Exhibition explores how we can make do and mend

Addressing what can be done in the creative world is this exhibition from forward-thinking Fife Contemporary on the “circular economy”, the idea that items are designed to be reused, or repaired, shared or easily recycled.

Not so difficult, really, when you think that before plastic, it was the ethos that underpinned most societies’ approach to goods. Here, freelance curator Mella Shaw, herself a ceramic artist, sometime anthropology graduate and former curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, takes up the baton and runs with 12 artists and makers, plus Edinburgh’s redoubtable Tool Library, all of whom are making some contribution to new ideas for embedding the circular economy in their work and in life.

Shaw was very concerned that this shouldn’t be a “dry” exhibition about the circular economy per se, but more an acknowledgement that many artists and designers are now looking at resources in a different way.

“Not everyone in the show is fully sustainable, but they are all approaching one of the themes, and there are some really engaging stimulating objects.”

The four themes around which Shaw has grouped her artists, mostly found via an open call from Fife Contemporary, are “Transforming waste to function” – and quite literally, the aim is no waste; “Design for Disassembly” – from repair to recovery of parts to be used in other things; “Powered by Renewable Energy”; and “Sharing and Repairing” – less about personal ownership, and more about renting or sharing items.

“I’ve been trying to make my own practice as sustainable as possible,” says Shaw, “and that’s tough with ceramics, because of the materials we use, and so I need to do something to offset this.” One of the exhibitors in the show, herself a recently graduated ceramicist, is approaching this particular conundrum directly, Shaw says, in her use of materials. Sara Howard, who graduated from Central St Martins in 2020, is the youngest exhibitor. “She has made this body of work called Circular Ceramics, using reclaimed clay and glazes sourced from industrial byproducts such as glass and silica from quarries that would otherwise be headed for landfill. She’s taking slurry that would go down a drain and making food-safe glazes – very subtle in tone, very beautiful. And the wonderful thing is, she’s made her research all open-source, so that others can experiment too.” It’s this aspect that Shaw finds doubly inspiring. “That’s how we’re going to make a real change. We have to start thinking about how we’re going to make this pardigm shift in attitude to what we use.”

Elsewhere, textile artist Deirdre Nelson has embroidered “A Repair Manifesto” – a document proposed by Amsterdam collective Platform 21 – on a T-shirt which she bought on ebay and repaired using skilled needlework, itself part of the skills she teaches whilst volunteering, regularly, at Glasgow’s Repair Cafe. Design duo Chalk Plaster have made a lampshade by reforming gypsum plasterboard discovered when they had to knock down a wall in their workshop. “And actually, that’s one of the ways in which the Covid hiatus worked for us,” says Shaw. “The exhibition was due to happen in 2021, but lockdown meant it was delayed again, and in the meantime, they’ve explored the process more and created two new lampshades out of different kinds of waste plaster – a pollutant, really – with different colours and qualities.”

Shaw was keen to make sure that the processes involved would be understood by a general audience, so throughout, alongside the usual labels, there are informative texts showing how each artist and designer has created their work. “So, for example, the panel for Draff Studio (set up by Dundee-based, French designer Aymeric Renoud), which makes furniture incorporating a substance made using spent grain from the breweries, combined with sustainable resin, reveals the process of how they do that.”

The work here has been chosen to be varied and visually striking, inspiring as well as ethically pointing in the right direction. “The whole show is meant to be quite optimistic,” says Shaw. “It’s aimed to show that this way of working can give us a viable and profitable future, one that is even better than the current life we live. We just have to do things in a different way.”

REsolve: A Creative Approach to the Circular Economy, Kirkcaldy Galleries, War Memorial Gardens, Kirkaldy, 01592583206, www.fcac.co.uk , Until 8 May, Tue, Wed, Fri 10-5; Thu 10-7; Sat 10-4; Sun 12-4.

Critic's Choice

Amartey Golding’s Bring me to Heal is entering its last few weeks at Tramway now – and I urge you to get along to it if you are able to – and this weekend, the artist is up from London for a series of events around the themes explored in his work.

The exhibition itself is a mix of film, photography and installation, including a garment made entirely out of hair – making reference to both Afro hair styles and Ancient British body art – that features in the eponymous film. Bring me to Heal also features Golding’s brother, the dancer and filmmaker Solomon Golding, in a transfixing, moving work which seems to mark that moment of realisation, that loss of innocence, that the world is not all it has seemed to be, as a child, but instead has a mixed heritage of injustice and trauma. In the second of the films, Solomon’s character walks through the V&A Museum in London, in wonder at the beauty of things which humans have made, then is visibly distraught at the horrors of inhumanity towards others which they display, and at the violence of British history.

This is an exhibition looking at generational trauma and communal healing, and Golding, himself of Anglo-Scottish and Ghanaian parentage – and a Rastafarian upbringing – explores this, both in his work and in the events around it this weekend. The first of the events is a live ‘in conversation’ with Golding; the second a panel discussion with the artist alongside broadcaster Gaylene Gould, artist, director and educator Thulani Rachia; and Shumela Ahmed, Director of the Resilience Learning partnership, “to look at the under-examined area of the emotional legacy and inherited trauma of white Britain,” and how we might begin to heal.

Amartey Golding: Bring me to Heal, Tramway, Albert Drive, Glasgow, 0845 330 3501 www.tramway.org Until 6 Mar, Tues - Fri, 12pm - 5pm; Sat - Sun, 12pm - 6pm. Events programme: 26 Feb: Amartey Golding in conversation, and 27 Feb: Reasoning - A Live Conversation. Both Free, but booking essential - see website for details

Don’t Miss

When John James Audubon (1785 - 1851), putative American woodsman, turned up in Edinburgh in 1826 with hair greased with bear oil and a series of vivid, dramatic bird paintings of American species alien to British shores, very few predicted that the result would become one of the most feted illustrated books of natural history. This, then, is the starting point for this exhibition from the National Museum of Scotland, a visually striking contextualisation of the hunger for knowledge that marked this particular point in history, painting a picture of a man whose myth was as vivid as the paintings he produced.

Audubon’s Birds of America, National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh,0300 123 6789www.nms.ac.ukUntil 8 May, Daily 10am – 5pm, Adult £10; Under 16 and Museum members, Free – other concessions available.

Subscribe to The Herald and don't miss a single word from your favourite writers by clicking here

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19496323.subscribe-herald-just-2/

Critic's Choice

Amartey Golding's Bring me to Heal is entering its last few weeks at Tramway now – and I urge you to get along to it if you are able to – and this weekend, the artist is up from London for a series of events around the themes explored in his work.

The exhibition itself is a mix of film, photography and installation, including a garment made entirely out of hair - making reference to both Afro hair styles and Ancient British body art - that features in the eponymous film. Bring me to Heal also features Golding's brother, the dancer and filmmaker Solomon Golding, in a transfixing, moving work which seems to mark that moment of realisation, that loss of innocence, that the world is not all it has seemed to be, as a child, but instead has a mixed heritage of injustice and trauma. In the second of the films, Solomon's character walks through the V&A Museum in London, in wonder at the beauty of things which humans have made, then is visibly distraught at the horrors of inhumanity towards others which they display, and at the violence of our British history.

This is an exhibition looking at generational trauma and communal healing, and Golding, himself of Anglo-Scottish and Ghanaian parentage – and a Rastafarian upbringing - explores this, both in his work and in the events around it this weekend. The first of the events is a live 'in conversation' with Golding; the second a panel discussion with the artist alongside broadcaster Gaylene Gould, artist, director and educator Thulani Rachia; and Shumela Ahmed, Director of the Resilience Learning partnership, “to look at the under-examined area of the emotional legacy and inherited trauma of white Britain,” and how we might begin to heal.

Amartey Golding: Bring me to Heal, Tramway, Albert Drive, Glasgow, 0845 330 3501 www.tramway.org Until 6 Mar, Tues - Fri, 12pm - 5pm; Sat - Sun, 12pm - 6pm. Events programme: 26 Feb: Amartey Golding in conversation, and 27 Feb: Reasoning - A Live Conversation. Both Free, but booking essential - see website for details

Don't Miss

When John James Audubon (1785 - 1851), putative American woodsman, turned up in Edinburgh in 1826 with hair greased with bear oil and a series of vivid, dramatic bird paintings of American species alien to British shores, very few predicted that the result would become one of the most feted illustrated books of natural history. This, then, is the starting point for this exhibition from the National Museum of Scotland, a visually striking contextualisation of the hunger for knowledge that marked this particular point in history, painting a picture of a man whose myth was as vivid as the paintings he produced.

Audubon's Birds of America, National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh,0300 123 6789www.nms.ac.ukUntil 8 May, Daily 10am – 5pm, Adult £10; Under 16 and Museum members, Free – other concessions available.