School staff
Dr Marion Arnold
Lecturer: Critical and Historical Studies
+44(0)1509 22 8944
Open Access Hours:
Email by Appointment
Dr Marion Arnold is an art historian, artist and writer. Her doctoral thesis on modernist literature, art theory and Post-Impressionist painting is ‘Post-Impressionist Vision: a Study of the Work of Roger Fry and Virginia Woolf’. She lived in Zimbabwe, studied in South Africa, and taught at the University of South Africa and University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, before settling in the UK in 2000. She taught part-time at Birkbeck College, London University, the University of East Anglia, the Norwich School of Art and Design, and Loughborough University, where she now holds a full-time post and teaches Critical and Historical Studies. She is Director of Research Programmes and, as Postgraduate Research Coordinator, she oversees the departmental PhD training programme.
Her paintings and prints are represented in all major public, corporate and university art collections in South Africa. She has published widely on Southern African art. Books include Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture (1981; updated 1986); The Life and Work of Thomas Baines 1820-1875 (1995, co-authored with Jane Carruthers); Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye (1995); Women and Art in South Africa (1996); South African Botanical Art: Peeling back the Petals (contributing editor, 2001), From Union to Liberation: South African Women Artists 1910-1994 (2005; contributing co-editor with Brenda Schmahmann), Art in Eastern Africa (2008, contributing editor).
Current research focuses on Southern African art, colonialism, postcolonialism, women’s art, feminist theory, and Southern African Diasporic experience. Her art practice is located in hand-generated imagery related to spatial encounters and memory embodied in cultural artefacts.
Teaching
SAB554 Visual Culture; Histories and Theories
Research
Recently completed projects include ‘Cutting Anti-Apartheid Images: Bongiwe Dhlomo’s Activist Linocut Prints’ in Impact 6 Proceedings (Multidisciplinary Printmaking Conference, 2011); ‘Thomas Baines, Victorian Artist in Southern Africa’ a conference paper, currently going through peer review for publication; ‘Here, There and In-Between: South African Women and the Diasporic Condition’ in Women, the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience (ed. Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe, forthcoming 2012); ‘Mind the Gap: Translation in a Fractured African Society’ in Africa: Cultural Translations (forthcoming 2012); ‘The Imprint of South Africa: Narratives by Some Black Women Printmakers at the Caversham Press’ in IMPACT 7: Intersections and Counterpoints (forthcoming 2012).
On-going research for a book on The Caversham Press in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, explores work produced at the press over 25 years, and investigates the print archive as a microcosm of art practice in pre- and post-apartheid South Africa. It unites Arnold’s interest in drawing, printmaking, writing, artists’ books, art, culture and politics, and women’s art practice. Her work on the Diasporic condition will be reflected in a paper to be delivered at ‘Home/Land: Women, Citizenship, Photographies’, a conference at Loughborough University in July 2012 (convenors: Marsha Meskimmon and Marion Arnold). A selection of conference papers will be published.
Postgraduate Research Supervisions
Marion Arnold’s current PhD students are:
Charlene Clempson, ‘Who Am I? An exploration of objects and memory (co-supervised with Gillian Whiteley).
Sarra Hornby, ‘An experimental exploration of contemporary animation on the cusp of 3D modelling and craft materiality’ (co-supervised with Paul Wells).
Joe Graham, ‘Streams of consciousness: Drawing as a method for exploring the subjective structure of the phenomenological “fringe” ’ (co-supervised with Simon Downs).
Colin Taylor, ‘The presence of the “unrepresentable” in contemporary pictorial representation’ (co-supervised with Mark Wright)’.
Featured Publications
Arnold,MI., 1986-1999: Looking back at Politics, Art and Young Artists in Standard Bank Young Artists: 25. A Retrospective Exhibition, Johannesburg, 2009, 19-27, 978-0-620-43441-6
Arnold,MI., Introduction in Art in Eastern Africa, Dar es Salaam, 2008, 1-34, 978-9987-449-13-2
Arnold,MI., `Sawubona Caversham - Home of People and Prints, Catalogue - South African Artists, Prints, Community, 2011
Arnold,MI., South African Art Now by Sue Williamson, Journal - African Arts vol 44 April 2011.
Links
Academia.edu: http://lboro.academia.edu/MarionArnold
Images
1. Marion Arnold, Africafricafrica (2003). Watercolour on paper. 142 x 102 cm. Collection: the artist.
2. Marion Arnold, Portrait of a Woman from Africa, (2) (2006). Watercolour on paper. 56,5 x 76 cm. Collection: the artist.
3. Noluthando Beyi, Igqirakazi (Witchdoctor) (1995). Linocut, 38 x 25 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
4. Bonnie Ntshalintshali, Udaniel Namabhubesi (1995). Screenprint, 83 x 53.7 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
5. Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Where to Go? (1991), Etching, 24,5 x 20,5 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
6. Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Lebelo Le A Jelwa (1995). Screenprint, 43.6 x 76 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
7. Gabisile Nkosi, In My Bedroom (2001). Hand-coloured linocut print, 40 x 55 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
8. Gabisile Nkosi, One Sunday Morning (Ngesonto ekuseni ) (2001). Screenprint and linocut, 40, 9 x 58 cm.Permission: The Caversham Press.
9. Gabisile Nkosi, Umoya wami (My soul) (2005). Linocut print, 49 x 35 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
10. Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Handing on Knowledge for the Future (2010). Etching, 29,5 x 25 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
11. Gabisile Nkosi, Ubuntu, (2006). Linocut print, 42,5 x 29,9 cm. Permission: The Caversham Press.
12. Cover of Jane Carruthers and Marion Arnold (1995). The Life and Work of Thomas Baines 1820-1875., Fernwood Press, Cape Town.
13. Cover of Marion Arnold (1996). Women and Art in South Africa, David Philip Publishers and St. Martin’s Press, Cape Town and New York.
14. Cover of Marion Arnold, (ed.) (2001). South African Botanical Art: Peeling Back the Petals, Fernwood Press, Cape Town.
15. Cover of Marion Arnold and Brenda Schmahmann (eds.) (2005) Between Union and Liberation: South African Women Artists 1910-1994, Ashgate, Aldershot.
