Andrew Howells
University of Newcastle, Australia
Activating Artefacts: Recontextualising the illustrative works of Margaret Senior and her contribution to the visual narrative of Australian wildlife. (Dr Andrew Howells, Dr Ari Chand, Dr Chloe Killen)
Panel: National Story
The practice of illustration involves communicating narratives, exploring ideas, and reflecting and shaping a ‘collective social memory’ (Hall 1999). The role of the illustrator is complex as they navigate these practices: responding to current issues, drawing upon history, and extending themselves into the future. This paper will showcase the work of natural history illustrator Margaret Senior AO and her role in defining a national visual identity for Australian flora and fauna.
Australia has a strong visual identity. Rollicking waves along sandy beaches juxtaposed against dry dense eucalypt bushland, or rugged and occasionally snow-capped mountain ranges meeting rolling verdant hills of farmland. Visuals of this natural environment teaming with unusual flora and fauna abound and they each communicate narratives about the Australian way of life both nationally and internationally. Margaret Senior’s body of illustration work, over her 40-year career, is a prime example of this, as she extensively documented Australian flora and fauna which in turn shaped the collective consciousness.
At one point in Senior’s career her posters adorned classrooms and bedrooms across the country, but hardly anyone would remember her name. Senior engaged in innovative collaborative relationships with several Australian state government departments to illustrate and promote wildlife conservation on a state and national level. This paper will showcase Senior’s ground-breaking illustration work and explore its historical impact and relevance to contemporary society.
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Activating artefacts, illustration thinking and process as tools for developing visual narratives to contextualise historical artefacts and cultures.
Panel: Technology
The paper references the “Mer-Neith-it-es” project, a transdisciplinary research initiative aimed at visually contextualising the decorative and narrative inscriptions of a faded 2600-year-old Egyptian timber coffin. Working with a Working with a high-resolution 3D archival scan the project revolved around the digital recolouring and communication through illustrative processes of hieroglyphs and iconographic inscriptions discovered on the coffins surface.
This paper contributes to the discourse of at least two of the four themes of the symposium; Participating in Heritage and A Found Voice and a Made Voice. The paper will detail the role of the illustrator researcher within a transdisciplinary research team in developing illustrations as a research outcome. The project’s focus was on discovery, and development of propositional visualisations that aimed to give a voice to an ancient artefact and its occupier. Was this the coffin of the priestess “Mer-Neith-it-es”? what were the origin of this artefact, its materials and making? and what did the hieroglyphs and iconographic inscriptions discovered on its faded surface say? To answer these questions a team including Egyptologist, museum curators, illustrators, and research scientist were invited to work in a transdisciplinary team where the required visual resource outcomes needed to communicate as objectively as possible the original meaning of the ancient inscriptions.
Final visual reinterpretations meant collaboration was integral to contextualising key messages and cross referencing two visual states of the artefact through time. This process was aimed at translating discipline specific knowledge often communicated through text and static line illustration forms into a time-based resource where a museum audience viewing the artefact in situ could cross-reference illustrations and animation with the original artefact in front of them in learning of its meaning.
The resulting outcomes serve as a permanent instillation at the University of Sydney’s Chow Chak Wing Museum’s Mummy room.
Dr Andrew Howells is an illustrator, animator, and artist with 25 years' experience in industry and academia. As a senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia Dr Howells has taught into and led both the B Natural History Illustration and B Visual Communication Design programs. Dr Howells research is focused on art/science collaboration investigating areas of conservation, environment, heritage, and visual communication. His recent research focus has been on activating artefacts and has involved collaborations with museums and libraries.
Howells’ has been recognised internationally for his work receiving the 2017 EdX prize for excellence in Online Learning and Teaching.