Paula Doherty and Matt Zurowski: Artefact or Artifact

ESW is delighted to present new work from the artists Paula Doherty and Matt Zurowski. Working across a diverse range of materials and processes, from Doherty’s tactile and earthy ceramics to Zurowski’s digitally rendered landscapes, they produce objects, images and sounds that bridge speculative gaps between a hypothetical ancient past and an imagined future.

OPENING 24TH JANUARY 7 – 9 PM
OPEN 25 TH – 31ST JANUARY 11 AM – 5 PM
NOT OPEN ON SUNDAY

Although, in both form and content, their work is very different there are a number of points of connection. Doherty and Zurowski make mysterious and enigmatic works, somehow disconnected from the present, that encourage the viewer to construct narratives around them, to speculate about their function and meaning as well as consider their aesthetic and formal qualities. Their work engages with the way in which humanity shapes nature to produce culture, an act that is at once both creative and destructive. Finally, underpinning both of their work is an interest in the origins and outcomes of ritual action.

Paula Doherty and Matt Zurowski are the recipients of the 2019/20 Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop Graduate Bursary Awards. The have spent the last three months in residence at ESW producing new work. The aim of the awards is to help newly-graduated  artists to establish themselves after leaving college, and encourage contemporary sculpture practice in its widest sense.

 

Paula Doherty is an Edinburgh born but Glasgow based artist who dabbles in ceramics, photography, performance and interactive arts. She graduated from the Glasgow School of Art’s Sculpture and Environmental Art course in 2018 and spent a six month Erasmus period in Vienna studying Post Conceptual Art Practices under Marina Gržinić. Recent works have been exhibited at Domestic Goddesses, Glasgow Open House, 2017; Last Futures, Tramway, 2018; Tocsin Dunes, Irvine Beach, 2018; and she was shortlisted for the GSA Sustainability Prize, 2018, and the Richard Seager Award, 2019. Since graduating she has been spending her time researching, practicing clay and lino techniques, and adventuring on a trekking extravaganza to Peru. She is a nature gal whose work strives to explore the relationship held between humans and the natural world.

www.paulapeadoherty.com

 

Matt Zurowski is an Edinburgh based artist who works with a combination of living materials and digital technology, negotiating new relationships between the two by networking them in environmentally responsive installations and performances. His work addresses environmental and land ownership concerns through a combination of historical and contemporary technologies, practices, rituals and music. He has an MFA from Edinburgh College of Art and a Bachelor of Music (Composition) from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Recent works include The A’Mhoine Tapes, with Mellon Charles, 2019; L.A.R.K.001, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, 2019; and Symbiont, Talbot Rice Gallery, 2018).

www.mattzurowski.co.uk

 

The Graduate Bursary Awards are generously funded by The Fenton Arts Trust and Edinburgh College of Art