PLANET APPLE CHEEK was the title for a lecture given as part of the 2017/18 TRANSMISSION Lecture Series at Sheffield Hallam University.

Along with the photographer and artist Tine Bek, McMullan documented every portrait of a woman currently on view in the National Trust for Scotland property Pollok House, Glasgow. Three photographs were taken of each portrait; one in context; one of the face; and one of a close up of the cheek of each woman. This lecture looked at these portraits individually as well as exploring their power when viewed collectively. A detail of the apple of each cheek of the fifty-two portraits was projected; a gesture that revealed both the intimate and universal simultaneously.

Transmission took as its theme for 2017 to 2018 the idea of The Mutable Artist, intending a number of meanings or interpretations, including changeability, volatility, inconstancy, resilience, versatility, and mobility. What characteristics determine artistic production or determine the production of an artist as subject or agent? Deriving from the Latin mutabilis, from mutare—to change, mutability suggests the capacity to move, to adapt to new conditions, to possess a value that is changeable. There is sense of uncertainty, as opposing forces of change may meet, matching or negating each other, offering twists and turns. Identity may be unstable, forming in relation to other identities, unfixed or invented. There may be monstrous forms and images (mutations), or heroic ones, through and beyond the self. Mutability allows the imagination and its constructs to roam and reassemble. The artists invited this year work in multiple capacities and include:

LARRY ACHIAMPONG, RALF VAN DER SMAN, FLORENCE PEAKE, LILIANE LIJN, KIRA O'REILLY, SHAUNA MCMULLAN, WOLF VON KRIES