Matthew Cornford was recently appointed as Professor in Fine Art, based in the Fine Art Programme, Faculty of Arts
15 Aug 2013
Matthew Cornford was recently appointed as Professor in Fine Art, based in the Fine Art Programme, School of Arts and Media, Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton. Cornford previously worked in the School of Art and Design, at the University of Wolverhampton, where he was Professor in Fine Art, and programme leader MA Fine Art.
Cornford has a longstanding collaborative art practice with David Cross, whom he met whilst studying at St Martin’s School of Art, London in 1986, both Cornford & Cross went onto study at the Royal College of Art, from which they graduated in 1991. Since then they have created a body of work that responds to the problems that arise out of particular contexts or situations. Accordingly, each of their projects has been radically different, not only in form but in content.
Their work engages with the spatial, social and historical contexts of specific places, forming a critical interaction with the people and organizations that occupy them. Cornford & Cross have carried out an Arts Council residency at the London School of Economics, and a British Council residency at Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, China. In Europe, they have exhibited in Bologna, Brugge, Pancevo (Serbia), Rome, and Stockholm; in the USA in San Fransisco, Philadelphia and New York. In London their work has been exhibited at the Camden Arts Centre, the ICA, Photographers' Gallery and South London Gallery. In addition to a number of site-specific projects in England, since 2006 they have held solo exhibitions at Aspex Gallery, The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Exchange Gallery, Pump House Gallery, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Cornford & Cross have recently completed a solo-touring exhibition and book that draws upon works produced over the last 15 years. The exhibition originated at Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2005-06), and travelled to Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth (2007), and the Exchange Gallery, Penzance (2007). Black Dog London, have published a 192-page book Cornford & Cross (2009), which includes artists’ texts, reference material and photographs documenting 33 different works, plus critical essays by John Roberts and Rachel Withers.
Cornford and Cross’s projects investigate into the relationship between artistic collaboration, social engagement and context-specific installation. Their art practice is based on ‘action research’ into the proposition that a key function of contemporary art is to test concepts, assumptions and boundaries in everyday life. They make ‘live’ interventions into social situations, which involve people within and beyond contemporary art discourse. As a creative partnership they have agreed aims, but not a set method or approach. However all their projects are developed and made using the same methodology; prolonged, intense and often adversarial discussion and debate between themselves. Thus each project involves a cycle of discussion, fact-finding, writing a proposal, and (potentially) realizing a context-specific project. Importantly, ‘realizing’ does not mean presenting a resolved statement, but a paradox manifested in physical action and sculptural form, to engage a variety of audiences in reflection and thought.
Matthew Cornford says ‘Far from making observations from an oppositional viewpoint, we aim to encourage a 'reflective scepticism' towards individual actions and their collective results. Our projects intervene into particular situations; they are often satirical or polemic in nature, and involve an element of risk, uncertainty and experimentation. As well as the visible artwork, the project outcomes include exchanged attitudes between the people we work with, us as artists, and hopefully those who respond as our audience.’
Matthew talks about three recent projects by Cornford & Cross
The following art projects where completed after our Cornford & Cross book went into production, but we continue to make tangible investigation into the relationship between artistic collaboration, social engagement and context-specific installation.
Their art practice is based on ‘action research’ into the proposition that a key function of contemporary art is to test concepts, assumptions and boundaries in everyday life. They make ‘live’ interventions into social situations, which involve people within and beyond contemporary art discourse. As a creative partnership they have agreed aims, but not a set method or approach. However all their projects are developed and made using the same methodology; prolonged, intense and often adversarial discussion and debate between themselves. Thus each project involves a cycle of discussion, fact-finding, writing a proposal, and (potentially) realizing a context-specific project. Importantly, ‘realizing’ does not mean presenting a resolved statement, but a paradox manifested in physical action and sculptural form, to engage a variety of audiences in reflection and thought.
Far from making observations from an oppositional viewpoint, we aim to encourage a 'reflective scepticism' towards individual actions and their collective results. Our projects intervene into particular situations; they are often satirical or polemic in nature, and involve an element of risk, uncertainty and experimentation. As well as the visible artwork, the project outcomes include exchanged attitudes between the people we work with, us as artists, and hopefully those who respond as our audience.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Once and Future King, 2008
Well, ‘crowned’ by razor wire
For Give Me Shelter: an outdoor exhibition of contemporary art —
curated by Anne De Charmant, Meadow Arts
Attingham Park, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
26th September 2008 — 27th September 2009
In the landscaped grounds of a stately home is an imposing brick wall, which forms an enclosure. Passing through a heavy wooden door, visitors enter a great square of level ground laid to lawn and intersected by two broad paths. Where the paths meet in the centre of the garden is a large circular pool, brick lined and capped with stone but left open to the sky. Next to this lies buried the original well, which has recently been the subject of an archaeological dig. The conjunction of an enclosed garden, crossed paths and water source is rich with significance from classical mythology to Christian faith. The barrier, route and source that define the space are also open to psychoanalytic interpretation.
This place was once the kitchen garden, which in its heyday would have provided enough food to support the whole household. For many decades, it stood as an empty, unproductive space while fossil fuel, industrial agriculture, and supermarkets dominated global food production. With the coming energy crisis, food and water look set to become desperately scarce. If so, this fertile ground, which is sheltered from the elements and secured against intruders, would become a vital and contested territory. It is now being put back into production through a volunteer-led National Trust initiative.
Over the well, we made a distorted globe of security wire. The galvanized ‘tangle wire’ that forms the surface of the globe was specially developed by a local firm to safely keep protestors out of the grounds of the Gleneagles Hotel during the 2005 G8 summit. Beneath the surface, the structure of the globe is a lethal bundle of stainless steel razor wire. Like a thorn bush in a fable, the loops and swirls of shimmering steel may draw the viewer near, yet hold them off in an encounter that is at once threatening and fascinating.
‘The Once and Future King’ is a novel by T.H. White, which retells the myth of King Arthur interwoven with elements of twentieth century warfare, psychoanalysis and time travel. The narrative opens with a youthful clarity of style and character, gradually rises in complexity and paradox, before closing with a portrayal of subtle insight won against a backdrop of epic change.
Cornford & Cross
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Lion and the Unicorn, 2008
British coal on gallery floor
For solo exhibition — curated by Kate Pryor
Wolverhampton Art Gallery
8 November 2008 — 31 January 2009
It is generally accepted that the Industrial Revolution originated in the West Midlands. This revolution was at first powered by renewable energy. But it was coal that provided the phenomenal power that allowed people to overcome many physical limitations of the body and the environment. The result has been the most radical transformation of our economy, society and culture since history began.
The physical form of this installation, The Lion and the Unicorn, was an expression of limitations: the maximum safe load on the gallery floor is 14000kg, and the minimum legal width for a safety access way is 1500mm. By extension, the work pointed to a limitation so large that it seems beyond our frame of vision: the limit to industrial growth. This is determined by the earth’s ‘ecological carrying capacity’, the ability of all living systems to absorb the waste products of human activity. Burning fossil fuels, including the coal used to generate the electricity that powers the gallery lights, is destroying the earth’s climate system.
We switched off the lights.
The title of this installation references an essay, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’, written by George Orwell during the Second World War. In it, Orwell tested the limits of social obligation in terms of the bonds between people of different classes, and the continuity of collective identity between generations.
Cornford & Cross
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Man Who Sold the World, 2009
Two Georgian pennies hidden in the crypt
For Atlas… Separated by Intervals group exhibition —
curated by Emma Somerset Davis and Mark Metcalfe
The Crypt, St Pancras new church, London
14 April – 20 April
Built during the Georgian era, a period of population explosion, economic turbulence and social unrest, St Pancras new church was the most expensive in London since the rebuilding of Saint Paul’s. Beneath its grand neoclassical architecture lies the vaulted crypt, a site of burial for wealthy and privileged families of the parish.
Perhaps because the eyes are a locus of identity and recognition, for centuries it has been customary to place coins over the eyelids of the dead, allowing the living to see the face of the dead without looking into their eyes.
For our contribution to Invisible Cities, we bought one George III and one George IV penny, and hid them in the crypt. Displacing coins in this way may change their status from commodity to discovery. But because their presence in the church is plausible, the coins’ tenure as art is vulnerable. Side by side and heads up, the coins bear profiles that allude to the emperors of classical antiquity; father and son face each other across the generations, though their eyes never meet.
‘The Man Who Sold the World’ is the title of a song by David Bowie, which envisions a metaphysical encounter centred on the gaze. The song was written soon after the 1968 Apollo mission to the moon, which resulted in the first photograph of the whole Earth from space. Embraced by the environmental movement and multinational corporations, the iconic image became an ambiguous symbol of power and fragility.
Cornford & Cross
