Li Yuan-chia – The Man behind the Artist.

Over the last 4 months we have been working across teams, (The Visual Collections and The Manuscript and Archives Departments), to try and enhance our understanding of what is contained in the uncatalogued archive of the artist Li Yuan-chia. We have been trying to improve upon the current box list for the collection to enable researchers to have better access to the collection and to rehouse the material into more manageable archival storage.

Li Yuan Chia (1929-94) was a poet-artist-calligrapher-photographer, founder and curator of the LYC Museum in Cumbria. He lived in China, Taiwan, Italy and Britain and spent the last twenty-eight years of his life at Banks, Cumbria, in a house next to Hadrian’s Wall, where he created the LYC Museum. The Tate has an exhibition of Li Yuan-chia’s work running until October 2015 which highlights many of the recurring themes in his work, such as his preoccupations with space, life and time.

Our Clear-Up Project has given us the opportunity to really assess what the archive is comprised of. For example we already knew it contained a huge collection of Li’s photographic work (see Blog post: Locating Li Yuan-chia, 11^th February 2014), but as we began looking through the boxes we realised it gave us a unique insight into Li as a person. There was, what appeared to be, a very random collection of artefacts, many personal items such as letters, passport, bank books, travel cards as well as many items related to Li’s artistic practises such as cameras, lenses and artistic tools.

The inclusion of so many personal effects gave the archive a great poignancy, for example his khaki rucksack and his sou’ wester, which although a little musty, was recognisable from his modelling it in some of his photographs. The abundance of personal ephemera enabled us to build up an image of Li, not only as an artist and curator, but as a person. The many letters, cards and notes offered an insight into his personal relationships, often portraying friendships and the affection with which he was held. We particularly liked several get well cards, which had been made by children who had visited the art gallery he ran.

However, there did appear numerous items which we couldn’t link specifically to him. They led us to surmise as to their connection and why they’d been included with his effects, particularly a small collection of WW1 medals that had been carefully wrapped and placed in a 1970’s Kraft Cheese box. There is also a silver cigarette case engraved to resemble a Pound note, which we could find no account of. Whether he used it for its intended purpose or not is an unsolved mystery. Maybe he planned to use them as inspiration for future artistic endeavours? What did become apparent though was that the LYC archive is certainly multi-layered and that it is ready for further investigation and research.

Karen Jacques, Manuscripts and Archive, & Clare Baker, Visual Collections and Academic Engagement. Technical Advice Anne Anderton, CHICC.