Dung and Symposiums

By Friday morning my first proper week of noisily jigsawing cardboard discs and arranging dung suppliers with Eden segued into the SSW symposium about rural residencies. I sat in on the first half of the discussions. Included were organisers of residencies both local and further afield in Scotland, artists with a range of residency experiences, and representatives of arts funding bodies such as Emma Pratt from RSA. The discussion was chaired by Martin, a Media professor from Dublin (please excuse my occasional lack of surnames). Of course the residencies in question were all rural, and the gist of discussion centred on what makes a rural residency work, and whether there is a disctinction between one here in ‘the middle of nowhere’, and one in a city.

Discussion was in places heated, in places it seemed overly focussed on individual experience and aims. I do admit to acting like a naughty resident artist and skiving the second half to make more work. This was due to an idea that was brewing during the discussion, in which I could create a upturned hollow form that could encase a visitors head, from the nose up. The visitor would see through eye holes to an enclosed space that is lit only by a shaft that rises to the top of the form. Again made from stacked card and dungmix, this breaks with the evolution of small discs, but I’m open to new tangents. The viewer should see the interior space lit by the sun from above, so close to the eyes as to deny proper focus. So a maquette was made: a new helmet, and perhaps my inverted take on the rural setting of this residency: experiencing the effect of sunlight as a primal thing whose presence, or lack of, can change and reinterpret the scene by the hour.

So, back to the main point, why did I come on this particular residency? (a question a few people have asked me during the post-official discussion discussions (where more seems to get discussed, perhaps because more alcohol was imbued)). Well, the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, together with Glasgow Sculpture Studios and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, represent something quite unique for this country, as spaces dedicated to sculpture – something definitely not as well represented in England or Wales. Through an association with Enge and Jinny at GSS I had begun to hear about SSW, and to come up for a residency was something well-regarded and an important oportunity. It is a place with a great history, from founder Fred Bush to the present-day team, who are motivated by an urge to produce sculpture and retain a maker’s knowledge, rather than by any idealistic notion of its rural setting. But without a technician nothing would get produced, and it is the knowledge and experience of Eden Jolly that many, including myself, come from far and wide to benefit from. And his table Squennis commentary. Double fault!