Winter Residency 2019: January - Scottish Sculpture Workshop

In January, we were pleased to welcome Conor Cooke, Flora Deborah, Katie Surridge, Kati Karki and Theodore Vass to our first winter residency of 2019.

Responding to our call out which considered the multiple experiences, divergent thought and communal entanglements that exist at SSW in relation to our archive and documentation in our 40th year, all artists had an interest in oral histories, speculative narration, making kin and becoming with each other. The programme of activity, which included studio visits, saunas and reading groups, drew from research by SGSAH Researcher in Residence at SSW, Naomi Pearce, and Donna Haraway’s ‘Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Anthropocene’.

Alongside programmed activity and through the artists’ practices, Katie Surridge built and ran her iron furnace ‘Mad dog’ for the first time, and poured a bronze ceremonial drinking vessel that was ‘christened’ at the 1990’s stone circle near Muir of Fowlis. Kati Karki ran a series of collective writing workshops, which were carried throughout the residency, and the group went on a number of moonlight walks in the snow. All together, the time was explorative and social, with friendships made that have generated conversation and collective activity beyond the residency period.