Paul Gough

Professor Paul Gough is Pro Vice-Chancellor & Vice-President, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University, Melbourne. Drawing on the emblematic power of civic statuary, his project ‘Stoneology’ will explore how memory is shaped and controlled in our over-crowded urban spaces. It was on display at the exhibition Re-membering II at the Royal West of England Academy in the summer.

In 1917, within a week of the Imperial War Graves Commission being founded, the Imperial architect Sir Edward Lutyens had drawn up a list of 40 possible ideas for a commemorative stone to situate in each cemetery. He called this a ‘stoneology’. Drawing from cemeteries, memorials and monuments in Bristol and further afield, Paul Gough created a suite of drawings that reflect on the fabric of memory, most particularly the stones of remembrance that mark every garden-cemetery from the First World War. Using a wide range of drawing processes, including frottage, rubbing, and collage, Gough created art works that contain the embedded names of warfare and the very textures of memory in stone.

Paul Gough, ‘Stoneology 1' and 'Stoneology 2', conte and chalks on paper, 2014

Paul Gough presented a lecture on Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer on Tuesday 11 November 2014 and also appeared at the First World War Day: Bristol 2014 Arts Projects event on 15 November at Watershed.