Uncovered

This episode is a conversation with Sarah Ainslie, a photographer based in the East End of London. She talks about her journey into photography, and her work exploring objects of memory, hidden lives and changing landscapes. Ainslie's approach is collaborative and community-focused, engaging with groups such as theatre performers, working women, and visually impaired people. Her forthcoming book Women at Work: East End Portraits 1992-2025 (Spitalfields Life) will be published in November 2026. Other recent projects include 'Caught Between Two Worlds', which draws from photograph albums belonging to her grandfather when he was logging teak in Thailand between 1896-1914. She reconstructs and re-imagines spaces to encounter unexplained and secret lives that came to light through a chance meeting almost half a century later. In 'Limehouse Tilbury', walking east along the river Thames, she is taking pictures of the disappearing and changing landscape littered with derelict buildings and abandoned objects — shoes, clothing, pieces of furniture — the traces of humans and their lives. https://sarahainslie.com/ https://hackney-museum.hackney.gov.uk/ Sarah is in conversation with Judith Meddick, Honorary Research Associate in the Centre for Visual Cultures. The episode was recorded at Sarah’s studio in the East End. Image taken from 'Caught Between Two Worlds', Sarah Ainslie (2017-2019). Image description: Black-and-white composite of two family photographs. On the left, a British family poses outside, with five adults and one child holding a teddy bear. On the right, a Thai family poses, with two adult women and three children. Superimposed down the centre is a seated man in a wide-brimmed hat, holding a newspaper, creating an overlapping image between the two families.

Anissa Talahite-Moodley talks to Tamara Abdul Hadi, an internationally known Iraqi photographer based in Canada, about her artistic practice and her re-imagining of land, people and histories through photography. Tamara's webpage: https://www.tamarabdulhadi.com/ Articles about Tamara's work: https://www.1854.photography/2025/01/tamara-abdul-hadi-marshes-iraq-photo-book/ https://dorismccarthygallery.utoronto.ca/publications/essays/depicting-past-and-future-tamara-abdul-hadi-and-the-iraqi-marshlands https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/tamara-abdul-hadi https://www.vice.com/en/tag/tamara-abdul-hadi/ Image Descriptions of Re-imagining Return to the Marshes: https://aimlabgallery.accessinthemaking.ca/projects/re-imagining-return-to-the-marshes.php Self-Portraits from Inside Palestine (video): https://www.tpff.ca/program-guide-2015/2015/9/24/template-zesh8

Martina Borghi talks to Dr Stacy Boldrick from the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester about iconoclasm - the destruction of art! She tells us how museums approach this subject and discusses how to present the history of objects that have undergone various forms of damage. Stacy's bio: https://le.ac.uk/people/stacy-boldrick Artworks and artists’ projects mentioned: Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), oil on canvas, 1647-51 - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-the-toilet-of-venus-the-rokeby-venus John Cassidy and others, Edward Colston statue,1895/2020. Bronze, mixed media M shed (Bristol Museums) display, 2021 - https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/ Kate Davis, Reversibility (Militant Methods), 2011. Framed pencil drawing and silkscreen print on paper, 135 x 80cm - https://katedavisartist.co.uk/peace-at-last-2/ Sonia Boyce, Black artists and Modernism (2015-2018) - https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute/ual-related-activities/black-artists-and-modernism Hew Locke, Patriots series (2018) - http://www.hewlocke.net/patriots.html Titus Kaphar, Impressions of Liberty, Wood (American sycamore and plywood), etched glass, sculpting foam, graphite and LED lights, 2017 - https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/132361?lat=40.349209&lon=-74.660278 Francisco Goya, Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra), series of prints, 1810, Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher - https://www.parkwestgallery.com/francisco-goya-disasters-of-war/ Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024 (Dia Beacon) - https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/steve-mcqueen-exhibition Raqs Media Collective, Coronation Park (2015) - https://works.raqsmediacollective.net/index.php/2015/12/05/coronation-park/ Exhibitions mentioned: Iconoclash (2002), ZKM Medienmuseum (Karlsruhe Germany). - https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2002/05/iconoclash Books and articles mentioned in the Podcast: - David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Yale University Press, 1989) - David Freedberg, Iconoclasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021) - Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, 2nd edn (London: Reaktion, 2018) - Stacy Boldrick and Richard Clay (eds.), Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) - Stacy Boldrick, Iconoclasm and the museum (Oxon: Routledge, 2020) - Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds), Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2002) - Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) - James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) - Ramon Sarró, The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast Iconoclasm Done and Undone (London: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 2009) - James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013) - Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at war (London: Reaktion, 2007) - Henry Chapman, Iconoclasm and Later Prehistory (London: Routledge, 2018) - Fabio Rambelli, Eric Reinders, Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012) - Christoph Brumann and David Berliner (eds), World Heritage on the Ground. Etnographic prospective (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016) - José Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona, ‘Heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: legal and illegal iconoclasm’ in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5 (2020), pp. 519-538

This episode's guest is Sandy Saad-Smith, curator of the Doris McCarthy Gallery, a professional public art gallery within the University of Toronto Scarborough. In conversation with CVC's Anissa Talahite-Moodley, Sandy talks us through the process of curating it’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet, a solo exhibition of works by the artist Erika DeFreitas, whose practice reflects on loss, post-memory, legacy, and objecthood. DeFreitas' artwork addresses historical and archival absences, offering a rich, poetic reimagining of an alternate text that attests to the complex lives of women, including Maud Sulter, Jeanne Duval, Gertrude Stein, and Agnes Martin. Sandy also tells us about a new exhibition in the gallery by the Waard Ward collective in collaboration with Anne Campbell, Nicolas Fleming, Reza Nik, Darren Rigo & Alize Zorlutuna. Featuring photography, ceramics, florals, and a site-specific garden installation, A rose gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it evokes the memory of the Nanaa family’s garden, courtyard, and home, lost in the Syrian war. The exhibition explores the colonial history of flowers, the legacy of war on land, the imagined landscape, the displacement of people, and the longing for home. Find out more about the gallery and the exhibitions Sandy has worked on: Doris McCarthy Gallery A rose gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it it’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet The Yet See Sandy's website here CVC website Email: [email protected] X / Twitter: @RHUL_CVC Instagram: @rhul_cvc

Royal Holloway doctoral researchers Caroline Harris and Briony Hughes tell us how they curated Words from the Wild: the Nature of Poetry, a new exhibition which explores many different forms of poetry, all of which respond to the natural world. They talk about their eco-poetic practice, the challenges of putting together a multi-sensory poetry exhibition, and the importance of bringing poets into the conversation on questions of biodiversity, sustainability, and climate crisis. More info on Words from the Wild: https://royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/the-library/the-exhibition-space-at-the-emily-wilding-davison-building/words-from-the-wild/ You can find out more about Joan Retallack, ‘procedural ecologies’ and Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry in this article by A. J. Carruthers. Jonathan Skinner on ecopoetics: https://jacket2.org/commentary/jonathan-skinner CVC website: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/languages-literatures-and-cultures/research/our-research-areas/centre-for-visual-cultures/ [email protected] @rhul_cvc