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Sian Gouldstone is a visual artist and a lecturer on BA Photography at Leeds Arts University. She previously taught for five years on the BA Commercial Photography at Arts University Bournemouth.
She has an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths College, London (Distinction), and is a PhD researcher at University of Plymouth.
Sian’s research explores affective and material manifestations of whiteness, in post-colonialising spaces. She has a ranging interest in photographic materialities, suburban spaces and non-representational theories. Sian researches photographic methods for visualising whiteness, as an affective form of imperial duress, and a legacy of British imperialism in suburban contexts, in relation with assisted passage British settler migration in Australia. Using experimental photographic practices that draw on archival resources alongside her own images, Sian utilises shifting virtual and material forms of photography to produce and explore affective atmospheres. Her aim is to understand the continual forms of imperial duress and social forces of whiteness that manifest in contemporary suburban space.
In her most recent series, (re)mediations, Sian adopts various strategies for folding photographs, with reference, and in direct response, to ideas in phenomenology, philosophy, new materialism and affect theory. This approach allows Sian to experiment with means for problematising the domesticated, colonised, fixed, still, permanent, flat and representational; all of these are concerns that overlap in the study of photography and empire. Sian’s broader artist practices have explored experiences of domesticated space for over a decade.
Articles and Conferences
2021
January – ‘Lines’ – University of Plymouth
January (Pre-recorded) – RDC2 PhD Presentation – University of Plymouth
2020
December – Research as Practice, Practice as Research – AUB
January – RDC1 PhD Seminar – ‘Consolidations’ – University of Plymouth.
2019
June – Photography & Lived Experience, University of Huddersfield.
January – Visualising Place: intertwining methodologies in the examination of spatial practices, materiality and the affective spaces of home. – Solent University.
2017
July - Visualising the Home, University of Cumbria. UK.
June - HOMiNG: The Home-Migration Nexus, University of Trento, Italy.
Exhibitions
2023
In the Summer of 2023, Sian will be exhibiting work from her research at Vacancy Atlas in Plymouth, in the exhibition RE/EMERGE.
2022
Make Good - Leeds Arts University Staff Show, Leeds, UK.
2021
Surfacings - Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fair (BEAF), Royal Arcade, Bournemouth.
Surfacings - Artists for Affect (online) with Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fair (BEAF).
Assisted Passages - water~ways (online) - University of Plymouth
2017
These Paths We Travel - Visualising the Home - Photo Carlisle, Cumbria, UK.
2014
Agoraphobia - Blackpool & The Fylde College, Blackpool, UK.
2013
Who do you think you are? - AFamilyOf - Look13, Liverpool, UK.
AFamilyOf - Arles, France.
2011
Control - Look11 - Liverpool, UK.
Control - East London Photography Month - Oxford House, London, UK.
2010
Domus - Repair Manual - APT Gallery, Deptford, London, UK.
Twice Removed with AFamilyOf - Madlab, Manchester, UK.
2009
Identikit - 1000 Words - CUBE, Manchester, UK.
Capture Manchester - CUBE, Manchester, UK.
Made to Fit with Women’s Work - Willis Museum, Basingstoke, UK.
2008
Unnoticed - CUBE, Manchester, UK.