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Staff Profile

Michael Mulvihill

Research Associate

Background

I am Co Investigator for AHRC funded project 'Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: making practice visible at the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station.' 2020-2023. This research is being carried out by an interdisciplinary research team who seek to understand how RAF Fylingdales, has historically and currently interacts with it's environment through various practices, and cultural productions to produce multi-scaled geopolitical and social spaces.

A major outcome of this research will be an online archive that will allow the public to search and view RAF Fylingdales collection of objects and materials it has amassed since becoming operational on 17th September 1963, and more information about the project can be found here:

fylingdalesarchive.org.uk

This research came from from prior research work through AHRC Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC NBDTP) that investigated how creative activity can be used as a method to make visible the way nuclear weapons have influenced and structure the way we experience our social and cultural environment. This working was realized as the first ever artist in residence at RAF Fylingdales.

Linked to this activity I worked with English Heritage as an assistant curator in their Cold War Collections, which is composed of materialities from the UK governments preparation for nuclear war between 1946 and 1992. This has resulted in a report making recommendation regarding how English Heritage acquire knowledge about the collection, conserve key elements and engage the public.

I was Associate Producer on A British Guide to the End of the World (2019) an Erica Starling production for BBC Four Arena series, directed by BAFTA winner Dan Vernon. The 70 minute film emerged from my research at RAF Fylingdales and with English Heritage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b1gn/arena-a-british-guide-to-the-end-of-the-world

Prior to this research I held a Leverhulme Artist in Residence with the Military War and Security Research Group in the School of Geography Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. This work resulted in an exhibition called Standby for the New Stone Age (2015) that intervened amongst the artefacts at English Heritage’s York Group 20 ROC HQ museum to mark the 70th Anniversary of Operation Trinity, the first nuclear detonation.  Additionally I have recently shown work in solo exhibitions A Mid-Century Modern (2015, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery), The Means and the Instruments (2015, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland) and I featured in the group show They use to call it the Moon (2014, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead). I took part in the 4th Ghetto Biennale: Kreyol, Vodou, and the Lakou: Forms of Resistance (2015) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with a project called Charcoal. I am represented by VANE Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne who have recently shown my work in the group exhibitions Vicennial (2017, Vane Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne), Seeing a Who (2016, with Art Helix, Brooklyn, New York) and The Karman Line (2016, with Object A, Manchester).

Publications