Richard Harding | RMIT University (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Richard Harding

Research paper thumbnail of A Contemporary Revolution: Positivism as a precursor to change

IMPACT 11 International Printmaking Conference, 2021

Looking at journal and newspaper articles as primary sources, this paper reflects on a pairing of... more Looking at journal and newspaper articles as primary sources, this paper reflects on a pairing of the fields of journalism with contemporary visual art as a possibility for the public voicing of private solutions to current politics and public events. The paper examines how artworks produced in the privacy of the artist’s studio might be compared and linked to more public expressions of opinion found in the publication of the news. Does a creative artwork when paired with the print’s historical connection to the spread of news, and to circulation, multiplicity and sharing, embody or present an opportunity for an expression of optimism for the future?

Research paper thumbnail of Out of the Matrix: Decoding curation through print practice

IMPACT 11 International Printmaking Conference - Hong Kong, 2021

This paper will track and critique the various processes of curation employed to present three it... more This paper will track and critique the various processes of curation employed to present three iterations of the print exhibitions from the Out of the Matrix project. We will examine the 'how' of exhibition planning, making and presenting to ask questions of social, political and cultural identity using concepts of intersectionality with notions of encounter. With print-works ranging from traditional to unconventional these exhibitions have privileged the reproductive matrix as their primary premise. By evoking printmaking's 'mother' matrix through reproducibility the Out of the Matrix project exhibitions reflect-back into printmaking's multiple pasts to extend and thus project out to imagined futures. Beginning in Melbourne Australia in 2016, the exhibition Out of the Matrix showcased a group of artists who activated an expanded understanding of current print practice. In 2018 the second iteration was presented in Santander Spain, co-curated by Richard Harding, Wilson Yeung Chun Wai and Estefania Salas, this iteration explored how the process of curation could cross cultural differences yet be positioned in sameness through the commonality of print praxis. Through the Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP) iteration we will discuss the presentation of print-based works that can be reconfigured and prepresented in various geopolitical or geo-social spaces. The Out of the Matrix project has highlighted how the matrix is a trans-disciplinary device that activates a cross section of outcomes. This paper will discuss the notion of the matrix through the practice of making and installing artwork and how the viewer encounters the artworks within a given space: architectural, material and virtual.

Research paper thumbnail of Out of the Matrix

Out of the Matrix presents artworks from a diverse group of practitioners who employ the various ... more Out of the Matrix presents artworks from a diverse group of practitioners who employ the various histories and methods of print production to create for our time. The intention of this exhibition is to evoke an extended sense of history the RMIT Printmaking Studio generates as much as evidence its present agency within the wider print community. Using the premise of the matrix, that from what all prints emanate, this group of artists activate an expanded understanding of print imaging. Oscillating between analogue, digital and spatial positions this exhibition privileges and extends print practice highlighting the universal nature of printmaking today.

Research paper thumbnail of Juxtapose: An Exploration of Gay Masculine Identity and its Relationship to the Closet

The notion of visibility for gay men has changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. O... more The notion of visibility for gay men has changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. Online platforms have spawned terms such as ‘straight acting’ that privilege heteronormative masculinity above other forms of masculinity through a hierarchy of masculine performance and identification. My proposition has been that the more a gay male performs, simulates, or copies a ‘straight’ mode of masculine performance, the more his otherness is rendered invisible. Consequently he builds a closet around himself.
The research undertaken for this project employed various methodologies that focus on printmedia’s inherent
qualities of sameness and difference through collected found images and text. Incorporating questions of authenticity and the real, the print-based artworks interrogated heteronormative masculinity through mass media. My project combined the discourses and practice of printmedia with cultural and queer theory, to interrogate connections between heteronormative masculine performances by gay men and how this could closet otherness. The aim of this research strategy was to locate a psychological or actual space that was free of the homosexual closet.
The outcome of my project has been a series of print-based explorations and exhibitions that informed and culminated into a final exhibition. The examination exhibition presents my project’s findings through a repetition
of image making and installation of artworks within the architecturally altered gallery space of the School of Art Gallery at RMIT University.

Research paper thumbnail of Print as other, the future is Queer

This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practice... more This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practices using the socio-political notion of otherness. The framework for this discussion will utilise identity politics of gender and sexual orientation as an analogy for Printmaking's position within a historical and ongoing medium hierarchy. I will make connections between Printmaking's reproductive foundations and its qualities of sameness & difference with gender and sexual orientation to better understand complicated and uncertain knowledge in both arenas of endeavour. By assigning Print the title of 'other' this discussion will be set within what I call a 'painting normative' culture. Through outlining a number of key protocols and attitudes, past and present, towards print practices I am attempting to identify a space where print practices can position themselves with equity and fluidity. As debates of gender and sexual orientation have entered an expanded phase of questioning through Queer, so to can printmaking's ubiquitous position within the general art community. With this in mind the key question before us is, how can printmaking move past its historical and current cultural position into a more equitable state while it operates in and by the dominant cultural practices of the constructed notion of the original?

Research paper thumbnail of Harding Richard Impact 7 paper Print as Other, the Future is Queer: Abstract

This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practice... more This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practices using the socio-political notion of otherness. The framework for this discussion will utilise identity politics of gender and sexual orientation as an analogy for Printmaking's position within a historical and ongoing medium hierarchy. I will make connections between Printmaking's reproductive foundations and its qualities of sameness & difference with gender and sexual orientation to better understand complicated and uncertain knowledge in both arenas of endeavour. By assigning Print the title of 'other' this discussion will be set within what I call a 'painting normative' culture. Through outlining a number of key protocols and attitudes, past and present, towards print practices I am attempting to identify a space where print practices can position themselves with equity and fluidity. As debates of gender and sexual orientation have entered an expanded phase of questioning through Queer, so to can printmaking's ubiquitous position within the general art community. With this in mind the key question before us is, how can printmaking move past its historical and current cultural position into a more equitable state while it operates in and by the dominant cultural practices of the constructed notion of the original?

Books by Richard Harding

Research paper thumbnail of Presenting The News Anew

Grace McQuilten and Daniel Palmer. (editors). Dystopian and Utopian Impulses in Art Making. Bristol, UK: Intellect. , 2023

In these times of rampant distrust of news as a source of information, how does a creative artwor... more In these times of rampant distrust of news as a source of information, how does a creative artwork when paired with the print's historical connection to the distribution of information embody or present an opportunity for an expression of optimism for the future?

The migration of an image from origins in news media to the field of fine art presents the opportunity for an imaginative reaction and recreation of the world, fashioned by the artist's hand and values. This act of repurposing, making and redistributing images can be seen as a creative liberation born out of Dystopian and Utopian inclinations and enabled through the politics of the press.

According to Simon O’Sullivan it is important to understand, ‘politics – and political art practice – as not just being about institutional and ideological critique, but as involving the active production of our own subjectivity.’ (O’Sullivan 2008: 1) As artists pluck texts and images from a daily news cycle to be employed as source materials for creative practice, an imaginative manipulation of these found materials occurs. In this re-ordering of significance and production methods, is a new a status for these re-cycled images provoked? And does the subjectivity of creative art practice promote new ways of knowing?

This chapter examines how artworks produced in the artist’s studio are linked to more public expressions of opinion found in the publication of the news. Three case studies are presented: Alison Alder’s Newscrap (2018), Marian Crawford’s Antiquities (2015) and Richard Harding’s Pinkwashing (2018-2019) will be analysed to examine the links between the frameworks of the archive, multiplicity and replication. Negotiated through the processes of creative practice, Alder, Crawford and Harding re-order the news, presenting it anew in the imaginative language of visual artworks.

Research paper thumbnail of A Contemporary Revolution: Positivism as a precursor to change

IMPACT 11 International Printmaking Conference, 2021

Looking at journal and newspaper articles as primary sources, this paper reflects on a pairing of... more Looking at journal and newspaper articles as primary sources, this paper reflects on a pairing of the fields of journalism with contemporary visual art as a possibility for the public voicing of private solutions to current politics and public events. The paper examines how artworks produced in the privacy of the artist’s studio might be compared and linked to more public expressions of opinion found in the publication of the news. Does a creative artwork when paired with the print’s historical connection to the spread of news, and to circulation, multiplicity and sharing, embody or present an opportunity for an expression of optimism for the future?

Research paper thumbnail of Out of the Matrix: Decoding curation through print practice

IMPACT 11 International Printmaking Conference - Hong Kong, 2021

This paper will track and critique the various processes of curation employed to present three it... more This paper will track and critique the various processes of curation employed to present three iterations of the print exhibitions from the Out of the Matrix project. We will examine the 'how' of exhibition planning, making and presenting to ask questions of social, political and cultural identity using concepts of intersectionality with notions of encounter. With print-works ranging from traditional to unconventional these exhibitions have privileged the reproductive matrix as their primary premise. By evoking printmaking's 'mother' matrix through reproducibility the Out of the Matrix project exhibitions reflect-back into printmaking's multiple pasts to extend and thus project out to imagined futures. Beginning in Melbourne Australia in 2016, the exhibition Out of the Matrix showcased a group of artists who activated an expanded understanding of current print practice. In 2018 the second iteration was presented in Santander Spain, co-curated by Richard Harding, Wilson Yeung Chun Wai and Estefania Salas, this iteration explored how the process of curation could cross cultural differences yet be positioned in sameness through the commonality of print praxis. Through the Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP) iteration we will discuss the presentation of print-based works that can be reconfigured and prepresented in various geopolitical or geo-social spaces. The Out of the Matrix project has highlighted how the matrix is a trans-disciplinary device that activates a cross section of outcomes. This paper will discuss the notion of the matrix through the practice of making and installing artwork and how the viewer encounters the artworks within a given space: architectural, material and virtual.

Research paper thumbnail of Out of the Matrix

Out of the Matrix presents artworks from a diverse group of practitioners who employ the various ... more Out of the Matrix presents artworks from a diverse group of practitioners who employ the various histories and methods of print production to create for our time. The intention of this exhibition is to evoke an extended sense of history the RMIT Printmaking Studio generates as much as evidence its present agency within the wider print community. Using the premise of the matrix, that from what all prints emanate, this group of artists activate an expanded understanding of print imaging. Oscillating between analogue, digital and spatial positions this exhibition privileges and extends print practice highlighting the universal nature of printmaking today.

Research paper thumbnail of Juxtapose: An Exploration of Gay Masculine Identity and its Relationship to the Closet

The notion of visibility for gay men has changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. O... more The notion of visibility for gay men has changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. Online platforms have spawned terms such as ‘straight acting’ that privilege heteronormative masculinity above other forms of masculinity through a hierarchy of masculine performance and identification. My proposition has been that the more a gay male performs, simulates, or copies a ‘straight’ mode of masculine performance, the more his otherness is rendered invisible. Consequently he builds a closet around himself.
The research undertaken for this project employed various methodologies that focus on printmedia’s inherent
qualities of sameness and difference through collected found images and text. Incorporating questions of authenticity and the real, the print-based artworks interrogated heteronormative masculinity through mass media. My project combined the discourses and practice of printmedia with cultural and queer theory, to interrogate connections between heteronormative masculine performances by gay men and how this could closet otherness. The aim of this research strategy was to locate a psychological or actual space that was free of the homosexual closet.
The outcome of my project has been a series of print-based explorations and exhibitions that informed and culminated into a final exhibition. The examination exhibition presents my project’s findings through a repetition
of image making and installation of artworks within the architecturally altered gallery space of the School of Art Gallery at RMIT University.

Research paper thumbnail of Print as other, the future is Queer

This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practice... more This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practices using the socio-political notion of otherness. The framework for this discussion will utilise identity politics of gender and sexual orientation as an analogy for Printmaking's position within a historical and ongoing medium hierarchy. I will make connections between Printmaking's reproductive foundations and its qualities of sameness & difference with gender and sexual orientation to better understand complicated and uncertain knowledge in both arenas of endeavour. By assigning Print the title of 'other' this discussion will be set within what I call a 'painting normative' culture. Through outlining a number of key protocols and attitudes, past and present, towards print practices I am attempting to identify a space where print practices can position themselves with equity and fluidity. As debates of gender and sexual orientation have entered an expanded phase of questioning through Queer, so to can printmaking's ubiquitous position within the general art community. With this in mind the key question before us is, how can printmaking move past its historical and current cultural position into a more equitable state while it operates in and by the dominant cultural practices of the constructed notion of the original?

Research paper thumbnail of Harding Richard Impact 7 paper Print as Other, the Future is Queer: Abstract

This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practice... more This paper will attempt to locate printmaking's current position within contemporary art practices using the socio-political notion of otherness. The framework for this discussion will utilise identity politics of gender and sexual orientation as an analogy for Printmaking's position within a historical and ongoing medium hierarchy. I will make connections between Printmaking's reproductive foundations and its qualities of sameness & difference with gender and sexual orientation to better understand complicated and uncertain knowledge in both arenas of endeavour. By assigning Print the title of 'other' this discussion will be set within what I call a 'painting normative' culture. Through outlining a number of key protocols and attitudes, past and present, towards print practices I am attempting to identify a space where print practices can position themselves with equity and fluidity. As debates of gender and sexual orientation have entered an expanded phase of questioning through Queer, so to can printmaking's ubiquitous position within the general art community. With this in mind the key question before us is, how can printmaking move past its historical and current cultural position into a more equitable state while it operates in and by the dominant cultural practices of the constructed notion of the original?

Research paper thumbnail of Presenting The News Anew

Grace McQuilten and Daniel Palmer. (editors). Dystopian and Utopian Impulses in Art Making. Bristol, UK: Intellect. , 2023

In these times of rampant distrust of news as a source of information, how does a creative artwor... more In these times of rampant distrust of news as a source of information, how does a creative artwork when paired with the print's historical connection to the distribution of information embody or present an opportunity for an expression of optimism for the future?

The migration of an image from origins in news media to the field of fine art presents the opportunity for an imaginative reaction and recreation of the world, fashioned by the artist's hand and values. This act of repurposing, making and redistributing images can be seen as a creative liberation born out of Dystopian and Utopian inclinations and enabled through the politics of the press.

According to Simon O’Sullivan it is important to understand, ‘politics – and political art practice – as not just being about institutional and ideological critique, but as involving the active production of our own subjectivity.’ (O’Sullivan 2008: 1) As artists pluck texts and images from a daily news cycle to be employed as source materials for creative practice, an imaginative manipulation of these found materials occurs. In this re-ordering of significance and production methods, is a new a status for these re-cycled images provoked? And does the subjectivity of creative art practice promote new ways of knowing?

This chapter examines how artworks produced in the artist’s studio are linked to more public expressions of opinion found in the publication of the news. Three case studies are presented: Alison Alder’s Newscrap (2018), Marian Crawford’s Antiquities (2015) and Richard Harding’s Pinkwashing (2018-2019) will be analysed to examine the links between the frameworks of the archive, multiplicity and replication. Negotiated through the processes of creative practice, Alder, Crawford and Harding re-order the news, presenting it anew in the imaginative language of visual artworks.