Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a tiny cell at Prinknash Abbey rebounded continuously with the sound of an Olivetti Lettera 22, as the Benedictine monk and concrete poet Dom Sylvester Houédard,(1924-1992) wrote the letters, constructed Typestracts and initiated much of the critical thinking around the British Concrete Poetry Movement.
Prolific, prominent and pivotal in a web of correspondence and collaboration between the Beats, the Gloster Ode Construction Company, DIAS and Fluxus, Houédard has subsequently been largely neglected by both the poetic and artistic worlds. With little critical work on Houédard beyond the few small press articles written by his contemporaries and none that take Houédard’s own wider ecumenical and metaphysical interests as a starting point, my research aims to begin this process of artistic and theological reassessment.
Beginning with his beat-style lyrical verse, my research investigates the theological and theoretical impetus behind a spatial journey that took Houédard’s poems literally off the page into many different forms, including dance. The aim is to follow the trajectory of experimentation in the concrete poems, as Houédard explores word and image relationships; “the wordgame, ikongame and the poet as maker”.
The focus of my enquiry will be to show how initially in Zen and then more satisfactorily in the Madhyamika-Prasangika School of Tibetan Buddhism, Houédard found a paradigm for questioning the interplay between logos and icon, subject and object, the “the non and the non-non”.
The philosophy of Emptiness is central to both Houédard’s creation of the art-object and his analogous use of space, which forms a structural correlation with notions of the enlightened mind. I also hope to demonstrate how this conceptual idea had a wider influence over the avant-garde constellation in which he featured.
I am currently curating an exhibition of Houédard’s work, scheduled for the autumn here at the gallery at Norwich, which will begin to assemble some these ideas and approaches to his work.
More information about this exhibition ‘frogpondplop: the yoga of concrete’ is available online.
Nicola Simpson
This PhD is a combined practice and theoretical exploration that aims to identify and document photographically the nature and consequences of this economic decline in the form of a visual narrative that will raise awareness of these problems and the potential for regeneration.
This research project seeks to interrogate and reframe the thinking of horror through a rigorous engagement with its formal limits.
Jonathan P. Watts (he/him) is a fully-funded PhD candidate at Norwich University of the Arts supervised by Professor Simon Willmoth and Professor Jo Melvin at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
A love of secondhand clothing lies at the core of this research project.
This PhD by curatorial practice focuses on a group of embroidered textile testimonies made at the turn of the twentieth century by an inmate of the Female Lunatic Ward of Great Yarmouth Workhouse.
Roger Ackling – Work and Teaching 1969 to 2014 This PhD by curatorial practice focuses on the work of British artist Roger Ackling (1947 – 2014). Ackling’s career is notable for his artistic practice and his long and influential teaching career. The research aims to understand his work in relation to Land Art, Minimalist and Conceptual Art movements and the impact of his practice on artists he worked with and taught.
New perspectives on VJ practice: The art of performing moving image
The Work of Richard Seifert & Denys Lasdun: A Comparative Study of Their Buildings and Reputations.
Interrogating Artist-Teacher identity formation in Adult Community Learning
Spectral Shores: vanishing places and haunted spaces. Coastal Erosion and its effect on perceptions of time and the cultural construction of coastal landscapes
In Transition: People, landscape and nature in the East Anglian edgelands
