The Illustration Programme at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London (UAL) hosted the 14th International Illustration Research Symposium.
Programmed by Dr Rachel Emily Taylor, the symposium explored active processes of heritage-making through:
The symposium was attended by practitioners and researchers from illustration, heritage, architecture, anthropology and other fields. It considered principles including inheritance, displacement, collective memory, subjectivity and plurality. How do contemporary illustrators take part in historical narratives and give a voice to people and communities? How can they be remembered, obscured and imagined through their work?
Course Leader, BA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts.
Curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, University of Oxford.
Illustrator and Assistant Professor, Hongik University, South Korea.
Graphic Designer and Assistant Professor, Pratt University, USA.
During the symposium a variety of potentials for the roles and definitions of illustration and heritage were considered:
Illustration is an act of illuminating, but light also casts a shadow and obscures or ignores other elements. Illustration as a visual listener. Illustration as an intellectual visual act. Illustration as an attempt at empathy. Illustration as a sympathetic process with other disciplines. Illustration as a mode of embodied expression. Illustration as notation. Illustration as language. Illustration as intervention.
Heritage as a process.Heritage as a story.Heritage as fragmentary, made up of different perspectives.Heritage as interpretation.Heritage as authority.Heritage as authorship.Heritage as place.Heritage as absence.
Audio recordings
Listen back to highlights from the symposium on Soundcloud.
The symposium was curated in response to Illustration and Heritage, by Rachel Emily Taylor, published in 2024 by Bloomsbury Press.
Organised in partnership with Illustration Research, Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, the Association of Illustrators and Illustration Educators.
Supported by Research at Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Colleges of Arts, University of the Arts London.