Ithell Colquhoun 1906-1998: A contextual study of the artist's imagery and working practices focussed on Tate's newly expanded collection and archive

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This PhD will navigate how Ithell Colquhoun is positioned as an artist, writer and proto-feminist, and evaluate her life with reference to contemporaneous visual culture and context. The diversity of Colquhoun's output and the substantial size of the archive will make interdisciplinary work vital, as I would also seek to contextualise Colquhoun's imagery and working practices within her own writings. The artist's dedicated interest in the occult and specific amalgamation of automatism, mythology and alchemy was unique among her contemporaries, and investigation into the as yet partially uncatalogued archive will contribute a significant layer to existing scholarship on Surrealism in Britain. The PhD will investigate Colquhoun's studios, as well as tackling the historiography of her legacy and how it was shaped by myriad factors including deeply sexualised imagery and literary taboo, financial concerns and institutional group structures (including further work on her break with the British Surrealist Group in 1940). It will further explore the artist's investigations into localised and regional nationalisms, specifically the cultural legacy of pre-Christian and pagan ritual in Cornwall and Ireland: a research strand which looks to become increasingly important as, in its political sphere, the UK continues tograpple with its complex internal and external relationships - with Scotland, Europe and the Republic of Ireland.