Isabelle Kenningham

• BA (Hons) Fine Art
• Drawing as Activation and Recovering the Family Photograph

My work this summer has revolved around how drawing can be used as a tool to explore images in archives, with a specific focus on photographs of families. Using the archives at the Philip Robinson Library, Keighley Local Studies Library, and the Tyne and Wear Archives I created a series of drawings from family photographs that have been archived and engaged in analysis and reading around why these images might have been archived as opposed to others. My research culminated in an examination of an album of images of tenant families on the country estate of Wallington Hall, Northumberland in 1928, and how their lives were shaped by the politics of their landlord, Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, a Liberal and Labour MP. The drawings and writing made around the tenants are to be exhibited within the Fine Art department this semester.

Funding Source: Newcastle University

Project Supervisor: Professor Christopher Jones