Victoria Worsley, is the Archivist at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and is responsible for the archive of sculpture in Britain, that has an emphasis on the period post-1880. She also develops the sculpture collections of Leeds Museums & Galleries through acquisitions and curates exhibitions and displays. She started her career in archives at the Guildhall Manuscripts in the City of London, and has since worked at UCL Manuscripts, The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths' and Tate Archive before taking up her current role in 2001. She has worked closely with various artists on the development of projects using the archive, including with Neal White, Jane Simpson and Sarah Staton and her forthcoming exhibition is a collaboration with the Design Archive, University of Brighton, Indoors and Out: the sculpture and design of Bernard Schottlander (Sep. 2007). Her recent publications include Ian Breakwell's UNWORD, 1969-70: Early performance art in Britain, (HMI, 2006), Mind the Book  (Contemporary Artists Book Fair, Halifax, 2006), Guide to the Henry Moore Institute Archive, (HMI, 2005), 'Everything happens for the first time' in Jaki Irvine: Plans for Forgotten Works (HMI, 2005), 'Archives?' in Text/Image (Wild Pansy Press, 2004) and she has an essay in the forthcoming Becoming Helen Chadwick, ed. Griselda Pollock (Prestel, 2007). She was an editor for Sculpture in 20th-century Britain (HMI, 2003). She has interviewed Ian Breakwell and John Hilliard for the Artists' Lives strand of the British Library's, National Life Stories and is a member of the Visual Archives Committee of Arlis, which is currently collaborating with Tate Britain on a Study Day,in November 2007 about artists and archives.

Sue Breakell is the Archivist (Head of Archives) at Tate.  She is responsible for the gallery’s archive collections which comprise both the Archive of British Art since 1900 (collected papers and other records of artists, art groups and institutions) and Tate’s own institutional records.  The archive team acquires, catalogues and maintains the archives, making them available through the Hyman Kreitman Research Centre at Tate Britain and through other activities such as displays, education events and publications.  Most recently, Sue curated the archive showcases in the current Prunella Clough display at Tate Britain.  Sue has master’s degrees in Archive Studies and Art History.  She began her archive career as a cataloguer at Tate Archive, where she prepared catalogues of large collections including the papers of Kenneth Clark.   She later worked at the Imperial War Museum, first in the Department of Art, cataloguing the War Artists’ Archive, and subsequently as the first Archivist of the Museum’s organisational records.  She returned to Tate in her current role in 2004.  She is currently a member of the Visual Archives Committee of ARLIS, which is collaborating with Tate Britain on a Study Day in November 2007, about artists and archives.

Collecting the Traces: an archivist's perspective

The phenomenon of artists drawing on their own and other archives is not a new one, but over the past few years there has undoubtedly been a significant increase in attention, among both artists and art historians, given to the archive as part of the creative process, as well as to archive practice.  This mirrors a wider phenomenon of popular interest in archives and personal history.  As well as the context of their original creation, archives can go on to have several “lives” through the act of reiteration and regeneration, through the impulse which Hal Foster has described as “[the] desire to turn belatedness into becomingness, to recoup failed visions… and everyday life into possible scenarios… to turn “excavation sites” into “construction sites”.

Within the framework of archive theory, which emphasises the importance of context in the assessment of the meaning of a document within a body of archive material, this paper will consider the generation and identification of forms of documentation of the creative process.  It will also consider degrees of consciousness and intention in the creation of such documentation, an increasingly complex subject as we move further into the digital age.  There are also questions relating to the blurred boundaries between artwork and documentation.  Using case studies from archives held by both Tate and the Henry Moore Institute, including Helen Chadwick and Prunella Clough, we will consider artists’ different attitudes to the records of their creative process, and place these in the wider context of archival theory and institutional practice.