Archives are more prominent than ever, not only in art practice and theoretical discourse but also in popular culture. An archive is now understood to mean anything that is longer current but that has been retained. This paper considers how archival practice can be integrated further within current discourses of art history, theory and practice, at a time when the concept of the archive is at both more widely known and less fixed in its meaning.

This paper discusses the relation between trauma and representation in the work of Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar (born 1956), focusing mainly on his installations dedicated to Africa, in particular Sudan and Rwanda. It will be argued that the artist toys with the mechanisms of trauma, reprogramming the shock dynamics of trauma and substituting the aesthetics of the wound with the ‘document’, which contextualises and integrates image and event beyond and against the politics of global information.

When John Constable’s sketch of The Glebe Farm was formally presented to Tate Britain in 2006, after the death of Sir Edwin Manton, its provenance had been traced to the Emory Ford collection in 1914. This research extends the line back to the artist’s sale of 1838, and identifies the chain of owners. It includes evidence about the identity of Williams, the original purchaser who was an active participant at Constable’s sale.

This paper explores the aims and outcomes of an artist’s residency in the Archives of the London School of Economics. It considers the impact of the residency on archive staff and on the arts community, and its role in attracting new audiences to the Archives.

This paper discusses the role of the archive in relation to the artistic process, through the work of Lucy Gunning, and in terms of day-to-day interactions, with reference to the Studio International Archive held at Tate, the Wordsworth Trust Archive and the Henry Moore Institute Archive.

The idea that artists might reinvigorate and activate collections in new ways no longer seems a radical concept, but this understanding of the potential of collaborations between artists and archives was not always so widespread. This paper – based on a conversation held at the Archival Impulse Study Day at Tate Britain in November 2007 – explores the role played by Angela Weight as Keeper of the Department of Art at the Imperial War Museum between 1981 and 2005 in commissioning artists to work alongside the museum’s collections and archives.

Hans Hartung (1904–89) suffered a major stroke in 1986 and was wheelchair-bound for his remaining years. Yet in theis period he produced an astonishing number of large and energetically painted canvases. Some people speculated that the paintings must have been produced by his team of studio assistants. This paper examines the relationship of Hartung and his assistants in his last years in order to explore the role played by the artist as author of his late works.