PhD Practice-based research

Material Hoards
Yorkshire Hoards and the artist’s edit

This practice-based body of research explores the materiality of four hidden away hoards through the lens of an artist’s methodology – the artist’s edit. The artist’s edit is a physical making process, resulting in artwork that is 3d, 2d and textual in form. It-narrative is used as a narrative mode to allow the artwork to ‘talk’ about their supposed material nature and where they see themselves in the hoarded situations they now and have found themselves in. The artwork produced is rooted within the context of contemporary art in heritage and looks to challenge the term hoard that is used traditionally used in archaeology. This research offers a new way for the viewer to see and question more widely the materials found in the grouping termed hoards.

The key findings of this research conclude that by applying different methods such as the artist’s edit in an inter-disciplinary manner to established museological categories such as the hoard, new, alternative, embodied knowledge can be created and challenge what we think we should see when we think of that term. By embracing new ways of working such as the artist’s edit new ways of seeing and engagement with heritage can be achieved. The alterative contexts that artists can offer can help expand the field of arts and heritage, in ways of thinking and making.