Changing Ideas Award
As an artist educated in Scotland, access to good-quality education, resources, and places where one can continue to develop art are important to me.
In my art practice, I am interested in what we look at, what we value and what we choose to preserve.
"Man down" (2025) comes from a self-directed project that appraised: access to working with historically privileged material – bronze; and the sustainability of working as an artist in an urban setting.
The body of work was made in a disciplined set-up: I used my membership access to the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s casting workshop, with the idea that if my project worked, anyone could replicate it if they had technical guidance, access to equipment and funds to cover access fees and basic materials.
My project asked not only what to make, but how to make it now, living in the city, with climate change, the cost of living crisis, and the costs of education.
The project explored ideas around the concept of the 15-minute city, and tested in real life 6 qualities of great urban places (according to the Hassell Studio: “beautifully original, conveniently compact, richly diverse, openly networked, playfully dynamic, naturally regenerative”).
For me, sustainability expresses itself in investing in the preservation and reinterpretation of skills, by protecting the time and places where people can gather to learn, to exchange ideas and to pass knowledge on to the next generation. “Spaces that increase interaction between people from diverse backgrounds can also help increase social empathy and decrease stereotyping and discrimination in both professional and social settings.” (Bai, X. and Ramos, M. R. and Fiske, S.T., 2020)
I put this to the test working as a woman in bronze - historically considered to be a male discipline. The differences in gender, education and life experiences added to the quality of the artistic journey. The artwork on one hand translates my ceramics to bronze, and on the other, the artwork preserves the moment in time of various artists working together.
Different voices, shared resources, different generations making together are not only sustainable, but are the biggest investment for sustaining arts in years to come: sustaining expression of artistic quality, freedom and growth. Maintaining spaces for artists in the city greatly contributes to the desirability of living in that city; shared resources are not only a sustainable choice but an investment in the natural regeneration of arts for the future.
My project took 6 months, approximately 3675 working hours, and used 87kg bronze recycled from industry. I got healthier cycling a total of 1231 km commuting to the
workshop using the Roseburn to Union Canal Cycling Path. Making the mould for “Man down” took 2 months. All the work was made by hand by me, at every stage.
I would like to thank Creative Scotland Professional Development Fund for supporting the project, ESW Team, ESW Technicians and Artists: Stephen Murray, Uist Corrigan, Vicky Higginson and Gabriele Jogelaite; All the artists who I met while at the workshop. I would also like to thank the Edinburgh Forge for challenging conversations about making in the city that greatly contributed to the origins of this project. - the artist