About the lecture

In this talk, I present an overview of my ongoing doctoral research at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, with a focus on the importance of archival photography in exploring overlooked or neglected practice. I am exploring visual representations of landscape in women’s practice in Orkney, Shetland, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland in the 20th century.

Using the lens of island studies, and responding to ‘ideas of the north' I seek to challenge representations of the north, most often by men, that have tended to portray it, in the words of Christopher Heuer and Robert G. David, as a tabula rasa or ‘non-site’ for national and imperialist ambitions. I do this by focusing on case studies of practice that are defined (in my analysis) by their attention to the ‘lived reality’ of island life in the north, that is, to its complex and interconnected web of ecologies, the more-than-human dimensions that reflect the actuality of island life, not fantasies of it.

My overarching aim is to create an archipelagic (relational and non-linear), transregional, possibly transhemispheric, framework of analysis that can be used to consider excluded histories that have existed outside mainstream discourses, and which cannot always be framed, necessarily, in institutional contexts.

Anne Renahan bio

Anne Renahan is a second-year PhD candidate in the School of Art History, University of St Andrews, Scotland. She is exploring the representation of modern and contemporary boreal island landscape in the North Atlantic in relation to women and marginalised artists and periphery-centre dynamics. Her research sets out to explore and counter mainstream and colonial depictions or ‘ideas of the north’ by compiling diverse case studies of selected artists that emphasise transnational and transtemporal connections amongst artists and places. Anne’s research is situated strongly through the lens of island studies.

Anne is a consultant editor for Rizzoli, an international publisher (New York and Milan), specialising in books predominantly related to art, architecture and design. She has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and Czech Republic, editor for the United Nations in Beirut, Lebanon; and as managing editor of Bloomsbury’s former Doha, Qatar office.

The lecture will be held in English and entrance is free. 

Welcome!