Recycl-Age art exhibition 9-11 July 2021

 

This collage entitled Sanctuary I expresses my thoughts on shoreline, nature and the ubiquitous litter on our shores. Royston beach in Granton (Edinburgh) is the setting of this scene. My walk started with a feeling of joy, love, gratitude of beautiful scenery, reflection on good things and bad things in life.  Nature is a powerful healer and brings positivity and strength in coping with our daily stresses. But then I noticed all the rubbish and my heart sank. What are we doing to our planet? What are we doing to our lives? How will our children children's cope? Our beaches are sanctuaries. We are all responsible. Will we have the power, and the love for our natural world, to restore nature? Only our love for this planet will make us come to our senses.

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Love will save me

from scattering

my troubled soul

But how will we save

our lives ahead?

We do not see

the blindfold

that we share

that I share

Will we know?

How will I know?

This sanctuary

I see you

ahead we run

until we fall

Will love save us?

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This collage is accompanied by a video poem. The images are framed by the soundtrack ‘Beacon’ produced by Edinburgh based musician and composer Harry Bongo. It captures my feeling of despair and sense of urgency. This video is my journey, the litter recorded in-situ and now framed for all of us to take notice. We need to take action, our future is at stake

other artworks

Adrift (Royston Beach)

in collaboration with Ian Reddie

Royston Shore

Ian has been producing abstract landscapes incorporating sand and marble dust (a waste product from sculptures) for many years. 

Gina re-imagines these landscapes, combining elements of everyday experiences, including found objects on shorelines, urban and country walks. Objects are re-imagined, get a new life, become disconnected from previous existence and narratives. 

About the exhibition

The Recycl-Age Art exhibition was selected as part of this Coastal Knowledge project and is included in the 2021 Edinburgh Science festival, offering artists a unique opportunity to showcase their work. Recycl-Age Art 2021 includes painters, printmakers, collage artists, ceramicists, illustrators, photographers, textile artists, jewellers, composers, poets and makers. Many artworks incorporate recycled elements, indeed several are made of 100% recycled and repurposed materials. Some artists reflect on what recycling means to them, figuratively or conceptually.

Check the full programme here

Visit 9-11 July

between 11-6pm

Madelvic House 

Granton Park Avenue 

Edinburgh 

EH5 1HS

Recycl-Age Art exhibition scheduled for 9-11July 2021

My next project! Organising the exhibition at granton:hub.... from the announcement:

granton:hub is pleased to announce that our community is now included in the ‘Coastal Knowledge’ project funded by the RSE Young Academy Scotland and led by Dr Niki Vermeulen (University of Edinburgh) celebrating Scotland’s (prolonged) year of coast and waters. As a coastal community, Granton plays a part in developing diverse forms of knowledge about the coast and experiences that people have living and working on the coast.

The Recycl-Age Art exhibition has been selected as part of this Coastal Knowledge project and will now be included in the Edinburgh Science Festival offering artists a unique opportunity to showcase their work.

The exhibition will take place on the 9th, 10th and 11th of July 2021, subject to COVID restrictions.

Recycl-Age Art is open to painters, printmakers, photographers, textile artists, ceramicists, jewellers, composers, poets, new media artists. We welcome artworks that:
(1) incorporate recycled elements
(2) may entirely be made up of recycled materials
(3) reflect on what recycling means or represents, either figuratively or conceptually. For example, how waste affects our environments; plastic pollution affecting wildlife in marine environments and shorelines; what innovation can offer as a solution to the recycling challenges.

To enter please send an e-mail to artingranton@grantonhub.org and include the artwork’s title, one image, the price and full dimensions by the deadline of 16 May 2021. 

Full details are here

2021 exhibition on 'Recycling' at granton:hub

I have decided to take the lead on organising a series of art exhibitions at granton:hub. 

The call for expressions of interest has been posted on the Creative Scotland opportunities website. The theme will be recycling. 

The call is open to all Artists and Makers: painters, printmakers, photographers, textile artists, ceramicists, jewellers, composers, poets, new media artists to exhibit and showcase their works. This year's theme is the ‘age of recycling’ and we welcome proposals for artworks that are

(1) either entirely made up of recycled materials

(2) incorporate recycled elements

(3) or take the inspiration from what recycling means, both figuratively and conceptually.

Interested? Do get in touch through artingranton@grantonhub.org

Feel free to interpret the brief in creative and innovative ways. Our deadline for suggestions is 31 March 2021.

There will be a number of exhibition opportunities, hopefully from end of April onwards, based on COVID restrictions government guidelines.

Artworks may be suitable for temporary outdoor display in the granton:hub community garden at Madelvic House.

More info is on the granton:hub website

virtual student artshow on the virtual university campus

 

5 years ago I had the opportunity to work with Google glasses. I suggested that art students could use this device for curating their artwork for a student degree show. 

The student would select suitable buildings and campus locations to 'pin' their work. Outside walls, inside gallery spaces... anything that could associate the work in a campus-based location allowing anyone to enjoy the work using a suitable VR headset. 

Now more than ever this seems so relevant.

What do you think? Get in touch giraf87projects@goooglemail.com

Lockdown action: Madelvic Wire Works and that dinner

During lockdown, I came across a photograph on the Living Memory Association Facebook page of a large group of Madelvic Wire Works employees - all male - taken at a formal dinner event in 1965. The photo had a cinematographic quality which reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

For this new video I reused photographs I took a few years of the derelict car factory, as well as video of a mixed media work entitled ‘The Works’ I created last year. I added the new soundscape ‘Husk’ created by musician/composer Harry Bongo with whom I have collaborated on numerous occasions.

The video evokes the eeriness this derelict building represents, grasping the forgotten sounds of workers’ conversations and the drafts blowing through the broken windows and doors, now all boarded up.  

The Madelvic Factory is on the ‘at risk register’ of Buildings in Scotland, and a ‘Listed’ building on the national register. 

Art and music

For my latest project I worked with the artist Ian Reddie who started producing abstract work well over a decade ago now, but  has been inactive in recent times for personal reasons. The idea was to present a retrospective of all the paintings, a chance to review where it all started and how his output changed over the years. This would allow him to take stock and decide on his next move.

I commissioned Edinburgh-based musician/composer Harry Bongo to create a sound tracks suitable to accompany Ian's paintings.  The sound had to evoke a dessert setting, bleached by the sun, rugged, desolate, but also beautiful and introspective.

Ian's work is very much landscape focused, imaginary landscapes that appeal to the emotions and feelings. A trip to Arizona and Monument Valley in 2019 gave a chance to re-interpret some of his previous work.

From Ian's website:
Ian has consistently developed his abstract style since the beginning of his artistic career. After exploring screen printing and digital collage, he began painting in mixed media. Oils, marble dust, concrete, grit and jute are amongst the materials he has used. Texture is a vital component of his style, with surfaces and colour being worked and reworked, scoured clear and covered over again. Elemental forms cut through these tactile landscapes, creating humanist reference points in the universal chaos of existence. Dynamic tension is created by the relationship of form and space, the exploration of edge – the boundary at which states alter; solid becoming void; the definite, ambiguous.These works invite the viewer to respond at an emotional level; to find their own orientation, and create their own personal narrative.

Check Ian Reddie's website here
Check Harry Bongo's website here

granton:hub lockdown online

Despite planning for a number of art exhibitions at granton:hub in January-February this year, we then hit lockdown and the closure of Madelvic House.

A quick re-think about what I could do next and a Zoom meeting with some of the artists, made me decide to make some videos, as an online exhibition alternative.

All the videos are uploaded on the new granton:hub YouTube Channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_UH8qG5Jn2hgbhQP5cr51A/

For the video about photographer Paul Cunningham,  I collaborated again with musician Harry Bongo who produced a new sound track entitled 'Scapes'. I had already selected some of Harry's tracks (from his Album Harry Bongo, 2015)  for some of the other granton:hub videos, but Harry was keen to come up with some new ambient music. And I wanted to have more of an input too. So Paul sent around 40 photos, and I decided to make a selection to create a tour, with Scottish landscapes, rivers and lochs, and then the Forth Railway Bridge, harbour views and Edinburgh city centre, at night. The ambient track mapped very well on the photos. Have a look and let me know what you think via artingranton@grantonhub.org.