What:
Unit 7 is hosting 20 artist residencies at their Glasgow space between April and September this year. This will result in 20 exhibitions for all involved. Exhibitions and events following the workshop-based artist residencies will take place with partner organisations across the UK towards the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014. Current partner venues for the residents’ exhibitions are: Pipe Factory, Glasgow, Hand in Glove, Bristol, and One Thoresby Street, Nottingham.

Theresa Moerman

Participating artists include:
Week 1 – Will Thompson
Week 2 – Theresa Moerman
Week 3 – Steven Grainger
Week 4 – Robin Leishman
Week 5 – Danielle Heath
Week 6 – Vickie Fear
Week 7 – Sam Stead
Week 8 – Rebecca Ounstead
Week 9 – Katie Johnston
Week 10 – Sam Aldridge
Week 11 – Jeff Baker & John Harris
Week 12 – Claire Sharpe
Week 13 – Reuben Ewan
Week 14 – Will Greensmith
Week 15 – Martin Campbell
Week 16 – Scott Brotherton
Week 17 – Lorraine Hamilton & Euan Ogilvie
Week 18 – Emma Ewan
Week 19 – Uula Jero
Week 20 – Hannah Brackston

Sam Stead

Why we like it:
Supporting 20 artist residencies over 20 weeks is no small task. Unit 7′s ambitious programme is inspiring. They have also organised one on one development sessions for the residents with Amy McKelvie (Assistant Curator for the Schools and Teachers Programme at Tate Britain), Sarah Tripp (lecturer in Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art) and Jenny Brownrigg (The Glasgow School of Art Gallery Curator). You can keep updated on the progress of the residencies on Unit 7′s website which will be updated weekly, sharing new images by each participating resident artist.

More: Website | Facebook

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

Postcards is an ongoing series by Bristol-based Graphic Designer Reuben Whitehouse.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr

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Discover more work by creatives we’ve featured, here.
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Zara Picken is an illustrator based in Bristol, UK. Zara combines digital and handmade elements. Projects begin with pencil drawings and are completed using Photoshop in a distinctive style.

See more from Zara’s Glitch project here, and for more projects look here.

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We mainly work from this bright first floor room in our home in Bristol. We also share it with our cat Mochi whose hammock is on the radiator! We take inspiration from all over the place, we have a washing line above our desks with some of the fun little things we find. The shelves are full of toys and books we love. It’s a great room to work from.

www.peskimo.com

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

In the case of Bristol, however I think all those terms can be applied; in its landscape, people and culture, the city seems to thrive on a joyful, humorous and chaotic sense of itself.  It’s not over planned, not ghettoised, not segregated, (after all the city’s not big enough for such compartmentalisation), its influences, shapes and architecture bump into each other in ways that in other cities might seem jarring, For example, on paper a vista that includes a giant steel globe, a Victorian redbrick industrial chimney and an Italianate Romanesque tower might sound like a clash of cultures too far, but you can see this view from Bristol’s Millenium Square and somehow this strange juxtaposition of styles just seems to work. The town is littered with such cultural clashes and far from being dissonant or discordant they work in a strange and surprising harmony bringing a unique rhythm and life to the landscape.

But it was the colours of Bristol that I first noticed when we moved here a year ago, specifically the rows of multicoloured terraced houses that dot the ridges of the hills that surround the basin of the harbour and the city centre. Sitting on top of Clifton, Totterdown, Hotwells and my own home Windmill Hill, these multicoloured Victorian dwellings look like rainbows splashed on the landscape, interrupting the horizons and boundaries between the city and the Somerset countryside which you can see from almost anywhere in the city. These terraces seem to have become something of an unofficial symbol for the city, appearing in the title sequence of Skins, being the setting for the BBC’s Being Human and, more locally, as part of the body of Bristol-based artist Andy Council’s Bristol Dinosaur. Happily contemporary architects have taken this love of colour on board as well and the new buildings that dot the skyline are every bit as joyful as the old housing stock, some even paying homage to this Bristol tradition.

The colour of the city is not just restricted to these houses though, polychromy trickles down the hills into practically every street where you’ll be hard pushed to find two doors the same colour, to pubs and community centres adorned with murals designed by local people, to the derelict buildings and hoardings decorated with graffiti and pavement displays outside shops, the streets are awash with every hue imaginable. It’s as if there’s something deep in the heart of the Bristolian psyche that finds something unnatural about the notion of the unadorned, a deep seated instinct to decorate in opposition to the modern tendency towards the monochrome which David Batchelor describes in his book ‘Chromophobia’.

For an artist this ebullient riot of colour is a constant source of inspiration. Take your camera out for a walk and you soon have a reel of film or memory card full of images that would not look out of place hanging next to Matisse, a Klee or a Rothko.

The colour and chaos of Bristol seems to me be symptomatic of its welcoming attitude, after all its difficult to feel like the odd one out in a town where everything is both out of place and exactly right at the same time.  After years of living in the London and Brighton, my eyes had become attuned to endless stretches of Lewisham Grey and Regency White interrupted only by the corporately imposed and standardised colour of advertising billboards and shopfronts familiar from the high streets of every and any city, but here in my new home colour feels as if it grows out of the buildings, it’s essential, vital, democratic and above all intrinsic to city and instinctive to its population and it’s made me feel like I’m seeing the world with new eyes.

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My Creative Scene is an insight into different creative & cultural happenings in cities where your members and readers live. Browse through more insider guides or contact us to write about the arts scene where you are.

Wildlife is never too far away in the city, foxes a regular sighting late at night and in the early hours, enjoying their city as any other human resident.  Loads of green spaces to lay back in and contemplate nature, Leigh Woods for some hiking and spotting and biking.

I’ve been living in and out of Bristol since September 2004, firstly just to undertake a couple of weeks work experience at the NHU, kind of testing the water.  It didn’t take long to realise that Bristol had to become my home and thus started a living and working relationship with the city, mixed in with stretches of time abroad filming, long enough to move out.  I’ve had a very welcome return each time and still nowhere else tempts me to move elsewhere.

What I like about the city is that it’s compact… everything you want and need is within a walk or cycle, whichever area of the city you’re in.  Speaking of which, the city is the premiere cycling city in the country with routes around and out of the city, its amazing how far you can get just with 20 minutes of cycling.  The suburbs are seemingly endless and Bristol is a large city, but at the creative heart everything is just there.  When you want to get out of the city, you’re surrounded by countryside in every direction… Wales, Somerset, Devon, Gloucestershire… all easily accessible for weekends camping, surfing, cider sampling, wild swimming and mountain biking.

When you’re in the city, there are some great creative hubs to meet people… so many people on the same wavelength with projects going on all over the place.  When I’m in the city on the last Tuesday of the month it is a must to attend the Bristol Media Tuesday networking night.  This has been running for a number of years and it the monthly chance to make new contacts, and bump into old – not just in television but across the creative board… advertising, publishing, PR, digital, animation, composers, writers… always a different mix of people in the same place, just staying in touch with the scene over a friendly beer.

I live in Arnos Vale, which is the location of a grand old cemetery – very peaceful walks around some 50000 mostly derelict graves… slightly morbid but away from it all in the dead centre of the city.  Just down the road is one of my favourite meeting places: the Boca Bar, part of Paint Works – a once disused paint factory, which has been regenerated and converted into offices for creative companies and now a thriving business centre.  The Boca is the meeting spot for the large creative contingent which works from Paintworks on the Bath Road, just up the road from Temple Meads station.  Laid back, comfortable and good atmosphere, many a productive meeting and ideas writing sessions have happened here for me and I’m sure plenty of other creatives in this part of the city… And now they’ve finally gotten round to installing free WiFi, no better excuse to work with some coffee.

A lot of my time when not filming is spent networking and catching up with friends.  One of the regular catch up spots is The Windmill, in Windmill Hill next to Bedminster station.  Perfect opportunity to have a pie and pint with a friend, Hannah, who’s recently returned from one filming trip in Ethiopia only to be preparing to go away for another month away next week.  Each area of Bristol has its own thing going on and the Windmill is a place off the beaten track to have a good catch up.  Another regularly visited place for meetings and socialising is The Watershed on the Harbourside… go for the cinema, a coffee or a decent lunch plus regular host of many industry events.

I can’t think of anywhere else I’d like to lie and mix with people than here in Bristol… such a wealth of activity and creativity, there are opportunities freely available where you know to look.

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My Creative Scene is an insight into different creative & cultural happenings in cities where your members and readers live. Browse through more insider guides here or contact us to write about the arts scene where you are.

1. Sequin Apron – detail by KirstyHall

Kirsty’s work focuses on repetitive actions, such as sewing thousands of sequins onto an apron. It might be slow work but the outcome is gorgeous.

2. Graphite Doily by CamillaStacey

Camilla is an artist and curator whose work explores memory and the passing of time.

3. La Manche by PeteB

Photographer Pete Beck is inspired, among other things, by seascapes and the urban environment.

4. Exploding Head by carly_ashdown_creative

Carly Ashdown’s colourful paintings encapsulate the myriad of human emotions in the human experience.

5. Inagreement by zaraillustrates

A bold illustration with a dash of humour by illustrator Zara Picken.

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See more of our Top 5 selections here.