conceived in Eastern and Western thought (see my previous post on the Tai Chi diagram). This idea of interconnected opposites is particularly important to Daoism, which has formed... Continue Reading →
I recently took part in the Fringe Arts Bath Festival in Bath, UK. I devised a ‘participatory performance’ entitled Communal Calligraphy as part of the exhibition “On the tip of my tongue”. This was curated by Alice Ling and Bryony Tilsley and took place at the home of a local resident, Chrissy Philp, on Sat... Continue Reading →
Calligraphy Research 