Below artist Eva Sajovic reflects on her two week Open Access (O/A) Residency at SSW. O/A Residencies are available throughout the year, for artists, makers or individuals wishing to develop a project, fabricate work or spend time with their practice.
Words and Images by Eva Sajovic
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My two-week residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop (SSW), supported by a Developing Your Creative Practive (DYCP) grant from Arts Council England, offered a welcome shift from the urgency of London into a slower, more reflective rhythm of making and thinking. Travelling by train helped set the tone—an intentional, gradual transition into a period of focused concentration. Staying in the village house introduced gentle pauses for meals and rest—natural interruptions that balanced the temptation to spend every waking moment in the generously equipped and welcoming workshop.
The residency provided vital space to deepen recurring themes in my practice, particularly my ongoing engagement with symbols of colonial power—reimagining them as vessels for care, dialogue, and transformation. This research feeds directly into Rise and Fall of a Temple, a participatory performance project I am currently developing through the UAL Fine Art Fellowship at the British School at Rome. In this work, the temple stands in for ideology, and its pillars represent societal values. It asks: as these pillars begin to crack and collapse, what possibilities emerge from the ruins? Rather than fear of collapse, the work creates space for imagination, agency, and collective reimagining.
At SSW, I focused on developing ceramic components for the performance. The chance to work intensively with ceramics—an area I usually have limited studio access to—was both productive and grounding. I explored different types of clay and began to understand their distinct material properties. With generous technical support from Amy (SSW ceramics technican), I learned to mix glazes (now one of my favourite parts of the process), and observed each stage of kiln firing. These moments of material insight gave me a deeper connection to the rhythms and patience that ceramic work demands.
It was wonderful to also take part in a raku firing, organised by fellow artist-in-residence Morven. Raku is a traditional Japanese ceramic technique in which glazed pieces are removed from the kiln while still glowing hot and placed into sawdust or combustible material before submersed into cold water. This rapid cooling process creates dramatic surface effects and gives them an almost metallic sheen.
In parallel, Ruaridh introduced me to the metal workshop. Initially overwhelming, the process gradually opened up through hands-on experience—cutting, polishing, shaping—and I began to appreciate its physicality and potential. During a blacksmithing workshop, I created iron hooks for my tapestries, combining utility with tactile presence.
The trust, generosity, and expertise I encountered at SSW were truly energising. I left with new skills, deeper material understanding, and a desire to return. Ceramics in particular requires long pauses—drying, firing, glazing, firing again—and I only wished I had one more week to continue building on what had just begun.
