Acid-soaked molluscs: a xenophoric approach to practising sculpture and print

This thesis examines three bodies of work produced in 2019: Feeling the Underside, an artist’s book; Mollusc Series, a series of etchings; and Coiled in a Single Plane, Skimmed and Separated, an installation. The catalyst for these works was an encounter with a xenophora carrier snail shell at the Leeds Discovery Centre archive. Xenophora are marine gastropods known for their collecting behaviour, they gather shells, stones, fragments of coral and other detritus from the sea floor and attach this material to the outside of its own shell. They become museums of the sea floor, specific to their locality. This thesis considers the process of making the three works and the subsequent evolution of a xenophoric research methodology, that shadows the xenophora’s habits as a creative process. The methodology is contextualised by the theories of Donna Haraway (tentacular thinking), Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (ecological assemblages) and Jane Bennett (vibrant materials). A main contribution of this thesis is the proposed xenophoric research methodology, which uniquely combines thinking with the xenophora with material knowledge and tactility, to produce sculpture and print. New materialism and material culture studies inform much the work discussed and the proposed xenophoric research methodology. The three works discussed throughout, bridge the divide between print and sculpture and combine research into conchology, sculpture production and the mutability of print. These bodies of work are discussed in relation to key works by Marcel Duchamp, Mark Dion and the practices of artists Helen Chadwick, Alice Channer and Carol Bove alongside others. Throughout this thesis is a focus on material processes and how they overlap with equivalent processes found in geology, nature and the activities of non-human lifeforms. This PhD by practice is the result of a collaboration with Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI), a new festival of visual art in Yorkshire focusing on contemporary sculpture. The first iteration of the festival (22 June to 29 September 2019) was held across four partner galleries: Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and in the public realm between Leeds and Wakefield. This research developed while being embedded in the team delivering Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019 and supporting the delivery of public programming and public sculpture commissions by international artists.