Event overview
Jorella Andrews, Professor Emeritus of Visual Cultures
In ‘The Institution of a Work of Art’ (part of a 1954-55 lecture series called 'Institution in Personal and Public History'), the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty introduced his students at the Collège de France, Paris, to the idea of pictorial rationality: “… there is a pictorial rationality as there is a rationality of a painter’s work,” he stated, “rationality not of completion but of ‘investigation’.”
In this talk, I draw on Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'pictorial rationality' and explore two practices of my own—'radical description' and 'thinking from below'—to distil the insights from art practice, visual culture, and phenomenology that have had the greatest practical and strategic importance for me as a researcher, teacher, and arts- and environmentally-focused community worker.
Having trained as a fine artist, worked in media, and re-trained as an art theorist, Jorella taught in the Visual Cultures Department at Goldsmiths for over 25 years. Jorella's research focuses on the social and political potential of thinking art practice, visual culture, phenomenology, and theology together. Recent projects on this theme include lectures and workshops on non-oppositional/prefigurative approaches to political activism delivered at the universities of Madison-Wisconsin and Villanova, Pennsylvania during 2024, and ongoing work with local HIV and anti-stigma health activists Red Ribbon Living Well, whose textiles and films were included in the 2024 Visual Cultures/Deptford People's Heritage Museum exhibition 'The Monument is the Struggle'. Key related publications include the essay ‘Interviewing Images: How Visual Research Using IPA (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis) Can Illuminate the Change-Making Possibilities of Place, Space, and Dwelling’ (2020) and two monographs, The Question of Painting: Rethinking Thought with Merleau-Ponty and Showing Off! A Philosophy of Image (2018 and 2014, both Bloomsbury). Forthcoming publications include the essays ‘Pictorial Rationalities and why they matter in our struggles for identity and community’ and ‘How to turn around trouble: phenomenological aesthetics, Merleau-Pontean institution, and the metaphor of ‘woman’-as-hinge’ (both 2025). Jorella edited the 6-book series Visual Cultures As... (Sternberg/MIT), is a Trustee of the Association for Art History, and Chair of Albion Millennium Green Trust, which cares for a public green space in SE London. Alongside her role as Professor Emeritus in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, Jorella is a Research Associate at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge.
Image: Jorella Andrews, Thinking from Below, photographic collage, 2024.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Dec 2024 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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