Hawthornvale Mentorship Programme 2025

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is thrilled to announce that Camila Ospina Gáitan, Megan Rudden and Méabh Breathnach have been selected for the Hawthornvale Mentorship Programme 2025.

This programme supports emerging visual artists who are beginning to establish their practice and require guidance to advance their careers. Over the course of 2025, the selected artists will benefit from:

  • One-on-one mentorship.
  • A £500 bursary.
  • A dedicated materials and production budget.
  • Comprehensive technical training.
  • An exhibition opportunity in the Hawthornvale Space.

The Hawthornvale Programme is designed to foster the development of contemporary public art, reaching a wide audience and offering the public an unexpected encounter with thought-provoking artworks in a dynamic setting.

Hawthornvale Space 2024 Programme

Conceived as an ongoing programme of temporary public artworks, this programme reaches a broad audience, providing the members of the public with an unexpected encounter with contemporary art.

The presentation slots lined up for 2025 are

  • April – June: Camila Ospina Gáitan
  • July – September: Megan Rudden
  • November – february: Méabh Breathnach

 

Camila Ospina Gaitán is a Colombian artist. She graduated with merit in Contemporary Art Practice MFA at the University of Edinburgh. She studied Visual Arts at Javeriana University in Bogotá and, in 2016, was awarded the LAP Program scholarship by the Japanese government. She pursued further studies in Nagoya at Nanzan University and in Tokyo at Sophia University. Her projects span various media, including sculpture and installation. Currently, her work focuses on the sexualisation and objectification of female bodies, engaging with diverse historical characterisations and narratives.

Since 2015, she has exhibited in various cities such as Tokyo, Bogotá, Miami, and Edinburgh. In 2022, she was awarded the Radcliffe Trust Award, Creative Scotland funding, and an EU Creatives grant, and she did a three-month residency at Northlands Creative. That year, she also held her first solo show, Thorn in the Flesh, in Edinburgh. At the start of 2023, she participated in a collaborative exhibition in Hamburg with Juan Ricaurte, reviewed in MAP Magazine by Guilherme Vilhena Martins. More recently, in May 2023, she received The Great Britain Sasakawa Award and presented her solo show, Visual Narratives and Pleasure, in Kyoto, Japan. From December 2023 to February 2024, she presented her largest solo exhibition to date, titled An Uncanny Feeling That She Was Being Watched, at the Summerhall Meadows Galleries in Edinburgh, showcasing four years of her work.

You can find out more about her work here.

Megan Rudden is a multidisciplinary artist and writer originally from Leith, whose diverse practice spans performance, object making, text, and drawing. She is a recent graduate of the MLitt in Art Writing at Glasgow School of Art, complementing her earlier BA (Hons) in Sculpture and Environmental Art from the same institution.

Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including solo shows such as Nancy’s House at Hubcap Gallery, Granton Gatehouse, and Granton Séance at mote102, Edinburgh. Other notable exhibitions include Inside there is a goat on the table at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, from time to time vaporous at Volk Gallery, Dundee, and The Witches Dance at Sett Studios, Edinburgh. She has also participated in a range of residencies, including serving as Artist in Residence at Edinburgh College, the Forest Arts Digital Residency (2020), the Hubcap Digital Residency (2020), Project Ability’s August Residency (2019), and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop Summer Residency (2018).

You can find out more about her work here

Méabh Breathnach uses ceramics, metal and the body as materials, tools, and sources of inspiration in the creation of sculptural installations that explore everyday objects and acts, how we as bodies interact with and undertake them, and the ways they might make us think, feel, and connect with one another. These immersive installations of evocative and affective objects resonate in thinking and feeling ways and strive to engage the head, hands and heart in both their creation and consideration.

Méabh Breathnach graduated from the Sculpture and Environmental Art department at the Glasgow School of Art in 2019 and is currently undertaking their masters in Ceramics at Konstfack University of the Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm. They have exhibited in Glasgow’s Pollok House, House for an Art Lover and in the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries exhibition. They have been awarded the Sir William Gillies Bequest (RSA), Creative Scotland’s Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award, and the Young Scot Nurturing Young Talent Fund.

You can find out more about their work here