(audio)

Flaxman, John (1755-1826)
A Self-Portrait at the Age of 24
pen and ink, with pale pink tinting on face and hands; with a mount of pen and ink and grey wash
1779

Related UCL Art Collections Artwork
None specifically, but the use of information from the original letters between Maria Denman and Henry Crabb Robinson, minutes of meetings, catalogues of Flaxman's works, Flaxman's journal and letters concerning his work.

How does an archive of such diversity and fragmentation begin? There must be one point which defined the action of collecting and searching, drawing together anonymous and significant works that seem simultaneously to fit and not fit together.

John Flaxman, a neo-classicist sculptor, working in the late 18th and early 19th Century, died in 1826. His sister-in-law, a Miss Maria Denman, became significantly involved, along with Henry Crabb Robinson, in the negotiation of the housing of Flaxman's works and plaster casts under the Dome of University College London.  Such incidental coincidences in both the death of Flaxman and the lucid correspondences between Miss Denman and the committee at the university, initiated the establishment of the Strang Print Room Collection, which thereafter began collecting artists’ works of enormous variety.

It is this one significant yet fleeting moment in time in which I am interested, using the voice as both a suggestive representation of an event, narrative or time and also as a subjective and variable medium of communication.

Emma Connor
BA1 Fine Art Media (First Year Undergraduate)