The event which is in front of her eyes: 1930s' Scottish Highland and Islands life- the documentary photography and film of M.E.M. Donaldson, Jenny Gilbertson and Margaret Fay Shaw

This essay looks at the motivations of M.E.M. Donaldson, Jenny Gilbertson and Margaret Fay Shaw for making documentary film and photography, and how they represented the subject in front of their camera. All three women lived for extended periods in the communities they were recording. Gilbertson moved to and lived on Shetland; Margaret Fay Shaw lived for six years with the sisters Peigi and Màiri MacRae in their croft at North Glendale, South Uist; and M.E.M. Donaldson built her own house in Ardnamurchan. Through comparison of their work and processes to their better known male contemporaries, such as John Grierson and Werner Kissling, who were also documenting Scottish rural communities, the essay frames their work in a wider national and international context of the documentary photography and film making of the inter-war years. The essay draws upon key archival sources at Canna House National Trust for Scotland, Shetland Museum & Archive, Inverness Museum & Gallery and National Library of Scotland

FREE CULTURE! Review of Michael Barr's work inspired by book on Cuban Cultural Policy

This is a review of Michael Barr's work 'FREE CULTURE!' which was part of the exhibition 'RSA New Contemporaries' at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (5-30 March 2016). His work references Dr Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt's book on Cuban cultural policy 'To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution' (PM Press, 2015). The article describes Barr's work, its references and meanings in the context of venue and exhibition type

‘Contemporary Curating in a Heritage Context’

My chapter ‘Contemporary Curating in a Heritage Context’ appears in new publication ‘Advancing Engagement’ in ‘A Handbook for Academic Museums’. It details my approach to curating the public exhibitions programme in the Mackintosh Museum, Mackintosh Building, The Glasgow School of Art, from 2009-2014. The Mackintosh Museum, built in 1909, is at the heart of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork, The Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh Building. With its high level of architectural detail, influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, and Mackintosh’s fascination with Japanese architecture and culture, the museum is the antithesis of the white cube model. This chapter explores how contemporary curating can engage with a specific historical context, in terms of people, place and collection. It also examines how contemporary art practice, through the commissioning process, can become the bridge between the historical and the contemporary. How can an exhibition echo the unique attitude of the building to enable past, present and future to exist simultaneously? In what ways can curators work to contextualize heritage with contemporary practice, to provide innovative access points for diverse audiences including tourists seeking the historical and academic audiences seeking the contemporary? To establish the background, the chapter begins by broadly describing the conditions of curating exhibition programmes for UK Higher Education Art and Design Institutions. It then defines the context at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and goes on to outline my own curatorial methodologies relating to working within this particular environment

Documenting 1920s-40s Scottish Highlands and Islands life: M.E.M. Donaldson, Jenny Gilbertson and Margaret Fay Shaw

This 35 minute presentation was given at University of Stirling Film and Media Department, at the invitation of Dr Sarah Neely, as part of their Communications, Media and Culture Research Seminars series. This seminar was a double bill focusing on the history of women photographers in Scotland, with my presentation delivered alongside Dr Alistair Scott, (Director, Screen Academy Scotland, a Creative Skillset Film Academy,Associate Professor, Film & Television, School of Arts and Creative Industries), Edinburgh Napier University, who spoke on Franki Raffles Archive. The presentation was a 35 min talk, on Jenny Gilbertson, M.E.M. Donaldson and Margaret Fay Shaw’s work, where I explored if these three women offered a different reading on the landscape and communities of the North from their better known male contemporaries. By referring to archival sources, alongside their film, photography and literature outputs, I presented their aims, methods and examples of their work. I concluded with showing other lines of enquiry within the research that include contextualising their work with other national and international practices of that period

'Draw from the well', catalogue essay for Sam Ainsley solo exhibition, An Tobar Art Centre

This catalogue essay is to accompany Sam Ainsley's first solo exhibition in thirty years, at An Tobar Art Centre, Isle of Mull. The essay focuses on three new works that Ainsley has made for the exhibition, appraising the on-going themes of her work, namely the metaphor; and the relationship of the body to landscape and architecture. The translation of 'An Tobar' is the well. I contextualise her work through drawing upon the well of words of women writers that she consistently revisits as inspiration for her work. Furthermore, from an early interview I made with Ainsley, she re-called the impact science fiction written by women had on her. I investigate this in the essay, drawing connection between how Ainsley often in the displaying of her work in grid form or series, juxtaposes different 'worlds' together - a science fiction device. Ainsley refers back in her work to 'The Map of Tendre', a 17th century allegorical cartography linking geography to the body and emotions. Using this device, I created small text 'islands' throughout the body of the essay, based on some of the map's locations. Given the site-specific island location of Ainsley's exhibition her third work, a wall painting of imaginary and real islands, the essay also brings in references to the ways in which other Scottish islands have been either realistically or fictionally represented. Examples include St Kilda (Powell and Pressburger) and Shetland (Jenny Gilbertson)

Women in Art - Conversation Piece

“Conversation Piece” is a British Art Studies series that draws together a group of contributors to respond in 500 words to an idea, provocation or question. ‘Still Invisible?’ is a “Conversation Piece” coordinated by Patricia de Montfort (University of Glasgow) and Robyne Erica Calvert (The Glasgow School of Art) in Issue 2. It asks the question ‘Is the work of women artists on display in museums and galleries?’ British Art Studies is an online journal which is peer-reviewed, created by Paul Mellon Centre and the Yale Center for British Art. The other contributors include: Alice Strang (Senior curator, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art); Joanna Meacock (Curator of British Art, Glasgow Museums); Sophie Hatchwell, University of Bristol); Hannah Williamson (Curator, Fine Art, Manchester City Galleries); Margaret F. MacDonald (Professor Emerita, University of Glasgow); Nadia Hebson (lecturer, Newcastle University); Alice Strickland (Curator for Imperial College Healthcare Charity); and Jan Marsh (Researcher, National Portrait Gallery, London). My contribution looks at the visibility of women artists in contemporary art, in terms of exhibitions and representation by commercial galleries. It asks the question if there are enough exhibitions with women artists; is there gender equality in statistics? Also, looking at the current trend for emphasising women artists in an exhibition, should it be explicitly 'badged', for example, an "all woman show", or implicit in curatorial decision-making, at the point of programming

Alternative readings of the Scottish Highlands & Islands: Margaret Fay Shaw and Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson

By looking at examples of Margaret Fay Shaw and M.E.M. Donaldson’s work from 1920s'-1930s', this 35 minute paper assessed if these women offered a different reading on the landscape of Scotland from their better known male contemporaries. Through archival sources, alongside their photography and literature outputs, I presented their aims, methods and examples of their work. I also referred to film-maker Jenny Gilbertson (1902-1990), who moved to Shetland from Glasgow to live on a croft, producing her first film 'A Crofter's Life in Shetland' (60 mins) in 1931. In order to contextualize Shaw’s and Donaldson’s approaches to the Scottish Highland & Islands landscape and its communities, I compared their outputs to others including Werner Kissling, John Grierson, Paul Strand, Robert Moyes Adam and Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. I used this to illustrate how Donaldson, Shaw and Gilbertson captured the changing face and fate of remote Scottish communities. I concluded with looking at the work of Shaw and Donaldson through the lens of Fife-born, Edinburgh photographer Violet Banks (1896-1985) who journeyed through the Hebrides in the 1920s and 30s. This paper was part of a symposium entitled 'Through a Northern Lens: Women, Picture and Place', co-organised by Dr Frances Robertson (GSA) and Dr Nicky Bird (GSA), which took place 28.10.16 at The Glasgow School of Art. The other speakers were Dr Mervi Lofgren (University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland) with her paper 'Women on Their Own: Single Female Photographers of Finnish Lapland at the Beginning of the 1900s'; Dr Sarah Neely (University of Stirling) with her paper 'Flowers are the Trees of the North: Margaret Tait, Isobel Wylie Hutchison and other ways of Looking in Film'; and Shona Main ( PhD candidate, University of Stirling/ Glasgow School of Art) with her paper "I just went with them and they paid no attention to the camera at all": Jenny Gilbertson's early films 1931-35'. This symposium aimed to develop conversations and research links around the role of early 20th Century women photographers / filmmakers and representations of ‘the North’. The focus was on image-makers who were working in the politically charged atmosphere of this period, with class- and international conflicts very present in the minds of artists and their publics. The presentations explored such subjects as the role of the domestic and the everyday, the relationship of peripheries to the centres of culture, the question of earning a living and how women developed status as serious professionals

Challenge to Fascism: Glasgow's May Day (1938)

This on-line article 'Challenge to Fascism: Glasgow's May Day' (1938) is about Helen Biggar's (1909- 1953) final film. The article gives a full synopsis of the film and looks at Biggar's upbringing to explain why she was one of the few early women filmmakers in Scotland to be making films with an overtly political message. The article was published on May Day 2016

'Hosts and Visitors' (2016) Birthe Jorgensen & Sogol Mabadi

'Hosts and Visitors’ was a two person exhibition in The Glasgow School of Art’s Reid Gallery showcasing newly commissioned work by Birthe Jorgensen and Sogol Mabadi. Often in two person exhibitions, the curator or organisation as the host brings two practices together who may not necessarily know each other. ‘Hosts and Visitors’ was different as there has been a long period of preparation, in getting to know each other’s work and processes which included the two artists and curator. ‘A Year-Long Conversation’ (2015) took place between the artists and the curator, Jenny Brownrigg, who introduced them. The artists met each month over a year, in order to see what the connections and disparities were in their work and processes. They invited Jenny Brownrigg at key points to record their process through writing and feedback, in particular noticing their key words or 'anchors' that they returned to in order to describe their own practice. This resulted in a presentation as an event at 1 Royal Terrace (2015) as part of Birthe Jorgensen’s solo exhibition there. The proposed exhibition ‘Hosts and Visitors’ was the opportunity for these artists to consolidate on their ‘Year-Long Conversation’ and push the boundaries of their respective practices. ‘Hosts and Visitors’ took as its focus and inspiration the subject of diaspora and migration. This theme came out of the artists’ discussions on language and identity and how their art practices creatively engage with it. Each of the artists was born in another country – Jorgensen is Danish and Mabadi was born in Tehran. Both artists also have keen interest in performance, both individual and collaborative; and the act of making. Over the ‘Yearlong Conversation’ (2015) it became apparent that Jorgensen, who had a very collaborative practice, wished to return to the private act of making; whilst Mabadi, who had a very private practice of one-to-one performances and making, wished to become more collaborative in her approach. This encouraged the sub-themes of private / public and outside/ inside or outsider/insider for their proposed GSA project. The artists shared a studio at Glasgow Sculpture Studios for two months in the run up to the exhibition. Brownrigg also asked them to reflect on the now private nature of the Mackintosh Museum, closed for restoration, and the public Reid Gallery, as a mirror to the directions they were moving on within the trajectories of their practice. For their individual offerings for ‘Hosts and Visitors’, Birthe Jorgensen made a series of wooden carvings of partially painted female figures inspired by references from museum artefacts from all over the world. 'Good Old Light' (2016) was a sculptural work incorporating two large velvet curtains that were custom made for “the Mack” lecture theatre in the 1950s’ which showed the trace of decades of exposure to the light which poured through windows onto their now brittle silk lining invoking the ghost image of a window. Jorgensen saw this piece as an archive of light. 'From rage to grief and back again' (2016) was a second site-specific installation by Jorgensen in the Reid Gallery. Thick shards of glass pierced the skin of the gallery wall. Facing the street, this work when viewed from outside, interrupted the sombre geometry of the Reid building’s exterior surface. The sun’s rays at particular points of the day, bounced off the mirror shards and create pinpoints of reflected light inside the Mackintosh’s studios. Mabadi produced a series of ‘rest’ chairs made out of shoulder pads and knitting needles, bra straps and other feminine signifiers. She also made a series of ‘anxiety tools’, using materials that for her are embedded with a particular meaning. On the public preview night, Mabadi worked with a team of five student performers from Royal Conservatoire and The Glasgow School of Art. A development from her ‘Home Visits’, a sequence of one-to-one performances that Mabadi made in people’s lounges, Mabadi worked with the students and chose the hosts, for the students to visit at their homes. This performative action mirrored the public and private dynamics the artists wish to highlight in this project. Jorgensen and Mabadi curated the events programme accompanying the exhibition. Professor Alison Phipps (Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, and Co-Convener of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNET)) gave a public lecture entitled: ‘We Refugees’: The Languaging of Breath against Death or ‘Funtunfunefu Denkyemfunefu’. This lecture addressed themes of migration, otherness and identity which are fundamental in both artists work. There was also a screening of 'The Silence' ('Sokout'), 1998 directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iran). The film was introduced by Dr Jim Harold

Bet Low - An Active Career

In the early part of her career, Bet Low’s (1924-2007) work captured city scenes and people, before she turned her attention to landscape painting. Low then developed a uniquely figurative style, visually reducing landscape into key elements. Running concurrent with her artistic practice, Low’s early working experience at Glasgow Unity Theatre and involvement in artist-led groups led to her co-founding the New Charing Cross Gallery (1963-8), Glasgow with John Taylor (born 1936). Although she was an independent artist actively working outside any institutional context, Low did not consider herself ‘unknown’. Following Low’s own understanding of her public profile, this article considers the visibility of her practice, arguing that the idea of an ‘unknown’ woman artist may be a projection in relation to Low’s career in particular, concluding with a consideration of her critical legacy. This article is part of 'Women Painting: Scottish Art 1940-1980', an issue co-edited by Marianne Greated and Susannah Thompson