Gill Perry on Radio NZ

Posted on 10/04/2013 by admin

Prof Gill Perry, Professor of Art History, will be appearing on Saturday Morning on NZ Radio on Saturday 13 April between 8am and midday (local time). The other guests include award winning author Anita Desai and renown poet Mary Ruefle.

Prof Perry is undertaking a series of lectures in New Zealand centred upon her phenomenally successful First Actresses exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and her new book Playing at Home: The House in Contemporary Art (London: Reaktion books Ltd, 2013). Her lectures will include “Angels & Aristocrats: Portraiture and the Feminine Face of Celebrity” at the Auckland Art Gallery, as part of their exhibition .

Hosted by Kim Hill (2012 International Radio Personality of the Year), the Saturday Morning show was NZ Radio Awards 2012 winner: Best Daily or Weekly Series.

You can listen to the programme online via http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday

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Creative Writing tutor wins Fish Short Memoir Prize 2013

Posted on 09/04/2013 by admin

Maureen Boyle, tutor on Level 2 module Creative Writing, has won the Fish Publishing Short Memoir Writing Contest 2013

Novelist Molly McCloskey was the judge for the 810 entries to the competition. Maureen wins 1000 euros, and her memoir will appear in the 2013 Fish Anthology to be launched during the West Cork Literary Festival in July 2013, at which she is also invited to read.

According to the judge, Luscus by Maureen Boyle “is a memoir in which the author strikes a wonderful balance between absolute control of her material and the achievement of a lightness and fluidity, as though the writing of it were happening easily and naturally; in fact it’s a highly crafted piece of writing. The author tells of losing an eye in a childhood accident; of the man who made her the succession of eyes that, as she grew, replaced her own; and of the world of doctors’ offices, with their wooden trays of eyes. The prose is restrained and unshowy and yet moves with a quiet power; with a wonderful concreteness, it roots us in the experience. The ending, about so much more than the narrator, the doctor, or the story at hand, moved me to tears.”

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The Place of Hell: Topographies, Structures, Genealogies

Posted on 09/04/2013 by admin

The Place of Hell. Topographies, Structures, Genealogies
31st May-1st June 2013 at King’s College London and The Warburg Institute
Organised by Dionysios Stathakopoulos and Rembrandt Duits

Attendance is free, but registration is required. Please follow instructions to register and print your ticket at: http://theplaceofhell.eventbrite.co.uk/#

Conference Aims and Themes
The aim of this conference is to explore the place Hell occupied within society and art as well as the way Hell was envisaged as a physical place.

A belief in Hell has been a staple of Christian thought from the earliest period of this religion. The depiction of Hell and its denizens – the devil, demons and the punished sinners – has an equally long history going back to at least the sixth century. From the eleventh century onwards, images of Hell become proliferate and more detailed in their presentation of the damned and their torments – in parallel to such texts as the popular Apocalypse of the Virgin.

Artists come up with different solutions in picturing the various torments inflicted upon the sinners as well as the places where these torments take place. In the art of the late Byzantine period and the late medieval west, the various figures of the damned are presented with inscriptions detailing the crimes and sins for which they are being punished. In western Europe, literary texts add detail to the vision of Hell as well, starting with the 11th-century Vision of Tondal and culminating in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The images, as well as the texts that we assume they are illustrating, offer a rich field for research. Questions of iconography as well as the exploration of social meanings attached to these powerful representations present themselves. The exploration of developments within the body of texts on and depictions of Hell can be particularly fruitful.

This conference is part of the Leverhulme International Network Project Damned in Hell in the Frescoes of Venetian-Dominated Crete (13th- 17th centuries) managed by Dr Angeliki Lymberopoulou (The Open University) and Prof. Vasiliki Tsamakda (The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz).

For further information please contact Dr Diana Newall at Diana.Newall@open.ac.uk

or visit www.open.ac.uk/arts/damned-in-hell/conferences.shtml

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