Staff profile

Rebecca Howard


Derby Scholar

Rebecca Howard staff profile pic

Subject

Art and Design

Department

Innovation and Research

ORCiD ID

0000-0001-5317-0001

Campus

Kedleston Road, Derby Campus

Email

r.howard@derby.ac.uk

About

I am a contemporary photographic artist and Early Career Academic in Creative Industries at the University of Derby. This involves a combination of research and lecturing in fine art practices and theory. I also belong to an artist-research group called Proximity Collective, based in Manchester, Cumbria, Blackpool and Leeds. Together, we explore the social and spatial aspects of practice-based research and notions of convivial aesthetics. 

My photography practice engages with architecture, sculpture, installation, and model-making to playfully investigate the ways in which photographic images intersect with the built environment and shape our experiences of place and space. 

My PhD research at Manchester School of Art titled Manifold draws on aspects of baroque architecture, paper design, installation practices, and theories of folding, to explore the photographic paper-print as a generative, form-making tool. 

Teaching responsibilities

BA Photography

Professional interests

Research interests

The doctoral research emerges from art practice and an interest in the relationship between photography and the built environment, in particular the ways in which photographic images shape and mediate our experiences of buildings and places. 

This study combines creative practice and theory to determine the generative and transformative capabilities of the photographic paper print and its potential to transform and reconfigure 'banal' 'everyday' or 'unremarkable' architectural spaces. Through a series of creative experiments, I explore the materiality of the paper print and the form-making, shape-shifting effects of cutting, folding, installing and rephotographing it. Drawing from theories of 'the fold' (Deleuze, 1988) and baroque aesthetics, I consider how a 'standard' sized photographic print can be transformed into something 'non-standard' and variable.

Qualifications

Recent conferences

Arts in Society History/Histories: From the Limits of Representation to the Boundaries of Narrative, 2022

iJade, Hybrid Spaces: Re-imagining pedagogy, practice and research, 2021

The Image, Techno-storytelling: Past, Present, Future, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2019 

NWCDTP, Digital Humanities, Human Technologies, Salford University, 2018

Experience in industry

Recent Exhibitions/Installations 

Group

There-Then-Here-Now, Manchester, UK (November 2022)

All the Small Things, Artcore, Derby, UK (2021) 

Proximity at Abingdon Street Market, Blackpool, UK (window exhibition) (2021)

Proximity at Paradise Works, Salford, UK (2019)

The Image, Manchester School of Art, UK (2019)  

Nothing Abandoned, Paradise Works, Salford, UK (2017)

Visualising the Home, Carlisle photo festival, Vallum Gallery, Carlisle, UK (2017) 

What? Now! Manchester School of Art, Manchester, UK (2013)

The World According to Mass, Bench Gallery, Manchester, UK (2012)

Leeds Beckett Degree Show, Leeds, UK (2011) 

Solo

Mirror-Like-Marble, Derby Cathedral, Derby, UK (2022)

Unit 28-30, Stretford Mall, Manchester, UK (2021) 

When we build, let us think that we build forever, Holden Gallery foyer, Manchester School of Art, UK (2019)

Meta, Holden Gallery (film projection room), Manchester School of Art, UK

Repeat Pattern, Manchester School of Art, Manchester (2016)

 UK Residencies 

Proximity at Rogue Studios, Manchester, UK, 2022

Researcher-in-residence, Instagram Takeover, PAHC (Post-graduate Arts and Humanities Research Centre) Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK (2021)

Paradise Works, Salford, UK (2019)

Islington Mill, Salford, UK (2019) 

Venture Arts, Manchester, UK (2019)

International experience

International Residencies 

Recent publications