Pig Rock Bothy is currently located on the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh until April. Created by artist Bobby Niven and architect Iain MacLeod, the structure was commissioned by the gallery to provide a temporary venue for a varied programme of talks, performances and events as part of Generation.

Laura Aldridge’s ceramics

In 2015 the bothy will move to its permanent location in Assynt to become part of the Bothy Residency Project. Until then, be sure to check it out and see Glasgow-based artist Laura Aldridge’s ceramic and textile installation. Inspired by a research trip to Assynt, her work captures the patterns and colours of the landscape. The bothy’s name was inspired by a rock Aldridge found which resembled the skin of a pig.

You can see Pig Rock Bothy until April on the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. For more information, see the Bothy Project’s website here.

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

Bobby Niven: Chez Galip, 2010
Courtesy of Sierra Metro & the artist

This collection contains clips and production stills from Chez Galip, an observational documentary set in Cappadocia, Turkey about a potter and his hair collection. Scottish artist, Bobby Niven created the project, which was supported by the Central Station Member Fund.

Potter Galip Körükçü collected women’s hair along with a note displaying the owner’s name and contact details. Every six months women were chosen at random for a free pottery workshop.

See the full collection of Chez Galip.

(originally published on Central Station V1)

Inshriach bothy photo by Johnny Barrington

TBP was initiated in 2009 by artists Bobby Niven and Will Foster. In 2011 TBP, now Bobby Niven and architectural designer Iain MacLeod, realised the first art residency bothy thanks to support from the RSA Residencies for Scotland programme. The bothy was part fabricated during the RSA residency at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and then transported to Inshriach Estate near Aviemore where the build was completed in a traditional Scottish woodland area in the Cairngorm National Park.

TBP is committed to using sustainable materials and natural building techniques to create simple, modern designs. They work in collaboration with visual artists, musicians and writers to design small-scale dwellings and experiment with solutions for renewable energy systems and the challenges of living off-the-grid.

157 Days of Sunshine, The Walled Garden mural by Nicolas Party, photo by Patrick Jameson

The network currently consists of three bothies: Inshriach Bothy in the Cairngorm National Park built in 2012, Sweeney’s Bothy being built this year on the Isle of Eigg and the Walled Garden Bothy in Glasgow. You can follow progress of Sweeney’s Bothy, a modest zero-carbon dwelling, on the Isle of Eigg, off the West coast of Scotland here. The Walled Garden currently hosts an ongoing exhibition, 157 Days of Sunshine with work by Nicolas Party, Laura Aldridge & Kathryn Elkin, Bobby Niven, Michael Stumpf and Guillaume Gattier which will run until the end of September 2013 with new artists adding work to the exhibition and organising events and performances throughout the summer. The Walled Garden is a Bothy Project events space, based in a vacant site that was formerly the Glasgow City Council Cleansing Department. It is located between the Glue Factory and Scottish Opera at the dead end where the stairs lead to the canal (27 Sawmillfield Street, Glasgow).

There are a few events happening this weekend with the main one being the Sweeney’s Bothy launch at the Walled Garden on Saturday 15 June. See here for more.

TBP are always looking to expand their network with new sites and new commissions. See here for more information on how to get involved.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Untitled by AsaWikman

Order defiled by the cold hands of the dead by craigjackson

Hand Cream by bobby niven

Puppet’s Hand by Lynsey_Marshall

I glued my hand back together by Lucymarian

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See more of our Top 5 selections here.

When black was white and white was black, I won by Bobby Niven.

image: The Hair Museum, Cappadocia, Turkey. (Credit: Bobby Niven)

Central Station catches up with Bobby Niven, who was awarded our Member Fund back in June, to discuss his documentary Chez Galip about the eerie Hair Museum in Cappadocia, Turkey.

When did you first hear about the Hair Museum in Turkey?
I went to Istanbul to do a residency in 2008 and from there I took an overnight bus to Cappadocia to do some drawings of the volcanic landscape. I remember picking up a leaflet about potters in the town of Avanos and in there I found an article about the hair museum, so the next day I went to have a look.

The museum is set in a cave below the workshop of a potter called Galip. In 1979 Galip had the idea of collecting women’s hair, the purpose of which was to raise course participation numbers for the pottery workshops he was running. Galip takes a cutting of hair from women that visit his workshop and attaches it along with a post-it note with their name, phone number and address to the wall of the cave. Every six months 10 addresses are chosen at random from inside the cave, the women are then contacted to announce that they have won a trip to stay in his guesthouse and participate in the pottery workshops for free.

What was it about the place that you wanted to explore through film?
Last winter I made a film up in the extreme north of Scotland with Martin Clark and Cara Connolly. We were making an observational documentary about Hermit’s Castle and the story of its creator David Scott (see image below). The process of working with film, the intensity of working collaboratively and the excitement of the journey was a great experience for me. Just after shooting Hermit’s Castle I was invited to do a show at Sierra Metro in Edinburgh and so I immediately started thinking about potential subjects for another film. Then I had the idea to travel to Turkey and make a film about the hair museum and its creator Galip. The exhibition would then become a comparative study of two quite extreme stories about two very different characters building something absurd in two geologically incredible landscapes. What I wanted to explore through film was the relationship between structure and landscape and the potential for the medium to question the reasoning and psychology behind the creation of these absurd structures.

Image: Hermit’s Castle, Scotland. (Credit: Bobby Niven)

How many days were you there shooting for? How did the shoot go?
We were away for 11 days in total, four of which were spent traveling leaving us only 7 days in which to collect the footage. We had to put in some long shifts, shooting tracking shots in the cave during the day and doing interviews in the evening. There is an abundance of material to film in Cappadocia. I was interested in capturing the visceral qualities of the hair, the clay, the soft curvaceous landscape and the sound textures of these materials set within the acoustics of the enclosed caves and valleys.

How did the experience compare to your expectations? Did anything come from the experience that was particularly surprising to you?
The sounds Cara collected from inside the pot as it was being thrown were amazing. The potter’s workshop is a real orchestra of different sounds through the wedging of the clay, the spinning of the kick wheel, the contact between hand and clay, the breathing fluctuations of the potter and the air movement out of the pots as the potter brings in the neck. It was really interesting to observe the reactions of the potters as they listened back over the sound recordings.

I had originally planned on interviewing Galip when he was throwing as a way to avoid the direct eye contact of a conventional interview set-up, but what I didn’t appreciate was the potter’s need for silence and concentration when throwing. The quality of the sound in the room as we filmed him throwing was incredibly vivid, allowing you to observe this concentration and connection between hand, brain and clay. We also recorded the sound of ceramic instruments being played by local musicians who take this connection between clay and sound and introduce rhythm and lyrics recalling old folk songs from the area that are so old they are without author. There seemed to be a strong relationship between potter and musician with both taking pleasure in the other’s craft.

Image: Love Valley, Cappadocia, Turkey. (Credit: Bobby Niven)

What was the most memorable part of the shoot?
There are a few. Diarrhea, good food, the generosity of the hosts, the Turkish humour, the entertainment of working collaboratively… The most intense experience had to be filming in the underground city which was insane. Walking hunchbacked down through eight stories of underground labyrinth, descending further and further into a network of rooms built by Christian communities as hideouts during the Arab raids. It brought on an unnerving sensation of excitement combined with the claustrophobia of descending into a stone hell.

A clip from Chez Galip, an observational documentary set in Cappadocia, Turkey about a potter and his hair collection.

The museum is set in a cave below the workshop of potter Galip Körükçü. In 1979 Galip had the idea of collecting women’s hair, the purpose of which was to raise course participation numbers for the pottery workshops he was running. Galip takes a cutting of hair from women that visit his workshop and attaches it along with a post-it note complete with their name, phone number and address to the wall of the cave. Every six months 10 addresses are chosen at random from inside the cave, the women are then contacted to announce that they have won a trip to stay in his guesthouse and participate in the pottery workshops for free.

Chez Galip screened at Sierra Metro Gallery in Edinburgh, November 2010. To see more clips from the film go here.

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Chez Galip

Director Bobby Niven
Cinematographer Martin Clark
2nd Camera Cara Connolly
Sound Cara Connolly
Editing Bobby Niven
Translation Alev Ersan

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Chez Galip was one of the projects awarded cash from the Central Station Members Fund.

1. reclusa by tawny

Embroidery with artist’s own hair on linen, 2010.

2. cat8.jpg by neilscott

3. laze by schmelfhelp

4. All the Bald Models by EmeraldMaybe

5. Root Ginger #1 by jennywicks

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See more of our Top 5 selections here.

The winner of £1,500 on round five was Bobby Niven who will be making a film about the Hair Museum in Cappedocia, Turkey. He will be documenting the cave, the owner, the pottery workshops and the landscape in the region. He’ll also make a series of ceramic and stone sculptures to accompany the film.

We had 80 submissions in July, with requests totaling over £100,000. The team really enjoyed looking through the ideas and were impressed by the breadth and variety of the projects. Unfortunately we couldn’t fund everyone.

Our last £1,500 went to Mitch Miller and Emma Lennox who will be presenting “Boswell In Space – A Strictly Ill-adviced Documentary Journey“. It caught our eye because of the project is trying to do something genuinely multimedia, in a territory that’s still struggling to establish itself with frameworks and guidelines.

Congratulations to the winners.