Simon Rycroft
Biographic Data
| ID | 93289 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simon Rycroft |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simon |
| FAMILY NAME | Rycroft |
| SIGNATURE | RYCROFT S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Artist Placement Group: An Archaeology of Impact
Mid-20th century experiments in aesthetics underpin the establishment of the first artist-in-residence schemes which were established by the Artist Placement Group from 1966. Documents from two underused archives, the Tate’s Artist Placement Group archive and the John Latham Archive, tell the story of the organisation. Tracing this story helps outline one aspect of the pre-history of impact in the geohumanities. The Artist Placement Group had a r…
John Latham’s Cosmos and Mid-Century Representation
The conceptual artist John Latham (1921–2006) is sometimes cast as disconnected from the currents of British visual culture. Latham’s idiosyncratic cosmology, based upon time and events and incorporating human creativity rather than matter and energy, is used to distinguish this disconnection. This article argues, however, that his work can be seen as closely related to that of other mid-century cultural producers who were engaged with alternativ…
Lightshows and the cultural politics of light: Mid-century cosmologies
The practices of multimedia lightshows adopted by the British counterculture in London during the 1960s are related to aesthetic practices involving the use and manipulation of light in kinetic and op art. Both reflect a new sense of matter and energy that emerged from the adoption of post-Newtonian understandings of nature and the cosmos in the mid-twentieth century. The stereotypical cosmic mysticism with which the counterculture is associated …
J.B. Priestley: Bradford and a provincial narrative of England, 1913–1933
J.B. Priestley's writing has been used to explore aspects of landscape and Englishness. Through an analysis of Priestley's early journalism in the Bradford Pioneer and the Yorkshire Observer, we argue that his critical disengagement to most of the landscapes of England was based on a connection to the landscapes of his youth in Bradford where he first developed his fictional and documentary narrative style. In his early journalism, Priestley arti…
Art and micro-cosmos: Kinetic Art and Mid-20th-Century Cosmology
Recent work by cultural geographers on visual art has emphasized performative and participatory aspects focusing upon the embodied and multi-sensory experience of encountering and being part of a work of art. Research on non-figurative art has much to offer in elucidating the relationships and distinctions between representation, non-representation and abstraction. Non figurative artists were representing or enacting a new kind of materiality, on…
Towards an historical geography of nonrepresentation: Making the Countercultural Subject in the 1960s
It is in the experiments in the arts, media, culture, politics and everyday practices developed by the counterculture in the 1960s that many nonrepresentational perspectives emerge. Aspects and examples of those experiments are reviewed with a particular focus on the construction of the countercultural subject and on some performative practices developed to shape those subjects, including psychedelics and underground cinema. During the 1960s nonr…
The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation
The monochrome paintings of the British Op artist Bridget Riley produced between 1960 and 1965, in common with a number of experimental arts and media practices of the 1960s, were characterised by a drift away from traditional representational techniques towards what are now described as nonrepresentational practices. The dynamics of the Op Art aesthetic and the critical writings that surround it bear striking similarities to much recent work on …
Mapping underground London: The Cultural Politics of Nature, Technology and Humanity
An understanding of the geographies of resistance benefits from an exploration of alternative geographical imaginations. A focus on the London based counter-culture of the 1960s illustrates this point. The oppositional geographies of the counter-culture can be mapped using the London underground press as both source and object. In doing so, the underground's peculiar constructions of the relationships between nature, technology and humanity can b…
The geographies of Swinging London
Landscape and Englishness
Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. This book argues that, in fact, landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body. Extensively illustrated, the book draws on a wide range of materials, including topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, p…
Changing Lanes: Textuality off and on the Road
will agree that this exchange has proved invaluable in reshaping our ideas. Many of my arguments made originally when refereeing concerning McDowell's (1996) piece and Cresswell's (1993) original article and response (1996) have already been raised. Indeed, I am delighted that we all found each others' comments relevant and applicable to our readings and perhaps this amply demonstrates that any 'vexed' questions of relativism are easily addressed…
Landscape and Identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water
Large-scale water control projects have been a major component of environmental engineering and landscape transformation during the twentieth century, creating some of its most characteristic modernist forms. The discourses generated by their design and implementation articulate diverse and often opposing cultural identities. Those surrounding the design and construction of reservoirs at Ladybower (1935-45), in what is now the Peak District Natio…
Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey
Simon Rycroft, Denis Cosgrove; Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey, History Workshop Journal, Volume 40, Issue 1, 1 Oct
Mapping the Modern City: Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham Novels
Mapping the Modern City: Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham Novels
Landscape and Identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water
Large-scale water control projects have been a major component of environmental engineering and landscape transformation during the twentieth century, creating some of its most characteristic modernist forms. The discourses generated by their design and implementation articulate diverse and often opposing cultural identities. Those surrounding the design and construction of reservoirs at Ladybower (1935-45), in what is now the Peak District Natio…
The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation
The monochrome paintings of the British Op artist Bridget Riley produced between 1960 and 1965, in common with a number of experimental arts and media practices of the 1960s, were characterised by a drift away from traditional representational techniques towards what are now described as nonrepresentational practices. The dynamics of the Op Art aesthetic and the critical writings that surround it bear striking similarities to much recent work on …
Towards an historical geography of nonrepresentation: Making the Countercultural Subject in the 1960s
It is in the experiments in the arts, media, culture, politics and everyday practices developed by the counterculture in the 1960s that many nonrepresentational perspectives emerge. Aspects and examples of those experiments are reviewed with a particular focus on the construction of the countercultural subject and on some performative practices developed to shape those subjects, including psychedelics and underground cinema. During the 1960s nonr…
Art and micro-cosmos: Kinetic Art and Mid-20th-Century Cosmology
Recent work by cultural geographers on visual art has emphasized performative and participatory aspects focusing upon the embodied and multi-sensory experience of encountering and being part of a work of art. Research on non-figurative art has much to offer in elucidating the relationships and distinctions between representation, non-representation and abstraction. Non figurative artists were representing or enacting a new kind of materiality, on…
Mapping underground London: The Cultural Politics of Nature, Technology and Humanity
An understanding of the geographies of resistance benefits from an exploration of alternative geographical imaginations. A focus on the London based counter-culture of the 1960s illustrates this point. The oppositional geographies of the counter-culture can be mapped using the London underground press as both source and object. In doing so, the underground's peculiar constructions of the relationships between nature, technology and humanity can b…
The geographies of Swinging London
Changing Lanes: Textuality off and on the Road
will agree that this exchange has proved invaluable in reshaping our ideas. Many of my arguments made originally when refereeing concerning McDowell's (1996) piece and Cresswell's (1993) original article and response (1996) have already been raised. Indeed, I am delighted that we all found each others' comments relevant and applicable to our readings and perhaps this amply demonstrates that any 'vexed' questions of relativism are easily addressed…
Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey
Simon Rycroft, Denis Cosgrove; Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey, History Workshop Journal, Volume 40, Issue 1, 1 Oct
Lightshows and the cultural politics of light: Mid-century cosmologies
The practices of multimedia lightshows adopted by the British counterculture in London during the 1960s are related to aesthetic practices involving the use and manipulation of light in kinetic and op art. Both reflect a new sense of matter and energy that emerged from the adoption of post-Newtonian understandings of nature and the cosmos in the mid-twentieth century. The stereotypical cosmic mysticism with which the counterculture is associated …
J.B. Priestley: Bradford and a provincial narrative of England, 1913–1933
J.B. Priestley's writing has been used to explore aspects of landscape and Englishness. Through an analysis of Priestley's early journalism in the Bradford Pioneer and the Yorkshire Observer, we argue that his critical disengagement to most of the landscapes of England was based on a connection to the landscapes of his youth in Bradford where he first developed his fictional and documentary narrative style. In his early journalism, Priestley arti…
Mapping the Modern City: Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham Novels
Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey
Simon Rycroft, Denis Cosgrove; Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey, History Workshop Journal, Volume 40, Issue 1, 1 Oct
Changing Lanes: Textuality off and on the Road
will agree that this exchange has proved invaluable in reshaping our ideas. Many of my arguments made originally when refereeing concerning McDowell's (1996) piece and Cresswell's (1993) original article and response (1996) have already been raised. Indeed, I am delighted that we all found each others' comments relevant and applicable to our readings and perhaps this amply demonstrates that any 'vexed' questions of relativism are easily addressed…
Landscape and Identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water
Large-scale water control projects have been a major component of environmental engineering and landscape transformation during the twentieth century, creating some of its most characteristic modernist forms. The discourses generated by their design and implementation articulate diverse and often opposing cultural identities. Those surrounding the design and construction of reservoirs at Ladybower (1935-45), in what is now the Peak District Natio…
Landscape and Englishness
Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. This book argues that, in fact, landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body. Extensively illustrated, the book draws on a wide range of materials, including topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, p…
The geographies of Swinging London
Mapping underground London: The Cultural Politics of Nature, Technology and Humanity
An understanding of the geographies of resistance benefits from an exploration of alternative geographical imaginations. A focus on the London based counter-culture of the 1960s illustrates this point. The oppositional geographies of the counter-culture can be mapped using the London underground press as both source and object. In doing so, the underground's peculiar constructions of the relationships between nature, technology and humanity can b…
The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation
The monochrome paintings of the British Op artist Bridget Riley produced between 1960 and 1965, in common with a number of experimental arts and media practices of the 1960s, were characterised by a drift away from traditional representational techniques towards what are now described as nonrepresentational practices. The dynamics of the Op Art aesthetic and the critical writings that surround it bear striking similarities to much recent work on …
Towards an historical geography of nonrepresentation: Making the Countercultural Subject in the 1960s
It is in the experiments in the arts, media, culture, politics and everyday practices developed by the counterculture in the 1960s that many nonrepresentational perspectives emerge. Aspects and examples of those experiments are reviewed with a particular focus on the construction of the countercultural subject and on some performative practices developed to shape those subjects, including psychedelics and underground cinema. During the 1960s nonr…
J.B. Priestley: Bradford and a provincial narrative of England, 1913–1933
J.B. Priestley's writing has been used to explore aspects of landscape and Englishness. Through an analysis of Priestley's early journalism in the Bradford Pioneer and the Yorkshire Observer, we argue that his critical disengagement to most of the landscapes of England was based on a connection to the landscapes of his youth in Bradford where he first developed his fictional and documentary narrative style. In his early journalism, Priestley arti…
Art and micro-cosmos: Kinetic Art and Mid-20th-Century Cosmology
Recent work by cultural geographers on visual art has emphasized performative and participatory aspects focusing upon the embodied and multi-sensory experience of encountering and being part of a work of art. Research on non-figurative art has much to offer in elucidating the relationships and distinctions between representation, non-representation and abstraction. Non figurative artists were representing or enacting a new kind of materiality, on…
Lightshows and the cultural politics of light: Mid-century cosmologies
The practices of multimedia lightshows adopted by the British counterculture in London during the 1960s are related to aesthetic practices involving the use and manipulation of light in kinetic and op art. Both reflect a new sense of matter and energy that emerged from the adoption of post-Newtonian understandings of nature and the cosmos in the mid-twentieth century. The stereotypical cosmic mysticism with which the counterculture is associated …
John Latham’s Cosmos and Mid-Century Representation
The conceptual artist John Latham (1921–2006) is sometimes cast as disconnected from the currents of British visual culture. Latham’s idiosyncratic cosmology, based upon time and events and incorporating human creativity rather than matter and energy, is used to distinguish this disconnection. This article argues, however, that his work can be seen as closely related to that of other mid-century cultural producers who were engaged with alternativ…
The Artist Placement Group: An Archaeology of Impact
Mid-20th century experiments in aesthetics underpin the establishment of the first artist-in-residence schemes which were established by the Artist Placement Group from 1966. Documents from two underused archives, the Tate’s Artist Placement Group archive and the John Latham Archive, tell the story of the organisation. Tracing this story helps outline one aspect of the pre-history of impact in the geohumanities. The Artist Placement Group had a r…
Art (11 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Art, Politics, and Modernism (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works)