Broken North

Richardson, Craig (2014) Broken North. In: Further North Conference, 4th - 5th September 2014, University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper is concerned with wilderness and desolation. It asks ‘How does Northern ‘emptiness’ function as a resource in the arts?’ It considers the formative context of key works by post-war artists, writers and film-makers, in particular the journeys which led to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Joseph Beuys’ Loch Awe Piece , and Thomas Struth’s Edinburgh photographs from the series Unconscious Places; each informed by their author’s perceptions of the North as naturally barren, socially deprived or simply uninhabited. The suggestion is that the journey to an empty northern landscape always offers the opportunity of a further North. However the North is a place of personal pilgrimage and arrival which has no ‘beyond’, a place one need not go beyond. While a special function of the North is as a space of art and as a resource in the arts, offering silence and withdrawal, its continued representation by visitors prolongs and strengthens this idea. However what emerges can be collectively represented in many ways, including as a ‘Broken North’.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
Schools:	School of Art, Design and Architecture
Related URLs:	Conference
Depositing User:	Craig Richardson
Date Deposited:	03 Aug 2015 10:02
Last Modified:	28 Aug 2021 17:58
URI:	https://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/25349

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