A Billboard for Newhaven

The final two (for now) new Billboards for Newhaven are Untitled, 2019, Sebastian Thomas and Untitled, 2021, Suzanne Anthony. Over the last 18 months 15 Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop members have shared their work with our local community, providing an unexpected encounter with visual art for people as they go about their daily business.

 

 

 

Untitled, collage, Sebastian Thomas, 2019

Sebastian Thomas is a visual artist who lives and works in Reading, UK. His practice spans sculpture, printmaking, painting, installation and film, central to which are the processes of collage and assemblage. These strategies allow him to freely generate ideas whilst interrogating the functions of language and how it informs our understanding of reality. His recent work has been concerned with the fevered relationship between the fiction consumed by the mind and the corporeal landscape. He’s particularly interested in how it creates a breeding ground for semi-fictional objects, places and protagonists, setting the stage for a retelling where reality and story merge. This is a place in the margins, where things move in another direction, born out of the detritus of human activity on earth, the left overs, off cuts, rubbish begins to mean something, taken out of context and imbued with a new sense of purpose. Materially this manifests itself in his work through the appropriation and deconstruction of images from the sprawl of imagery that inundates us and the elevation of cheap industrial materials and discarded objects.

You can find out more about his work here.

Untitled, 2021, Suzanne Anthony. 

Suzanne Anthony’s practice is centered around the notion of playful, intuitive making. It is about taking unwanted materials and giving them new life; to create a sense of joy and curiosity in otherwise discarded products. This work is from a series of prints that seek to transform that which has been overlooked in the built environment into new playful forms that reimagine the mundane everyday. Suzanne graduated from Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art, and has since exhibited with the Royal Scottish Academy’s ‘New Contemporaries’ (2020), the RSA’s Pandemic Award (2021), and has had a solo exhibition in ESW’s Hawthornvale Space (2021). She was also selected for Embassy Gallery’s year-long collaborative programme, shortlisted for the Gilchrist-Fisher Award (2020) and UK New Artist’s ‘Sustainability’ residency (2022).

You can find out more about her work here.

Untitled, Stephanie Mann, 2019

The image shows a balanced stack of objects. This includes a crucible used for melting stone, used by Charles Lyell (b. 1797) a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of natural causes in explaining the earth’s physical history. The poster hints at transformation over time, malleability of matter and balance.

Stephanie Mann (born 1990 in Dunfermline, Scotland), lives and works in Edinburgh. She obtained a degree in Sculpture (2011) and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice (2013) at Edinburgh College of Art.
Mann’s work has been presented at Talbot Rice Gallery, the Freelands Foundation, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, SWG3, Glasgow Sculpture Studios and Salon Gallery, Berlin. She is the recipient of the Andrew Grant Bequest Award, John Kinross Travel Scholarship and The John Watson Prize. She was artist in residence at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Ten Chances in Minneapolis USA, Snehta in Athens, Greece and the Edinburgh Art Festival Tourist in Residence.

You can find out more about her work here.

Fragments of Her Conversation, Tommy Perman & Andrew Weir, 2019

Fragments of Her Conversation is taken from Extraordinary Ladder – a new remote collaboration between friends Andrew Weir and Tommy Perman. The pair first met while studying at art school in Scotland where they discovered shared interests in literature, art, design, music and beer. After graduating in the early 2000s their lives diverged. Andrew spent over a decade living in Japan teaching at universities. In 2016 he and his wife left Japan for Germany, where he has pursued his career as a full-time painter. Tommy stayed in Scotland, formed a band called FOUND with whom he released records and toured the world. He has exhibited extensively and has had his artwork projected onto the Sydney Opera House. The friends kept in touch and began collaborating on a series of compositions in 2020.

You can view a video about the collaboration and see other works here.

Andrew Weir is a passionate painter based in Germany who has exhibited his work all over the world, including in Japan, Australia, Netherlands and the UK. Having also lived in these vastly different places, he harnesses a keen interest in the emotional experience of moving between cultures, and explores it in his dynamic works. Weir investigates symbols, language and other communicative systems in his composition of layered, bright paintings full of energy and impact.

Andrew was born in Scotland. He studied at Gray’s School of Art and graduated with BA(hons) in 2003. As part of his degree he also studied at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts in The Netherlands. Andrew Weir has exhibited in galleries across Europe, Australia, Asia and North America. His work is also held in private collections around the world.

You can see more of his work here.

Tommy Perman is a Scottish artist and designer who tries to blur the edges between these three disciplines by collaborating with other people.

His most recent music releases are Sing the Gloaming (2020, Blackford Hill) and Emergent Slow Arcs (2019, Fire Records) and Positive Interactions (2021) – a self-released album made entirely from happy sounds that can be purchased with a happy message.

He won a BAFTA for co-creating an “emotional robot band” called Cybraphon which is now part of the permanent collection in the National Museum of Scotland.

His visual design work has been seen across numerous high profile books, websites, record sleeves, and even projected on the Sydney Opera House.

You can find out more about his work here. 

 

In Flower, 2021, Oana Stanciu

In Flower is part of a larger series of self portraits taken at the artist’s grandmother’s old house and garden in Romania, where she used to spend her summer holidays as a child.

Oana Stanciu is a visual artist from Romania, currently living and working in Edinburgh at ESW. Her work combines performance with photography and moving image where she experiments with her body and different objects and environments to improvise scenes and create unnatural and subtly distorted self portraits.

Her work has received several awards including the RSA Morton Award 2021, Ingleby Award, Latimer Award, and the Meyer Oppenheim Award, and in 2019 she received one of the Royal Scottish Academy’s RSA Residencies for Scotland.  Her work has been exhibited in Edinburgh at the Ingleby Gallery and Royal Scottish Academy, as well as in Romania, Norway and other cities in the UK.

You can find out more about her work here

Optimal Conditions (Kahuku Ashley VI), Scott Rogers2020/21

The image is from the Kahuku caterpillars-butterflies the artist raised while living in Auckland through the lockdowns. This one made it’s chrysalis under the arm of the sofa.

Utilising sculpture and expanded forms of publishing, Scott Rogers is predominantly interested in the paradoxical relationships between humans, animals, and land. Rogers was born in Calgary, Canada, and lives in Glasgow, Scotland. Recent exhibitions and projects include Kunstverein München (DE), Ivory Tars (Glasgow, SCO), The Bows (Mohkinstsis, CA), Collective (Edinburgh, SCO), Haus Wien (Vienna, AT), and the Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH). Scott participated in the British Council Scotland / Argentina Exchange Residency between Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and La Ira de Dios (Buenos Aires, AR) in 2018. In 2021 he was part of Peripheral Alliances, a resdiency with Kunstverein München (DE), and will have a residency and solo exhibition at Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY) in 2022.

You can finder more about his work here and here

Hinged (Gray), Oisín Gallagher, 2021
Cut-and-snapped plasterboard with shims

Documentation part of an ongoing collaborative project with Joseph Glover

Gallagher’s adaptations are made from discarded materials that he gathers whilst working as a creative freelancer, allowing their size and history to determine the dimensions and patina of the sculptures. Plasterboard and shims are the basic materials for any home improvement job, though they are usually covered up and hidden once in place. Here they are celebrated for their functionality with the use of colourful shims that jar with the dry, fragile powderiness of the snapped plasterboard to support and level the structure. While these exist as works in their own right, they also exist as functioning objects that are, more often than not, given as gifts to be used.

You can see more of his work here.

Joseph Glover graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2016. In 2020 he was awarded the All Disciplines Award from the Fullbright Commission, which he turned down. He is currently studying a masters in photography at UWE Bristol (2021-2023).

You can see more of his work here

 I am cute, Mira Knoche, 2021

Mira Knoche is an Edinburgh/Glasgow based artist, curator and writer.

She managed a punk band for a while, and in 2019 founded women-led WENCH collective who organise art & music events. She has curated exhibition festivals as co-founder of Naked Aye Art collective and used to run the Word of Mouth poetry & music nights in Leith. She has written about art for Bella Caledonia.

Building creative communities outside the noisy centre, her paintings, sculptures, events, and writing explore a curiosity in people, bodies, power, class, gender, identity, connection and community.

In July 2019 she had a solo exhibition of paintings, ‘WENCH’, with the Edinburgh Central Art & Design Library. She has also shown paintings as part of group shows at Coburg House, Leith School of Art, Leith Library and Salt Space Gallery in Glasgow (2020). Recently she was awarded a scholarship to attend a painting residency with the New York Academy of Art.  John Byrne once told her she was ‘a true artist’ and Cindy Sherman kindly shook her hand.

She now studies at the Glasgow School of Art and works from her studio in Leith. This image is from the ‘Gorgeous Creatures’ series of steel paintings)

You can find out more about her work here, here and here

Powering the Cloud, Katie Hallam, 2021 

Katie Hallam is an artist working primarily in digital photography and print but has recently moved into creating sculptural works where new media art meets geology, fossils and contemporary spaces. This allegory is shown in motifs of geology representing ‘ancient power’, with the digital age represented with an electrifying palette; neon green and ultraviolets. Katie considers the traces digital culture will leave on the earth by creating hybrid manifestations through sculpture and digital materiality. Like alchemy, her works connect technology with archaic power. These ‘digital-mineral hybrids’ are hypnotic works that sit against a background of open, natural and urban landscapes as Katie teases the question of a glitch in nature.

You can find out more about her work here

Untitled, Fraser Gray 2021

Fraser Gray is originally from Dundee but is now based in Newhaven, Edinburgh. While primarily a painter who produces murals and painted installations as well as works on canvas, aluminium and other surfaces he also makes sculptures and window films. His work is concerned with the processes we use to construct meaning through what we see and exploring the material possibilities of the painting medium.

You can see more of his work here

Hug, Bernie Reid 2021.

Reid worked as an illustrator for 15 years before before turning his attention to art making by studying Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. Since graduating in 2010 he has exhibited his work at various galleries and museums internationally.

Finding inspiration in the figurative and geometric rhythm of pattern, using pencil, oils and aerosol paint in equal measure to create his images.

You can see more of his work on here

Pause Patina, Hanqing & Mona, 2021

The photograph depicts the material surface of an oriental garden ornament. The materialisation of the photographic object involves both natural erosion and human hands-on intervention; such an ornament is often displayed in the outdoor space of a traditional Asian courtyard. We captured the photograph in an abandoned residential site, and this liminal space immediately awoke our memories of how public urban spaces have been reshaped and impacted throughout the pandemic. Streets were emptied, and people were alienated, both physically and emotionally.

Hanqing & Mona (b.1990 & b.1987) are artists living and working between Edinburgh and Seoul. They met during the studies at the Royal College of Art in London and have been working together since 2014. Their collaborative practice use photography, sculpture and architectural intervention to explore the imagery of ruin, material decay and visual-temporality. They regard architecture as a reflection of culture, social structure and history; the patina of buildings, natural erosion and human remnants at a site deliver poetic sensations, as well as complex spatial characteristics to be interrogated.

Hanqing & Mona’s work have been internationally exhibited at institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Camden Art Centre, Talbot Rice Gallery, Royal Scottish Academy, Red Gate Gallery and OCI Museum of Art. They are a fellow member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and recipient of awards including the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Gilbert Bayes award and Young Creatives. They have also received grants and commissioned by Arts Council Korea, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture and Gyeong Gi Cultural Foundation

You can find out more about their work here.

You Are What you Eat, Andrew Kinghorn, 2021

“Old man running downhill”

But what you want is probably more akin to.

Andrew Kinghorn graduated in Sculpture from Chelsea College of Art in 1974. He has spent the time since, sculpting, designing books, offices, furniture and restoring listed building both in Australia and the UK. During the last fifteen years he has been a full time sculptor. He works mostly in stainless steel and bronze.

Click here to see more of Andrew’s work

 

 Eccentric Limb, (Plaster and Sprinkles), Andrew Gannon, 2021.

Over the last 18 months, motivated by a decision to pull at a thread of ableism within art practice, Gannon’s work has focused on the visibility of and social stigmas around disability, specifically his own congenital limb difference.

Eccentric Limbs, is a recent series of works that typically comprise a plaster cast of the artist’s limb difference, mirroring the medical process of making a prosthesis, which is then built up, incorporating another object or material to make something that might approximate or exaggerate an “arm.”

Simply inverting common assumptions these Limbs take their starting point from the question – what is a prosthesis if it is neither functional nor cosmetic?

Often playful and hastily made these objects use limb absence as site. Wearable sculptures, they have a relationship with performance, each set of Limbs lending itself to different movements or actions. As objects they refer to a body in absence, made to be worn they invite participation but for most exclude it.

Andrew Gannon, b. 1980, Lives and works in Edinburgh and has been a studio holder at ESW since 2015. Previous exhibitions include Stand Up!, Centre Pompidou, Paris, (2015) No Reading No Cry! Museum of the City of Skopje, Macedonia, (2015) and Slight Works, part of Open Out, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018.

You can find out more about his work here and here

Here and Now, Brian Samwell, 2019

Brian Samwell came late to making art.  After almost failing his O level, he re-discovered art 50 years later through stone carving at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, and mimicking Andy Goldsworthy’s use of natural materials in the Border hills. In 2016 he retired after 30 years of nursing, to focus on art.  Subsequent courses in Foundation then Contemporary Art Practice at Edinburgh College revealed a world of possibilities in figurative, abstract and conceptual art.

He makes sculpture in stone, steel, found objects, and images, using photography, pastel and paint. He particularly enjoys discovering the sculptural potential in the mundane and discarded. His work art is driven by social concern, and a need to explore the fragile personal, social and physical worlds we inhabit. The works are often off-kilter and playful yet always strive for an emotional connection.

Brian is based  in Peebles in the Scottish Borders.

Click here for more information about Brian’s work.

Thank you to Bare Branding for supporting this project.