PVCRS is very much a companion publication to our ejournal New Voices in Classical Reception Studies and our Eseminar Archive. All add to the range of resources that are made freely available on the Open University Reception of Classical Texts Research Project website. New Voices provides a refereed platform for newer researchers to publish their work. The Eseminar Archive makes available the records of the annual seminar that discusses all aspects of classical reception. Practitioners' Voices is a response to the growing awareness that Classical Reception research has to recognise the full range of processes that shape the impact of classical material in new contexts. Its aim is to provide a Forum in which theatre directors, designers, dramaturgs, actors, poets, translators, and all involved in the creative practices that are so crucial to classical receptions can discuss the relationship between their work and the classical texts, themes and contexts on which they draw.

We hope that the Forum will also lead to further dialogue between creative practitioners and critics and academics (who are after all also practitioners).

Issue 3 (2012)

Editor's Introduction

The 2012 issue of Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies focuses on practitioners working with visual and material culture. The classical past continues to be a rich source of inspiration for artists working all over the world, and it is within the field of the visual arts that we find some of the most impassioned debates about the role of antiquity in contemporary culture. University academics are also becoming increasingly interested in how modern artists have re-worked classical ideas, texts and images, and the last year has seen the publication of a number of books and articles on the topic. All of this suggests that the relationship between contemporary art and classical culture deserves a moment of special scrutiny, and that an exploration of this theme might be of interest not just to students of classical reception, but to all those academics, critics and creative artists engaged in debates about contemporary art’s entanglement with the past.
The five interviews included in this issue were recorded between February 2011 and April 2012.  As even the brief summaries below intimate, each of the practitioners who have contributed to the issue engages with different aspects of Greek and/or Roman antiquity, using different materials and techniques, while drawing on different literary and visual sources. Taken together, their work demonstrates the enormous range and depth of classical references in contemporary visual and material culture - references which enable even the most progressive and innovative of artworks to ‘thunder back through the ages’ (to borrow Craig Hamilton’s evocative phrase).
Thanks are due to all the practitioners who contributed interviews and generously allowed us to reproduce images of their work, and to Trish Cashen for technical and creative help.
Jessica Hughes, October 2012 

Christie Brown

Christie Brown is an artist and Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster, London. In this interview, recorded in her studio in March 2011, we talk about the influence of classical antiquity on her work, focussing on number of key pieces including the Cast of Characters (1995), Fragments of Narrative (2000) and Between the Dog and the Wolf (2003).

 

Richard Shirley Smith

The artist Richard Shirley Smith was born in Hampstead in 1935 and was educated at Harrow School, before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art and in Rome. In this interview, which took place at the artist’s home and studio in Marlborough, we talk about the role that classical antiquity has played in his work, particularly his many book illustrations and paintings. 

Norman McBeath and Robert Crawford

Norman McBeath is an independent photographer, based in Edinburgh, whose work can be seen in the National Portrait Galleries of England and Scotland. Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews and one of the country’s leading poets. In this interview they talk about their 2011 book Simonides, which features twenty-five black and white, duotone, photographs paired with texts translated from ancient Greek into Scots (and English). The book was published to coincide with an exhibition entitled Body Bags/Simonides which was shown at the Edinburgh College of Art as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival.

Marian Maguire

Marian Maguire was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1962, and studied at the Ilam School of Art, University of Canterbury and the Tamarind Institute of Lithography, Albuquerque, USA. Alongside making her own work she has pursued a career as a collaborative master printer, in which capacity she has printed the work of some of New Zealand’s leading artists. In 1996 established PaperGraphica, a print studio and gallery which she and fellow artist Nigel Buxton jointly direct. Currently Maguire works almost full-time on her own work.  

Craig Hamilton

Craig Hamilton is one of Britain’s leading classical architects. He was born in 1961 in South Africa, and studied architecture at the University of Natal. He has lived in Britain since 1986. In 1991 he formed the practice Craig Hamilton Architects, which he directs together with his wife, the artist Diana Hulton. The practice specialises in progressive classical design and the repair and sensitive extension of historic buildings; their work encompasses country houses, public buildings, sacred buildings and monuments. This interview took place at Coed Mawr farm, Craig and Diana’s home in the Welsh hills.  

Issue 2 (2010)

featuring Josephine Balmer, Maureen Almond, Oliver Taplin, Martin Wylde, Helen Eastman, Michael Ewans and Ian Ruffell.

Issue 1 (2007)

featuring Dorinda Hulton, Jane Montgomery Griffiths, David Stuttard and David Fitzpatrick