Laura Yuile is an artist from Glasgow. She works with video, sculpture and performative installation to explore the boundaries between public and private space, the fetishisation of transcience, and notions of displacement, transition and transformation in relation to time, place and the invisible infrastructures that shape our existence. She is currently based in London, participating as an associate artist at Open School East, where she is developing a project centering around the issues raised by recent property developments within London, and how their role as speculative architecture reshapes urban space and propels global flows of capital – and the tension between these redevelopments and actual lived experience. Laura gained a BA from The Glasgow School of Art in 2008 and recent exhibitions have included Welcome to Ecumenopolis, The Arts Foundation, Athens; Time Pieces, Caustic Costal, Manchester; Conversation of Monuments, Collective Edinburgh; Same Homepage, The Project Room, Glasgow; and Processing Progress, Mauve, Vienna. Laura has participated in international residency programmes such as IOAM in Beijing, and Temporary Art Platform in Beirut. She frequently organises discursive events and throughout 2012 facilitated a series of discursive events to take place in the showrooms of various IKEA stores. You can see some of Laura’s work here.

My Top Five

Art in Scotland: China Miéville

I was introduced to China Miéville’s work last year and have become particularly interested in it since moving to London this year, because of his sharp accounts of the realities of our time, as experienced from his home of London, as well as his powerful visions of a pre- and post- apocalyptic city.

Liva Dudareva: The Urbanography Series

I met METASITU through a residency in Lebanon last year, which was centered around exploring an industrial site that was located in the middle of a pine forest, and which was needing relocated due to the effect it was having on the surrounding environment. Calling themselves both artists and an urban consultancy, Liva Dudareva and Eduardo Cassina have an interesting research-based practice that explores the development of urban and rural space, and the structure of global networks.

The Merz Barn Project

The Merz Barn was a farm shed that Kurt Schwitters rented as a studio when he moved to live in Ambleside in the Lake District after the war. I’ve not yet visited them but I’ve heard good things from those who have undertaken short residencies there, and I’m interested in how such a site can maintain itself and offer something relevant and interesting to artists working today.

Flesh & Stone

I spent half of 2014 working with Collective as the Satellite’s programme Critical Discourse Intern. During this time I developed a project, Conversation of Monuments, that materialised as an installation in the form of an ‘inverse’ tourist information, in which I engaged visitors in conversations in order to generate feedback and input to assist with constructing a plan for a new monument for the city. It got me thinking a lot about Scotland’s architecture and heritage, and this video offers perspectives from individuals, on various architectural sites in Scotland, which are at some times quite amusing.

Cityscape: Social Inclusion

It’s interesting to look back on things like this and think about how discussions on social inclusion and exclusion change over time, and might develop towards the future. These are issues that feature heavily in the discussions at Open School East.

This is the fifth part of an ongoing series selecting films from SummerhallTV’s archive. Take a look at the first installment by Dave Rushton, the second by Bill Millett, the third by Alex Hetherington and the fourth by artist filmmaker Ruth Paxton. For a chance to curate your very own SummerhallTV film selection, please email Central Station on hello@thisiscentralstation.com.

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Image from ‘TOIL‘. Photo taken by David Liddell.

Ruth Paxton is Scottish filmmaker and visual artist. Nominated one of Canongate Books’ 40 Scottish Storytellers of The Future in 2013, and winner of the award for Best Woman Director at this year’s 12th London Short Film Festival, for her short work PULSE.

Paxton graduated in 2007 with an MA in Film and Television from Screen Academy Scotland, having gained her honours degree at Edinburgh College of Art. Her films are bold and powerful and she has a unique way of visualising, stylising and capturing the intimacy and complexity of people and their stories. Her award-winning shorts have been exhibited and nominated in competition at numerous international events, including prominent film festivals such as Edinburgh International Film Festival, Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, London Short Film Festival and during Armory and Volta in New York.

Paxton is in development across a number of dramatic projects and is represented by Mark Casarotto of Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.

My Top Five

Ingrid Christie’s Tour of Summerhall

I’d LOVE to have had Christie’s experience touring the disused Summerhall building ahead of its regeneration. Abandoned spaces are wonderlands to me. Abandoned creepy institutional spaces with remains lying about: extra so.

Antonio O’Connell: Virus

It was brilliant to discover the author and genesis of this constructed explosion spilling from the Summerhall façade. It makes me feel sunny whenever I see it. And I love O’Connell’s pitch; that it hints at the vibrant happenings inside, because it does just that.

Ross Hogg: Spectators

I realllllly like Ross’ work.

BIG ISSUE: Pilot Programme

I found this pilot from Gillian Ritch, totally fascinating. I’m guessing the speakers were documented circa 1999/2000? Considering we’re roughly 15 years on from the climate discussed in this clip, concerning the difficulties faced by females working in television, I’d be so curious to know how these professionals view the landscape for female presenters and reporters in British TV today. Here, Edith Bowman tentatively suggests, “it’s becoming less about looks.” I suspect we’ve not moved on quite as far as she might have hoped.

Marcus Pickering: Pickering’s Gin

Because I really like gin, and I have sampled this heavenly variety, and I think it’s completely charismatic that Summerhall – the energetic, constantly evolving establishment – has it’s own Edinburgh distillery.

This is the fourth part of an ongoing series selecting films from SummerhallTV’s archive. Take a look at the first installment by Dave Rushton, the second by Bill Millett and the third by Alex Hetherington. For a chance to curate your very own SummerhallTV film selection, please email Central Station on hello@thisiscentralstation.com.

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Alex Hetherington founded Modern Edinburgh Film School which combines moving image, curating, collaboration, publications, talks and critical writing. These work together on themes of learning about film and its ideas, moving image artists and their films, sculpture and poetry, and new expressions founded in discussion. It produced a series of works and projects in 2013 across Edinburgh on film and sculpture including Ute Aurand: FILME at Stills, The Slow-Wave and Videotheque at Talbot Rice Gallery, The Hand that Holds the Desert Down, April Set, Lauren Gault: Granular and Crumb and Hold This Object Up Until There is Nothing Left of You at ESW, Green Screen at Embassy Gallery, 6000 Posters for Giants and Dwarfs at Rhubaba Gallery and The Good Work, New Media Scotland, and in 2014 produced The Silver River, at Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow for Atelier Public 2 programmed as part of Glasgow International, “A New Island forming…” for Annuale, Embassy Gallery and Queer Information, an anthology of experimental writing and poetry. Recent published writing includes 21 Revolutions, ‘Men Gather, In Speech’, Karen Cunningham, Stan Douglas, Georgina Starr, Anne Colvin, Isa Genzken, Anna Oppermann, Studio Jamming, Kathrin Sonntag and Counterpoint. Modern Edinburgh Film School is currently working on an essay and film programme reflecting on the subject of Women and Works on Paper for Gallery of Modern Art in 2015.

My Top Five

David Bussel: Isa Genzken

I’m making resoundingly personal choices here, reflecting on certain stages of my life and work: here Bussel introduces Isa Genzken’s extraordinary Botanical Garden which I wrote about for This is Tomorrow, so that takes on a different viewing experience when looking at the exhibition and this video of it, but am “re-mindful” of my own emotional chaos that summer that Isa’s space of collage, minutiae, flowers, roses, paints, a Mike Kelley obituary, gems, toys, aerosols and Michael Jackson dance routines mirrored.

Susan Hiller: Re-Sounding

I love this video of Hiller discussing her work, its relationship to science, the spiritual, phenomenon, the unsubstantiated outside of our gaze and am reminded of my current writing and thinking about artists Mairi Lafferty and Allison Gibbs, and to traces of people I admire like Craig Mulholand, Darren Banks and Michelle Hannah, you can see them in her, and I’m reminded that Hiller’s An Entertainment was one of the first exhibitions I worked on, operating the four VHS decks that had to be started manually and in sync.

Georgina Starr: The History of Sculpture and Before Le Cerveau Affamé

I am mentioning these two documents on Georgina Starr’s project at Cooper Gallery, curated by Sophia Hao, and of Starr’s absolute generosity in allowing me to watch her make her film and performance, write about her work and think extensively about the voice in contemporary art with Ella Finer, and to the team of dancers, assistants and the photographer Ross Fraser McLean when the installation was being made – a truly beautiful moment.

Pipilotti Rist at Tramway, Show A Leg

So here is the time Tramway was turned into the inside of Swiss artist Rist’s head: sight, sound, music, transparencies, collages and video overlaps, purple walking shoes and elegant skirts, paragliding down the sides of Glasgow high rises, her naked body using a bed as a trampoline – I haunted this exhibition during its installation, with its net curtain screens, moving image poetry, positive hysteria and special craziness.

Carolee Schneemannn

I heard Carolee talk about her extensive practices, visual art, gender, sexuality and the body at a show called Wack! at PS1 in Brooklyn when I was spending a lot of time in the USA, I think that exhibition helped me focus a lot on my relationship and interests in the work of women artists and to the importance of talking to artists when shaping projects that represent them, that capture certain moments in their practices: unfolding, shaping, moving, working.

Find out more about Modern Edinburgh Film School on Central Station here.

This is the third part of an ongoing series selecting films from SummerhallTV’s archive. Take a look at the first installment by Dave Rushton and the second by Bill Millett. For a chance to curate your very own SummerhallTV film selection, please email Central Station on hello@thisiscentralstation.com.

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Bill Millett is a visual artist working in video and photography, occasionally indulging in sound. His works focus on the multiple levels of reality, its illusion and construction towards cognitive framing. The images drift towards the abstract and meditative. His works can be viewed on his website.

My Top Five

I have chosen have a human thread running through the works; as you progress the thread will become obvious. Hopefully the chosen works illustrate the importance of documentation that now seems lost as its submerged, in a digital tsunami.

Jessica Lloyd-Jones: Hidden Energies

Lloyd-Jones’ works illustrate the beauty and fragility of the human body through the use of manipulated materials and light to reveal new perspectives.

Thibaut Clamart: Genesis & Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge

I saw this during the festival, thought it the best show. It does what art should confront, and is poignant in relation to the recent global dynamics. I don’t think you will ever see GPO trending.

David Lyons: Eye for an Eye

A precise and empirical use of art and science, illustrating that artwork can be intentionally created to be experienced differently depending on the individual’s visual abilities, perception there is more than meets the eye.

Simon Norfolk: Afghanistan – Chronotopia

I remember seeing a documentary on Norfolk’s work and found it a powerful way of illustrating war in a media stream that has become sanitised. In his works we see a painting of a landscape from a distance. On closer inspection, you start to notice the objects of war. It’s not Stalingrad but just as effective.

Ian Hughes: Unearthed Tongues Set Free

The last is the work of Ian Hughes who recently passed away. This is a powerful illustration of dehumanisation.

This is the second in an ongoing series selecting films from SummerhallTV’s archive. See the first in the series by Dave Rushton here. For a chance to curate your very own SummerhallTV film selection, please email Central Station on hello@thisiscentralstation.com.

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David Rushton was a founder editor of Coventry-based Analytical Art in the 1960s and subsequently worked for Art & Language from 1972 to 1975, notably on the Art & Language Indexes.

Rushton was a key agent in student-led activism and print throughout the 1970s and co-edited Politics of Art Education, 1979. Since then he has divided his time between an analysis of ‘making art’ and local and community based communications. Throughout the 1990s he work on policies and legislation towards the introduction of a more locally accountable TV and with Edinburgh Television and Channel Six Dundee (2000-2002) introduced a browser TV service with programmes scheduled by the viewers using their phone’s key-pads. These channels featured local and international music videos and pioneered short local arts-news.

Rushton is the Founding Director of the Institute of Local Television launched in 1989. The Institute’s most recent arts-news sites include www.summerhall.tv, www.artinscotland.tv, www.writerstories.tv and in partnership with Craft Scotland, www.craftscotland.tv.

My Top Five

As the first Top Five I’ll let my selection start with the early days of making news-clips on Super 8 film. Many of these films are now accessible on the Archive pages of www.summerhall.tv and also form part of the National Library of Scotland film collection … in chronological order:-

So this is Christmas … 1980

A roughly edited film of a demonstration in Glasgow in 1980. As a single copy Super 8 film this had a maximum audience of fifty viewers when it was shown two weeks after filming at Red Star’s Cinema held at the Netherbow (now the Storytelling Centre) on Edinburgh’s High Street. In August 2014 it went viral and was watched almost 3000 times over a couple of weeks, as a digital clip from Red Star’s Super 8 films archived on www.summerhall.tv.

Gore Vidal : In Conversation

Another ‘sleeper’ clip, this time made by Robert Morgan for Edinburgh Television in 2001. It started to be more widely seen after we launched www.writerstories.tv in January 2014. One of several hundred short arts, political and community clips originally shot on standard definition mini DV for Edinburgh Television and Channel Six Dundee between 2000 and 2004. The author interviews continued throughout many of the Edinburgh International Book Festivals with clips now finding a home on our Vimeo sites.

Angelika Schnabel

Moving away from arts-news this film from 2004 opens-out an interview with artist Angelika Schnabel. Here the construction is more lyrical, a montage of picture and soundscape, affecting the quiet confidence of working in the enclosed slow-paced discipline of Angelika’s Buddhist tradition.

Phillipa Aitken : Gerhard Richter

Shot by Ben Grieve for www.artinscotland.tv this interview with Phillipa Aitken is a good example of our daily arts-news coverage of exhibitions and artists throughout Scotland. These are now filmed on a variety of HD camcorders and DSLR cameras. Published openly via social media arts-news, these clips fit the short-time span required of .tv and increase the ‘virtual footfall’ to Scotland’s artists, writers and performers by remote and international ‘visitors’.

Ellie Harrison : After the Revolution, Who Will Clean Up the Mess?

Luci Wallace’s clip of Ellie Harrison’s Referendum Canons was our most watched arts-news clip of 2014. Luci’s film explores an event that at the time of filming may or may not take place depending on the Referendum result. A sequel was filmed on the morning of the announcement [Ellie Harrison : Counterpoint]. While the project didn’t go off with a Bang, the metaphor proved resilient; the result not so much a whimper as a Bigger Bang postponed.

This is the first part of an ongoing series selecting films from SummerhallTV’s archive. For a chance to curate your very own SummerhallTV film selection, please email Central Station on hello@thisiscentralstation.com.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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