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thalia.allington-wood@ucl.ac.uk
I graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA in English Literature in 2010, followed by an AHRC funded MA in History of Art from UCL in 2011. Before starting my PhD in 2014, I worked in museum education and research, most recently managing the Design Museum's Adult Education and Public Programme, following a stint in the V&A Sculpture Department. I have also programmed literary festivals and worked for the art publications Tate ETC. and the RA Magazine.
Thesis
Grounded: Unearthing the Materiality of Sculpture and Mythic Space in Sixteenth-Century Italy
This project seeks to consider how myth, history, landscape and sculpture interact with each other in certain, unusual, outdoor spaces in sixteenth-century Italy. The primary object of enquiry is the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo (ca. 1550-1580), a sculpture complex commissioned by Vicino Orsini, which goes against the conventions of sculptural villa gardens of the Italian Renaissance. In counter sites such as the Sacro Bosco - wooded, remote, and full of rough volcanic sculpture - new ways of configuring and constructing the past, through fantasy and materiality, were experimented with and articulated. What does it mean to invent a history merged with fiction and to do so in three-dimensions? Especially against a backdrop of religious debate which questioned the role and validity of images, objects and representation? This thesis seeks to examine sites such as the Sacro Bosco and to explore their fluid, inventive and embodied engagement with history making, which is irrevocably tied to the earth, ground and rocks.
Research Interests
Sculptural outdoor spaces in early modern culture, myth and mythmaking, fantasy and representation, the materiality of sculpture, imaginative engagements with history, the creation of place, embodiment and experience, gender, sexuality and feminism, cultural engagement and accessibility.
Research Themes
Art, Design & Architecture, Language, Linguistics & Literature, Thoughts, Beliefs & Philosophy, Heritage, Histories and Cultures
Funding/Awards
2016 Ahmanson Research Fellowship, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Los Angeles
2016 Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Doctoral Residency, Washington DC
2016 Dumbarton Oaks Garden & Landscape Studies Graduate Workshop (Summer Fellowship), Washington DC
2016 London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) Research Grant
2014 - 2017 Full AHRC Research Studentship
2010 - 2011 Full AHRC M.A. Studentship
2010 Samuel James Woodall Prize, Manchester University
Publications
Essays
'Fernanda Gomes', 'Mary Ramsden' and 'Ryan Sullivan', in Vitamin P3: New Perspectives on Painting, ed. by Tom Melick and Rebecca Morrill, London and New York: Phaidon Press, 2016
'Rocks: The Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo', LOBBY, no. 4, (2016), The Bartlett School of Architecture Journal, [Peer Reviewed], (commissioned article)
Reviews
'Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (Minneapolis: 2015)', in Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, no.18, (2016), [Peer Reviewed]
'Brian Griffiths: The Invisible Show, Vilma Gold Gallery, London', Art Review, (15 February 2012)
Conference Papers
'Mock Ruins in the Sacro Bosco: Constructing and Confronting Ancient History', in Ruinophilia in Early Modern Literature and Culture, Renaissance Society of America, Annual Conference, Chicago, March 2017
'Landscape and Literary Imagination in the Sacro Bosco', LUCAS International Graduate Conference: Landscape: Interpretations, Relations, and Representations, Leiden, January 2017
'Rock: Materiality in the Sixteenth-Century Garden', Dumbarton Oaks Garden & Landscape Studies Graduate Workshop, Washington DC, June 2016
'Making Myth: a re-imagining of Ancient Etruria', Historical Fictions Research Conference, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, February 2016
'Volcanic Rock and Historic Imagination', Image Matter: Art and Materiality, AAH New Voices Conference, MIRIAD - Manchester Metropolitan University, November 2015
'Bomarzo: between Nature and Artifice', King's Arts and Humanities Postgraduate Conference, King's College London, June 2015
'The 20th century 'rediscovery' of the Sacro Bosco', Nosce te Ipsum: A Conference on Early Modern Images, Department of Art History, UCL, May 2015
'Baretta's Moulages in Hopital Saint Louis: A Battle With Presence', AAH Summer Symposium: Art and Science, The Linnean Society, London, June 2012
'A Resurrected Christ in 1521: Physicality, Presence, Performance and Desire', Desiring Statues Conference, Exeter University and The Wellcome Trust, April 2012
'The Suicide of Lucretia in Renaissance Art: A Troubling Self Destruction', AAH Summer Symposium: Subversive Beauty, Loughborough University, June 2011
Audio
Radio Interview: 'Gardens', on Footnotes, King's College London Radio, November 2015
Teaching Summary
2017 Course Tutor: BA Art History HART1402, Renaissance Art in London, UCL (Spring Term)
2017 Visiting Lecturer: 'Art Museums, Galleries and Curating', Semester Program, Sotheby's Institute of Art, London (Spring Term)
2016 Course Tutor: BA Art History HART1402, Renaissance Art in London, UCL (Spring Term)
2016 Visiting Lecturer: 'Art Museums, Galleries and Curating', Semester Program, Sotheby's Institute of Art, London (Spring Term)
2016 Brilliant Club Tutor, London: www.thebrilliantclub.org, (public engagement programme taking PhD topics into UK schools for 6 week courses)
2015 Arena One Teaching Associate Programme, UCL, London
2014 - 2015 Visiting Lecturer: MA Curating Contemporary Design, Design Museum and Kingston University, London
Other
Session organizer: Discovering & Rediscovering Renaissance Objects, Renaissance Society of America, Annual Conference, Chicago, March 2017
Deputy Editor, Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, no.18, (2016)
Editorial Team, The Still Point Journal, Arts and Humanities Research Publication