=Public Talk #1: Borbála Soós | Wednesday 12 February 2020 Join curator Borbála Soós for a public talk in the form of a journey, exploring relationships between people, places and materials. Through stories, video, sound and artworks, she invites us to travel through a series of passageways; from a spiral staircase inside a shell, to an underwater forest resembling the rewilded hills in the Cairngorms National Park, and other parallel realities on the way. There are two separate events, the […]
Winter Residency 2020 artists with Harry Josephine GilesWe’re into the second week of our first 2020 residency, with artists Eloïse Dieutegard, Fionn Duffy, Cassia Dodman, David Moré and Leila Alice Smith. All artists responded to our Winter Residency call, which explores the muddy tensions between materiality and extraction within a time of climate breakdown. Here we share their plans for the residency period and an insight into their interests and practices. The first Winter Residency of 2020 runs from 27 January — 24 February. Eloïse DieutegardAmsterdam, Netherlands […]
Naomi Pearce, Nine Parts Navvy (2018). Photo: SSWWe are pleased to invite applications for our 2020 Summer Residency programme, from artists based in the UK and international. Coming together on residency at SSW, artists live and work on site and have daily access to our facilities coupled with support from our team. We aim to foster conditions for conversation, peer exchange and experimental making across a diverse range of processes and practices both those associated with contemporary sculpture and beyond. Our Summer Residency programme is for artists wishing […]
Lumsden Weekender (2018). Photo: Erika StevensonIn 2019 we were excited to announce our ambitions for a major capital development project at SSW, to upgrade our workshop spaces and site. In line with our ethos, the development will see a ‘ground-up’ approach at its heart, using local materials, skills and knowledges. It will foreground function and environmental sustainability throughout the design and construction. Now, we are looking for input from artists who have been to SSW, whether on residency, open access, for a course or project. […]
SSW is 40! Photo: Felicity CrawshawTime in Lumsden is intangible, fickle and slippy – but we have all made another cycle around the sun! Working on the rural peripheries, with a proximity to material, weather, the more-than-human and each other, time is felt and marked here in the temperature of the workshops, the hours of sunlight, funding cycles, and regular Cake Monday (thanks to the wonderful Max). Today is one of the shortest and darkest days, which tells us it’s nearly the close of SSW’s […]
SSW is 40! (2019). Photo: Felicity CrawshawTo celebrate the close of our 40th year at Scottish Sculpture Workshop, we have commissioned three texts that explore our current practices and speculate on the transformations that can take place here. Taru Elvfing, Ilana Halperin and Jack Tan have all come to know SSW in many different ways across varied time periods. Their words share both their personal experiences of SSW, and the opportunities they see in our future. We hope these texts help more people to come to […]
Ashanti Harris, Forsakin' Gold for Corn (2019). The Skeleton of a Name, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. Photo: Matthew Arthur WilliamsOver the past few weeks, we have been working with artist Ashanti Harris through the RSA Residencies for Scotland. Below she shares some words on her project and what she has been working on at SSW. “I am a visual artist working with sculpture, installation and performance to explore themes of identity and diaspora through historical research. I create educational artworks and performative installations which function as a form of post-colonial critique, challenging dominant representations of history and re-imagining the […]
Photo: Petra Söör, Into The Mountain research (2018)In October 2019, we welcomed artist Edythe Woolley to run a workshop, SWEAT: the sky leaks I leak, as part of LADA’s DIY programme. SWEAT aimed to cultivate an embodied practice of dyke/ queer resistance through a series of sauna sittings, walks, impulse writings and observation. Together, participants considered sweating and the intermingling of liquids as eruptions of resistance to and healings from, pervasive heteronormative culture. Here we share a collaborative text by the workshop’s participants. Written in and around […]
Trainee Technician Michael Hautemulle burning out a mould. Photo: Finn ArschavirA short reflection, written by Finn Arschavir, Infrastructures Intern at Scottish Sculpture Workshop: I started four weeks ago as the first Infrastructures Intern the night before the crucible of molten iron was poured marking 40 years of making at Scottish Sculpture Workshop. The countdown to my final three weeks conclude during the winter solstice – here I am at the midpoint reflecting and looking forwards. My role at SSW is to look at the infrastructures that support and sustain the […]
George Ridgway, Out-tract (2019)The Winter Residency programme at Scottish Sculpture Workshop invites artists to come together and continue developing their practices, informed by our wider research and programme. This winter, we continue explorations into the role of making and understanding materials in a time of climate breakdown. Together we will dwell2 in the tangles and tensions between materiality and extraction, industrial processes and ecological (un)learning. The messy overlaps between the making skills we foster at SSW through our workshops, and the skills needed […]
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