Andrew Langford, Reader in Fine Art and Design

Research Interests

Practice-led research exploring the development of original images and artefacts for exhibition and publication. Enquiry is centred on the context of accelerated biogenetic and industrial impact on the natural world and the shifting cultural value of the photograph in the digital environment. The significance of pictorial vistas are questioned through a range of digital experiments in collage and alternative exhibition forms. The work alludes to issues of interventionism, the Romantic and the Utilitarian and future human experiences of transformed nature and landscape.

My current research (funded by the AHRC) is concerned with issues around the dramatic transformation of a unique landscape in Andalusia, Spain. The motivation for such radical and irreversible change in the landscape is mass horticultural industrialization to produce multiple harvests of  fruit and vegetables - we now expect these products to be available in our supermarkets all year round. The work explores various aspects of transformation and incorporates ideas of space and enclosure, absence and presence, public and private, inside and outside, past and future. The work resonates with theories such as ‘edgelands’ (Shoard 2002), a connecting set of spaces and uses of land between the city and countryside and ‘Non-Space’(Argé 1995),  the experiential product of Super-Modernity.

Recent exhibitions

Uncertain Terrain, AHRC research solo show Nottingham Castle Art Gallery, 2001

Work since 1995, solo show, UoN The Gallery, 2002

Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art,  ‘Indepenent’ strand Sep-Oct, 2002

After Dolly, Invited Artist, national group exhibition, ICA galleries London, 2002

Group show, 5^th Generative Art International Conference, Milan, 2002

Falling Away, AHRC research solo show, UofN The Gallery, 2004

Pleasure Garden, commission within national group show, Nottingham Castle, July, 2004

Common Ground, AHRC/ACE Landscape and Contemporary Art, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, 2005

Invernaderos, within Format06 International Photography Festival, Derby Dance Centre,  2006

Twelve Views, Landscape and Arts Research, UofN Gallery and University of The Arts, 2006

Recent Publications

Uncertain Terrain, catalogue, ISBN O 905634 48 9       

Common Ground Catalogue, ISBN 0-9550829-0-0

Twelve Views Catalogue, ISBN 1-900868-51-2