Curatorial Projects
Over the last few years, I’ve added curatorial endeavours to my art practice, as my exploration of environmental issues has evolved. It’s my firm belief that if we are to step away from runaway climate change, this kind of collaborative and accessible creative exchange is vital. And, as I’ve talked about before, artists are in a unique position in being able to engagingly present climate data.
Points of Return
I’m recently back from the USA, where we presented the group exhibition Points of Return, a large scale exhibition discussing the climate crisis, at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, MA. The exhibition – which I co-curated with artist Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero – featured a versatile group of 27 artists, each offering perspectives on the state of our Earth. As the exhibition title suggests, our aim was to offer optimism, to highlight restorative strategies and sustainable pathways forward. We connected with hundreds of visitors through a series of tours, screenings, performances, talks and discussions.
Highlights include a day dedicated to Elizabeth Ogilvie & Robert Page’s project Into the Oceanic; a sound bath performance by Amy Duncan; an exclusive preview of Earthwatch founder Brian Rosborough’s Call of the Orcas (directed by Jessica Plumb); and, a lecture centered around the exhibition’s location by Dr Joseph Donica. Though now closed, you can still take a virtual tour of the exhibition online, and explore the dedicated webpage – which will be added to in the coming weeks.
Immediately upon returning I began working with Tatha Gallery (Fife, Scotland), collaborating on the curation of Slow Praxis, another environmental exhibition, this time presenting artists whose work encourages us to slow and take notice.
“As visually intriguing as the installations comprising ‘Points of Return’ [were], the narratives surrounding such thought-provoking work [were] equally fascinating.”
“Noticing the small changes requires the kind of communion that comes from knowing deeply … just when we needed to slow down and notice the subtle changes in the natural world that are telling us that something is seriously amiss, we have sped up, entered into the perpetual feed of the never-ending-now, slicing and dicing our attention spans as never before.”
Slow Praxis
I’m delighted to have been invited to co-curate – and exhibit in – this show, and to work with fellow artists I’ve long admired, including some whose works I’ve previously curated or covered: Vivian Ross-Smith (Coast, exhibition, 2019), Stuart Cairns (Coast, exhibition, 2019), Roland Fraser (Surface II, virtual exhibition, 2020), Tim Steward (A La Luz, article, 2020), Jean Gillespie (A La Luz, article, 2023), Rita Kermack, Samuel Sparrow, and my art school photography tutor Iain Stewart, whose work has been a huge influence on my own. Though focussed on the topic of climate change, this is not an exhibition of despair or sweeping gestures imploring desperately that we solve the climate conundrum, rather, it’s an exhibition about slowing down, living sustainably and within our means, using and re-using what we already have, observing, listening deeply, and importantly, exercising restraint – perhaps the most powerful achievable strategy we as individuals have at our disposal. Aristotle wrote: ‘what it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.’ If we are to have a chance of moving away from a future characterised by extreme weather events and biodiversity loss, we must be mindful of the long-term impacts of our actions on the world around us. We must, like the artists in this exhibition, approach from alternative angles and question established processes.
The content of the exhibition will remain under wraps for a few weeks more, but I will release my own inclusions: a new series of mixed media works painted onto repurposed industrial canvases and large-format nautical maps. View three below, and a further selection on this new webpage.
“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.”
Selected Curatorial Projects: 2017 – today
Foreign Familiar 2017 (curator)
As Coastline is to Ocean 2019 (co-curator)
Coast 2019 (co-curator)
Surface (II) 2020 (curator)
The Sea from Here 2020 (curator)
Eight Posters for Glasgow COP26, 2021 (curator of digital submissions)
Points of Return (I & II) 2021 – 2023 (co-curator)
Window display of environmental books for The Concord Bookshop 2023 (co-curator)
Into the Oceanic: Double Screening 2023 (co-curator)
Slow Praxis 2023 (co-curator)
The Sea from Here (II) TBA (curator)
Points of Return (III) TBA (co-curator)