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Professor Emma Rose

Professor

Research Interests

Emma Rose's research concerns the role of art in health and wellbeing underpinned by the theoretical lens of therapeutic landscapes, as it offers a means through which to conceptualise how particular spaces can contribute to an individual’s mental and physical wellbeing. Her research utilizes this concept to investigate the role of participatory arts interventions for groups marginalised by society. Recent projects have engaged with women refugees affected by gender-based violence, refugees who are survivors of torture, the ageing population, those living with dementia, and transgender people.

In 2018 she was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant: Art of Recovery: Migrating Landscapes Rose, E, (PI), Bingley, A. F., Lamb, K. (Co-Apps). Art of Recovery seeks to deepen understanding of ways in which participatory arts can contribute to mental health and recovery of migrants who fled extreme situations and experience trauma as a result.

She received funding for an ESRC funded 1+3 collaborative studentship for PhD research (2015-2019) in collaboration with Professor Christine Milligan (Department of Health Research) for the project titled: Assessing the health and wellbeing benefits of engagement in participatory arts activities for older people living with dementia.

Most recent publications:

Rose, E.E., and Bingley, A. F. (2017) Migrating art: A research design to support refugees' recovery from trauma - a pilot study, Design for Health, Taylor & Francis, DOI: 10.1080/24735132.2017.1386499. Published online, hard copy in December 2017

Rose, E.E., and Lonsdale, S.M. (2016) Painting place: re-imagining landscapes for older people's subjective wellbeing, Health and Place, 40, p. 58-65

Rose, E., Lonsdale, S. (2016). Hidden Identities: Concealed Dangers, Visual Art and Transgender Health and Wellbeing, International Journal of the Image, Vol 7, Issue 1.

Rose, E., (2012). Encountering place: A psychoanalytic approach for understanding how therapeutic landscapes benefit health and wellbeing, Health & Place, November 2012 Volume 18, number 6pp. 1381 – 1387, http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/science/journal/13538292/18

Rose, E., (2012). Mentalizing Therapeutic Landscapes: the Benefit for Mental Health, International Journal of the Image, Vol. 2., pp. 87-94.

Rose, E., Boynton, N. (2010). Landscapes in Time: a psychotherapeutic intervention, International Journal of the Image, Vol. 1., pp. 117-127.

Recent curatorship

2017 Southern, J., Rose, E.E., O’Keefe, L. Mobile Utopias: 13 Artists 12 Experiments. Exhibited throughout the duration of Mobile Utopias Conference, 2nd -5th November, Lancaster University.

Recent artworks:

Rose, E., Boynton, N., (2013). Ice, Cloud, Mirror, solo exhibition including paintings by John Ruskin curated by Emma Rose shown in context of her film a cinematic video installation, Mirror, by Rose and Boynton, Brantwood, Cumbria 18th April- 24th June. Rose, E., catalogue: Landscapes of Wellbeing. In: Rose, E., (Ed), Ice, Cloud, Mirror, pp. 1-30.

Rose, E., Boynton, N. (2012). Science Film Festival. Mirror, Boynton & Rose, 4’. New York, 8th – 16th November. Screened in New York Hall of Science, New York, USA, 10th November 2012.

Brooklyn Film Festival. Mirror, Brooklyn, New York, USA, 1st – 10th June. Indie-screen, 4th June 2012 Brooklyn Heights Cinema 9th June 2012.

Recent Conferences and seminars:

2018 Art of Recovery: Deterriatorialization and Transition, Ninth International Conference on the Image, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, SAR. 3rd – 4th November (forthcoming).

2017 Migrant Imaginaries, Mobile Utopia Conference, Lancaster University, 2nd – 5th November. Initiator of Utopia and Place Panel (seven panellists and speakers). Migrant Imaginaries delivered within this panel. Friday 3rd November

2017 Migrating art: A research design to support refugees' recovery from trauma. Confluence of Health and Healing Symposium, Lancaster University, 14th March, in collaboration with Dr Amanda Bingley.

2017 Migrating art: A research design to support refugees' recovery from trauma. Centre for Mobilities Research Showcase, Lancaster University, 7th Februaary. Amanda Bingley, Annabelle Edwards, Jo . Online video.

2017 REF 2020: Maximising Impact across the University, a keynote lecture at Leeds Beckett University.

2016 The seventh International Conference on the Image, Liverpool John Moores University, Migrating art: Re-imagining landscapes to promote wellbeing for migrant populations. Professor Emma Rose (collaborators: Dr Amanda Bingley (DHR), Annabelle Edwards (DHR), Jo Gorner (LICA), Macarena Rioseco (LICA), Julia ZielkeEmma Rose in collaboration with (University of Liverpool).

2016 In What Ways Can Older People Challenge Loneliness? Our Big Society. Festival of Questions, The Lecture Theatre, The Storey. Saturday 6th February, 1.30-2.45pm, Denise Nardone, Prof Emma Rose, Andy Smith, Prof Katherine Froggatt.

2015 Creativity and connectivity: Exploring the impact of painting remembered landscapes on older people’s subjective wellbeing accepted forpresentation: THE IMAGE 2015, Sixth International Conference of The Image, 29th October to 30th October 2015, University of California at Berkeley, USA.

2015 Creativity and connectivity: Conference Presentation: Dementia Futures, Lancaster Town Hall, September 18th 2015.

Hidden Identities: Concealed Dangers, Visual Art and Transgender Health and Wellbeing Conference presentation. THE IMAGE 2014, Fifth International Conference on The Image, 29th October, 2014 to 30 October. Freie University of Berlin. Official Event Web Site: Click for official site of THE IMAGE 2014

2012 Therapeutic Landscapes and the Benefit for Mental Health. Health and Wellness Conference, The University Centre, Chicago, Illinois, USA,

2011 Mentalising Therapeutic Landscapes. International Conference of the Image, San Sebastian, Spain.

2010 Landscapes in Time: A Psychotherapeutic Intervention at the International Conference of the Image, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

2010 Aesthetic decisions and sound design in the making of threshold at the Cinesonika conference and festival, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.

Films produced in collaboration with Neil Boynton include: the video rush interrogates formal qualities of imagery, some derived from abstract painting. The flow of images, sometimes disrupted by memories, suggests the consciousness of a contemplative viewer preoccupied not only by what is seen but also by its structure or syntax. Informed by the optical effect produced by Bridget Riley in her black-and-white paintings, rush captures the movements of tree trunks, which, when filmed from a fast-moving car, produce a similar flickering, stroboscopic effect disorienting the eye and brain. The digital manipulations and animations create an innovative dialogue between digital and painterly abstraction and photographic realism, their boundaries and their interrelationship.

Projected at 8 x 3 metres it creates an immersive environment with stereo sound and was shown in solo shows in Croatia and Nottingham, in a group exhibition in London at Oxo Tower, and in Inspiration to Order, with a full colour catalogue ISBN: 09773967-7-0, at California State University Art Gallery, The Winchester Gallery, Southampton University, The Gallery, Wimbledon College of Art, and the Art Historians' Annual Conference at the University of Ulster. rush was selected for exhibition at the Egilsstaðir experimental video festival in Iceland and shortlisted for the Alcoa prize. It was also selected for the Short Film Experiment, Bolzano, Italy, and Videoformes Clermont-Ferrand, France. The solo exhibition in Krizic Roban Gallery in Croatia was reviewed in Vijenac, XV (349/350/351), 19.07.07., str.22 the premier independent Croatian culture arts weekly. The solo exhibition of rush at the Surface Gallery, Nottingham, was reviewed in UK Metro Associated newspapers LtD

The film skyWriting investigates how technological advances can be combined with visual and social aesthetic concerns in new and emotionally compelling ways. First, digital technology enables the use of multiple windows or frames of action in a single screen. skyWriting exploits this potential to create new relationships between familiar images: several frames of action depict a subject from different viewpoints to create a new experience, forcing the viewer into an insecure relationship where nothing is taken for granted, each vision cut by a window revealing another world. Second, photographs are morphed into abstract forms: stripes, trails and traces, exposing details and facets of the object not usually subject to scrutiny; the audio material supplements and extends these devices. Exploring the margins between abstraction and photography, the work invites the viewer to evaluate familiar images and narrative sequences in a new way.

Transmediale 05 provided a global critical forum for new media art. There were 9 conference sessions and 60 lectures. skyWriting was part of its permanent exhibition. Transmediale was sponsored by The Council of the German Culture Foundation and there were 66 reviews in newspapers, journals, radio and television programmes. After showing on The Big Screen, Manchester City Centre, Philips used skyWriting to advertise BBC public space broadcasting on Philips LED video screens. It was screened twice during the Korean video festival, selected from the best experimental films of Seoul Net Festival from worldwide submission on the basis of its exploration of new models of screen aesthetics with high production quality. It was screened alongside a lecture at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou Paris, and included in group exhibitions in Edinburgh and Galashiels receiving reviews in The Scotsman and The Herald,.

Emma Rose's paintings and drawings

Solo exhibitions of paintings and drawings in Birmingham, North Tyneside and Bath were the outcome of Rose's practical enquiry into the paradoxical territory between vernacular photography and schematic, geometrical shapes, the components of a wholly abstract image. The investigation explored the area defined by images that are unproblematically representational photographs at one extreme and images wholly composed of overtly abstract elements -- like circles, triangles and diamonds -- at the other. She traverses the territory between painting and photography afresh in the light of digital media and abstraction, observing the visual demands of representational photographs on the one hand, and abstract, optically abstract image components on the other. The result was to create new, dramatically contrasting and complex relationships between photographic, abstract and digital elements; geometrical figures, like triangles, alluding to other images within the work, like fir trees and mountains or pixellated imagery.

When shown with White-out, the projection of skyWriting occupying the whole gallery wall extends the investigation of the boundaries between abstraction and photographic imagery. Animated images echo the sense of movement conveyed by the grouping of geometrical shapes in the paintings. The transformations reveal connections between the way abstract images are seen and the relation of abstraction to the source; in the processed images visual distinctions are perceptible even though features of the original image are emptied-out.

The exhibitions were accompanied by a full-colour catalogue with essays. The work at Mac was seen by 2457 visitors and a review of the exhibition was published in Metro March 11th 2005. The exhibitions were sponsored by Mac Gallery, AdHoc Gallery and Lancaster University.
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