In August 2013 a group of seventeen scholars, artists and organisers made their way to Raasay, a small island off Skye, for a short residency, responding to the legacy of 6th Century Irish monk Colm Cille. Participants include curator Jenny Brownrigg, artist/researcher John Hartley, Prof Clare Lees, Prof Thomas Joshua Cooper, PhD candidate Kathryn Maud, CCA Director Francis McKee, PhD candidate Emma Balkind, lecturer/artist Susan Brind, artist Caroline Dear, artist Hardeep Pandhal, typographic artist Edwin Pickstone, artist Michail Mersinis, artist Jessica Ramm, writer Johnny Rodger, artist/singer Ceara Conway and artist Augustus Veinoglou.

A month later the group then re-gathered in Glasgow, to give their creative responses over an afternoon event on 11 October at CCA, and in an exhibition at the Mackintosh Museum on show until 1 November. The work will then travel onto London Street Gallery, Derry~Londonderry, for an exhibition opening 30 November, showing all the presentations from the UK and Eire that make up Colm Cille’s Spiral.

Artist Ceara Conway developed and presented a voice performance and sound installation for the first stage in Colm Cille’s Spiral. Taking place in a curragh on the river Foyle, the work explored themes of exile and immigration, the lament and economic myths.

‘Convocation’ is part of the Derry~Londonderry City of Culture project ‘Colm Cille’s Spiral’ colmcillespiral.net, and is one of 6 projects across UK and EIRE that creates an artistic engagement with significant sites along once-vital perimeters and sea routes, including Lindisfarne, Derry~Londonderry and Bradwell-on-Sea.

Colm Cille’s Spiral is part of Creative Futures, a Creative Scotland talent development programme which aims to promote the professional development, capabilities, connectivity and ambitions of Scotland’s creative practitioners and organisations. See Head of Photography at GSA, Thomas Joshua Cooper’s project here and read more blogs by the participants on residency here.

Colm Cille’s Spiral is a Difference Exchange project in partnership with The Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, at Kings College London. ‘Convocation’ is supported by The Glasgow School of Art, CCA, ATLAS Arts and University of Glasgow.

The exhibition in the Mackintosh Museum at The Glasgow School of Art is on display until 1 November. The works will go on to be shown at London Street Gallery, Derry~Londonderry from 30 November – 15 December.

More: Website | Twitter

Sublime by Emma Dove.

Artists, Stephen Hurrel and Mark Lyken discuss their residency in The Lighthouse Field Station, Cromarty where they explored how sound and light within the physical spaces we inhabit affect behavioural patterns.

Three Points of Contact Residency (TPCR) Photo by Saule Zukaityte

Being asked to take part in the residency as a former student of GSA (undergrad/MFA) was a bizarre fantastic challenge. I don’t have a studio. I do performance. I don’t need one. I don’t really know what to do in them apart from making hippy tea and trying my best to annoy the crap out of other people. But the appeal to venture back into the Mac building and use that as a ‘studio’ was far too tempting not to of taken part. I’ll admit I never liked the Building as a 1st year student (red haired 18 year old, in black, mildly depressed). It was dark, oppressive and occasionally reminiscent of the Goblin King’s castle in Labyrinth… you know Bowie fiddling with balls… that bit with all the stairs.

TPCR Photo by Saule Zukaityte

With that in mind the first few days I done bloody nothing. It felt like being back at school. My mind as ever floats around like a cloud and as a result I took more notice of the building. The staff. The janitors. The students. The cleverness of Mackintosh. Clever bastard. Though indeed I was still going up the wrong flight of stairs as per usual and ending up in the backarse of an office I clearly shouldn’t of wandered into. But it was starting to be nice to wander about (annoy Jenny mostly) to see what the other (proper) artists were up to. I took Megan to the glory of the Savoy Centre. Great to chat to the coolest lady this side of Sleazys… Rafla about her work and secretly stare at the frightening wonderful talent that is Rachel Maclean. Not in a pervy way. I had never met Mark Vernon before but ended up performing a soundwork in his ‘lightsoutlisteninggroup’ thing. A revelation to perform in the dark. TAap of course tore right into it and exploded with ink, found books and lamp shades/sleeping bags as costume thingys. Stuart Gurden is a secret scientist I think and Von Calhau too are obviously from space and/or a Kenneth Anger film.

TPCR Photo by Saule Zukaityte

I realised that I might have to do something.

I do performances. I do sound. I make cosmic photographs of sexy statues, animals and most usually my face. Unlike a lot of artists in Glasgow I put myself in work. I’m not shying away from it. So I would aim for that during the Residency. Learn new songs. Paint my face golden & glitter, dress up in an evening gown, swan about and become the ‘other’… Its not an alter ego that I’m creating now as was the case in my past work. Its ‘self design’. A concept even, an anxiety that forces one—to confront the image of the self: to correct, to change, to adapt, to contradict this image. We all come under aesthetic evaluation. Of sorts. Movie stars, politicians, facebook profile pictures, bank managers, strippers, terrorists, call centre workers and even us… dear artists. Even those simple unknown tokens of untied shoelaces, tattoos, dirty nails, haircuts and the colour and form of shirts/pants/shoes and teeth signify to the world who and what we are.

TPCR Photo by Saule Zukaityte

A performative identity through the image of the self.

I have developed a strong discourse of Romanticism in my practice and over the past year this has revealed itself from the founding constructs of Cabaret -that is its original purpose to engage, entice and repulse equally in artifice, by using its theatrical beginnings to revolve around a feminized identity in terms of the ‘femme fatale’ or exotic other. Avoiding like hell the ‘live art’ area, dodgy office girl Burlesque and the nonsense of Suicide Girls and Agent Provocateur. They’ll be no getting them out in my work. No.Way.

I (try) to do this by means of vocal performances of appropriated, fragmented songs (chosen for their tokens of masculinity such as Black Hole Sun, Sympathy for the Devil, How Soon is Now etc… basically songs for depressed ostracised teenagers) I sing these with a soundtrack in electronic vein of Laurie Anderson with the sprinkling of the gender bending boundaries of Genesis P- Orridge, Linder and Kalup Linzy. I wear manga contacts, I paint my hair, I wear customised evening gowns in the most Twin Peakism format, I become metallic, ethereal, vocal and ultimately hopefully emotive.

Artspeak over. One day on the second week, I painted my face gold and glitter. It looked amazing. I felt cosmic. I thought I could be the Thin White Duke finally. (NO chance) I’ve started to experiment with stage spotlights. Simple and completely stolen from Lynch of course… so I set up the red light in the temporary darkspace and filmed.

SONNE film still by Michelle Hannah

This became SONNE. A distilled cover of How Soon is Now. My face golden as if staring into the last flickers of a dying star. I change lyrics for my own means. For some godly reason over the past year or so I have become obsessed by the omnipotent force of light. All light. Be it metaphysical, natural, artistic, man made or not. Instead of “Son and Heir” in Morrisey’s vocal pain, this is now ‘I am the Sun and Air”. Ironic really, that I am actually allergic to the Sun…

I made this in a day. It scared me how easy it was. It shouldn’t be that easy. But the wonderful thing about the challenge of this residency (2 weeks, 11-5 everyday) was that it forced me to open up and try things out that I usually would spend just 2 weeks thinking about. Worrying about if folk will accept it. Being on trend. I realise now, to hell with other folk… just embrace what you do and go and bloody do it.

HOW DOES IT FEEL performance photo by Saule Zukaityte

I also done another performance at the closing event. ‘HOW DOES IT FEEL’ In a blue blue electric blue of light. A simple blue spotlight going on and off. I in black costume lamenting… over the distilled New Order song. I liked doing that one. I think other people did too.

I showed Jenny the video. She said it was beautiful.

I think I done well.

Read more about the Residency from The Glasgow Schoool of Art Exhibitions Director, Jenny Brownrigg here.

Where to find out more:
Website

//////

Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.

The residency has been a curatorial collaboration, devised by independent curator Judit Bodor in York; Blair Todd who is the curator from publicly funded institution The Exchange in Penzance; and myself, Exhibitions Director from higher education institution The Glasgow School of Art. We met on a curatorial research trip to Portugal and when wishing to work together, began to discuss the normal residency format where an artist would come to a new place and unless there were other artists in residency, may find it difficult to meet other artists in that community. This led to a period of research where we spoke to Portuguese curators and UK and Portuguese artists to begin to identify then test out the concept for this residency model.

Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir’s studio space, Mackintosh Museum, GSA, Three Points of Contact Residency (2012)

An experimental residency, with no exhibition outcomes, the emphasis is rather on artists’ extending their networks by coming into contact with those from a different area and working alongside each other in a studio situation. The success can be gauged as much as in what happens after the residency, with new projects being forged between artists, as within its confines. Each residency takes place over a fortnight and is public facing. A group of core artists drawn from the three locations undertake their local residency and then travel to the residency at one of the other locations in the network. The international artists travel to all three locations. At each location a further number of regional artists join the group. The selected artists all have potential links in interests or process, or skills that may add a different dynamic to the group.

This model as in any curatorial model could have been like ‘The Bed of Procustes’ (publisher Penguin, 2010), where Nassim Talib re-tells the story of Procrustes who in Greek mythology ‘had a peculiar sense of hospitality: he abducted travellers, provided them with a generous dinner, then invited them to spend the night in a rather special bed’. He promised that the bed would be a perfect fit for the traveller. ‘Those who were too tall had their legs chopped off with a hatchet; those who were too short were stretched’. Eventually one traveller called Theseus made Procrustes lie in his own bed and chopped off his landlord’s head. Talib concludes that this aphorism is how we as humans ‘facing limits of knowledge and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies and pre-packaged narratives’.

The residency has avoided any curatorial ‘pre-packaged’ narrative as it has taken on a life of its own at each venue, led by individuals, the group and the location. At the first location in York, which also had support  from staff and facilities at York St John University, the social time and shared experience threaded through the time in the studio space located at The New School House Gallery and the evenings spent together as all visiting artists shared the same accommodation. Judit took the group to Spurn Point, a peninsula in Yorkshire, and this visit provided one of the focuses that the group kept on returning to. Initially, we the curators had envisaged collaboration might come through initial ideas workshops in the residency but we soon saw that this was too prescriptive and that any connections between the artists came more naturally through discussions about their own work or by the symbiosis of working alongside each other. Artists also worked against the grain and speed of the residency; von Calhau! with others began to play and slow down vinyl to 16rpm whilst they worked in order to slow down time. We find ourselves learning from each stage of the residency to the next. The residency in York concluded with a research exhibition, which instead of showing resolved artworks instead showed the material and documents collected by the group over the fortnight linked to developing new works including Super 8 films, performance for video, photography and sound performance.

Jesse Leroy Smith (TAap) takes photograph of Michelle Hannah as Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir and Rachel Maclean look on. Mackintosh Museum, GSA, Three Points of Contact Residency (2012)

The Mackintosh Museum at The Glasgow School of Art was the second site of the residency. 100 years ago this space was the drawing studio, where all the plaster casts were sited, to be drawn by students learning their craft. Within the context of a Higher Education Institution it has been vital to test out what can happen when this exhibition space becomes a site for a studio. Yet it also holds the potential to be a key public space at the heart of the building and the institutional side of this curatorial desire was for this project to demonstrate the nature of the studio culture that forms the identity of this institution. The fact that this was the second part of the residency, which goes onto a third stage in Cornwall 15-26 January 2013, also reinforces that this institution faces outwards rather than inwards.

The Museum holds specific tensions for making work in. The life of the building ebbs and flows through this space; tour groups routinely pass through; students on their way to the studios; doors creak; the reception’s radio carries up through the stairwell. To combat this we built the studio space in the Mackintosh Museum with some open space but also ‘spaces of shelter’ including a black box room where the artists could show films on or make film work in.

Over the fortnight I became very self-aware of the perceived role of the curator and the role of the artists. Was it my role to quickly work through ‘tasks’ to resolve any issues that came up? Should scheduling and the basic requirements of the institutional context make way for a more people-specific approach? Should I hover to see what work was being made in order to analyse it or find a way to tell a story about it to the public? So often curators come in at the end stage of the process to carry forward finished works towards a re-interpretation. How should I react to the everyday challenges of working in such a community? The time became intense, with the human nature of all individuals involved becoming just as important as the work made. The creative process throws up the enlightenment when something works and the tension when something is unresolved. Creativity travels at different speeds. Issue-solving needs to sometimes step aside for tension to settle naturally in the time it takes. The vitality of a living process of making art brings with it the dialectic of both challenging versus channelling the creative space. As a co-curator on this project I greatly benefited from being able to discuss the residency with my curatorial peers.

The Last Buffaye, TAap, Mackintosh Museum, GSA, Three Points of Contact Residency (2012)

‘The Last Supper’, the concluding event at the GSA, channelled much of the atmosphere of this residency and the museum space. TAap concluded their black gaffa tape rendition of the Last Supper on one wall of the Museum, creating a huge mural of the group of artists and curators involved, in ‘The Last Buffaye’. Von Calhau! with Stuart Gurden and Mark Vernon performed a version of Caledonia by Cromagnon, a 1960s’ USA experimental band who used primitive instruments such as sticks and stones. The sound lifted right up to the Arts & Crafts rafters, rendering a strangely monastic reading of the environment. Michelle Hannah showed ‘Sonne’, the film she had made during the residency where her rendition of The Smiths’ lyrics become ‘I am the Sun and the Air’. Above all, this all happened in the space of the studio, surrounded by artists’ areas of work including Rachel MacLean’s new costume for a forthcoming short film commission and Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir’s experiments in moving her handmade sculptural objects towards performative objects. Megan Wellington located ‘paradise’ through her conversations and photographs of stall holders and others encountered in the east end of Glasgow.

Mark Vernon, Stuart Gurden and von Cahau!, performance during ‘The Last Supper’, Mackintosh Museum, GSA, Three Points of Contact Residency 2012

As Marta from von Calhau! rang the Mackintosh ‘bell that does not ring’ in the atrium of the Mackintosh Museum, and played the studio table as a drum, it metaphorically ‘struck’ me that art is more about raw moments than outcomes. Through the commitment and leap of faith taken by all the artists and those involved Three Points of Contact Residency is providing an exhilerating enquiry into creativity and the conditions it requires. I look forward to witnessing the residency shift to the former telephone exchange at The Exchange, Penzance in January 2013 for the momentum to carry forward and a new set of connections to begin.

Check out residency artist, Michelle Hannah’s a blog post here.

*All photographs by Saule Zukaityte.

Where to find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

//////

Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.