Visual Ethnography // An Exhibition of Paintings at the Sheffield Winter Gardens

As part of the Livelihoods Project, artist, ethnographer and post-doc on the project, Olivia Howland, was commissioned to produce a new body of work to communicate stories from Tanzania.

The exhibition is part of the Festival of Social Science in Sheffield, and runs from Sunday 5th November until the Saturday 11th November. On Tuesday the 7th of November, there will be a private viewing of the paintings, which include figurative and landscape work, at the Winter Gardens in the evening. The private viewing starts at 7pm. If you would like to attend, please send us an email and we will sign you up. Attendance is free on any of the days, including for the private view.

Olivia works in oils on canvas or board, and is inspired by the places and people she visits as part of the Livelihoods Project.

For more information on Olivia’s work, please visit her website.

Using paintings to communicate research to the academic community and wider public is a novel method – we do not think this has been done before, but this exhibition is an excellent trial of the methodology to see how effective such a method of communication might be. Each painting has a story, which will be presented alongside it. It is hoped that this will be a particularly engaging way to communicate research in a highly visual manner, to a wider spectrum of people. The beautiful Winter Gardens are a perfect setting for Olivia’s work, since many of the tropical plant species are typical of the flora found in the project’s study sites.

If you are in or near Sheffield next week, please do come. This will be an exciting opportunity for both Olivia and the project, and we hope that as many people as possible will get to see and hear about our collaboration.