As the culmination to her project exploring the legacy of the influential arts educator Marion Richardson in collaboration with Dr Sarah Mills, Katarina Hruskova produced a mixed media installation for Loughborough University's Martin Hall Exhibition Space. Through printed textile, spoken word, archival materials and text, This is Just What I Saw both evoked and functioned as a pedagogical, imaginative space.

Hruskova and Mills' research saw them visit Marion Richardson's Archive at Birmingham City University to see works produced by her pupils and to interrogate her methods. They then developed these to lead workshops with schoolchildren and young adults in alternative learning environments in Loughborough, Leicester and Nottingham. These were structured around narratives written by Hruskova and focused on two aspects of Richardson’s methodology: ‘Mind Pictures’, and drawing and painting from description.

Richardson used the term ‘Mind Pictures’ to describe images which ‘came spontaneously to the mind’s eye’ without instruction. She encouraged pupils to close their eyes and paint ‘whatever they saw’, stimulating individual vision and trust in one’s own expression. Drawing and painting from description was more structured: Richardson would set a scene using detailed verbal description, which pupils would then re-create in their drawing or painting. With these two methods provided a backbone for Hruskova’s texts, they were developed using a visual language derived from works produced by Richardson's pupils. 

For the exhibition, Hruskova selected and assembled elements and gestures from the artworks produced by workshop participants to create collages and patterns. These were reproduced onto the surfaces of carpets, encouraging the viewer to sit down, listen to the stories behind the patterns and consider the malleable relationship between image and language.

Katarina Hruskova is a Slovak artist, born in Ruzomberok, Slovakia; currently based in Berlin, Germany. She studied at the Royal College of Art (MA, 2014) and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (BFA, 2010). She has exhibited and performed in the UK, Netherlands, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany and Portugal; her recent presentations include Residency Unlimited, (New York, USA), House of Egorn (Berlin, DE), Nitrianska Galeria (Nitra, SK), Galerie TIC (Brno, CZ), Black Tower Projects (London, UK), Institut fuer Bienenzucht (London, UK), Zona Mista (London, UK), Danielle Arnaud Gallery London, UK) and The Bluecoat Liverpool. Katarina has taken part in residencies in NY (Residency Unlimited, 2018), Italy (Residenza Petrolio, 2015), NY (Brooklyn Langer Residency, 2014) and Slovakia (Banska St a nica Contemporary, 2011 and 2014). She is one of the laureates of the Oskar Cepan Award, YVAA Slovakia (2017).

Dr Sarah Mills is Reader in Human Geography at Loughborough University. Her work explores the material, cultural and political geographies of education and childhood. Research projects have explored the role of sound, spatiality and childhood; youth citizenship projects; and the gendered citizenship projects and educational philosophies of several British youth movements across the twentieth century, including the Scouts, Girl Guides, Woodcraft Folk, and Jewish Lads’ Brigade. She is currently working on  a book for Routledge entitled Mapping the Moral Geographies of Education.