For 40 years, Collective has offered a supportive environment for artists to test out new ideas, produce new work and share their work with audiences.
Founded as an artist-run space in 1984, over the course of four decades we have become an integral part of Scotland’s creative ecosystem.
Collective is now recognised nationally and internationally for the quality of our programmes, especially with emergent practitioners based in Scotland.
As we celebrate 40 years, we need your support to continue enabling ground-breaking artists to realise and share their ideas.
Join us this Thursday 9 Novemberfor the launch of:asweetseaby Liza Sylvestre and Johnby Thomas Abercromby.
asweetsea explores what it means to communicate. As an artist who is deaf, and whose child and partner are both hearing, Liza Sylvestre seeks to locate where her disability lives within their family structure.
Sylvestre has collaborated with her 6 year-old child to reimagine her fond memories of the 1985 TV show ‘Sweet Sea’. The works shown at Collective as part of asweetsea were originally commissioned for Liza Sylvestre | asweetsea, John Hansard Gallery (2022).
John explores the intricate ties between family, grief and the multifaceted layers of social class.
The exhibition is centred around a film installation that juxtaposes childhood paintings made by Abercromby’s late father with opulent gallery interiors, painterly images of urban landscapes, and behind-the-scenes moments of the film’s all-working-class cast and crew.
Refreshments will be served from our Play Shelter outdoors, so please dress for the weather.
COLLECTIVE on CALTON HILL REVEAL BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION PROGRAMME
We are so excited to welcome you to our Collective Gala this Sunday 17 September, celebrating five years since opening the newly restored City Observatory as a centre for contemporary art.
Please see the full schedule for the day (above) to help you plan your visit.
We have a special programme of activities running throughout the day, with free drop-in creative play sessions by Frieda Ford, makers’ stalls, introductions to our exhibitions, bookable tours of the site including Cooke telescope and Observatory House, and culminating in a newly commissioned performance by Zoë Gibson.
Please note, Lisa Williams’ Black History walking tour has been postponed to October for Black History Month.
Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡, absolute truth (from the beginning of Earth – present), yixing clay, plywood, rain water, leaves, sand from Hong Kong and 20 cents Hong Kong dollars. Courtesy of the artist.
HILLSIDE GALLERY
3 December 2022 –26 February 2023
Tuesday – Sunday, 10am—4pm
Collective are delighted to announce a new exhibition by artist-curator Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡 as part of the Satellites Programme.
neither the West nor the East can be a determinate location is a multisensory installation featuring text, handmade paper, found objects, scent, ceramic sculptures and silver casts.
To create this new series, Katherine has developed an engaged approach to archival research, in which they interrogate and challenge the Western, Eurocentric frameworks that have been imposed on Hong Kong (a British colony from 1841–1997).
This installation will be a space for reflection, encouraging visitors to reclaim strength and charge resilience.
Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡 is an artist-curator whose practice and research became witness to the political transformation in Hong Kong. Their work contemplates the construction of diasporic identities, and confronts the politics of power, gender(s), and race with a humorous touch.
This creative table-based workshop is designed to help you learn how we can still our busy minds before approaching everyday tasks and challenges.
This session will help you discover Simran – a focused practice – while making some fascinating creative artworks of your own. Come and enjoy learning new ways to find focus in a busy world and have fun making some creative works with us in a group setting.
Don’t worry if you haven’t done anything like this before. You will gain valuable insights on how to use Simran before any task and use your own phrases to do so – this workshop will show you how.
This is part of a series of creative workshops designed to run alongside the Journey of the Mind exhibition, exploring how Sikh teachings can be used as tools to help anyone.
Collective is delighted to be taking part in Doors Open Days 2022, with a chance to visit both Observatory House and the McEwan Dome, which are not usually accessible to the public.
Doors Open Days is Scotland’s largest free festival that celebrates heritage and the built environment. It offers free access to over a thousand venues across the country each September. The aim of Doors Open Days is to ensure that Scotland’s spaces and stories, new and old, are made accessible to people living and visiting the country.
Please note that due to the historic nature of the architecture, there is no step-free access to Observatory House or McEwan Dome. Other spaces within the City Observatory and the wider site are accessible to all.
Dating back to 1776, Observatory House represents the very first attempt to develop an astronomical observatory on Calton Hill. Recently restored by Collective and including newly commissioned artwork by four contemporary artists, Observatory House is now available to rent as a holiday let, with proceeds helping to support our year round work with artists and communities.
About McEwan Dome
The City Observatory, designed by William Henry Playfair in 1818, gained Royal status after King George IV’s 1822 visit to Edinburgh. The neoclassical building houses a number of historic telescopes: the Transit telescope on the ground floor, and the Cooke telescope within the McEwan Dome, which is not usually accessible to the public.
As Collective’s summer exhibitions draw to an end, make sure you don’t miss your last chance to see them: Camara Taylor’s backwash and Annette Krauss’ A Matter of Precedents both close on 4 September, and Ruth Ewan’s The Beast closes on 18 September.
As our summer programme draws to a close, we are delighted to announce two new exhibitions opening in the coming weeks, featuring new work by Stephanie Black-Daniels and Katie Schwab.
Position & Attachment | Stephanie Black-Daniels
EXHIBITION
17 September – 20 November 2022
PREVIEW
16 September 2022, 6–8pm
Position & Attachment is a new exhibition by Glasgow-based artist and researcher Stephanie Black-Daniels, a participant in our 2021 Satellites Programme.
The artist draws on her experience of navigating breastfeeding practice in manmade public spaces during lockdown, whilst also reckoning with the medical language used to describe and instruct a feeding journey.
The new performance-based works for Collective build upon two years of performative and collaborative research with a group of women, and consider the potential for breastfeeding bodies to reclaim public space.
Join us for a preview on 16 September 6–8pm, to celebrate the launch of the exhibition.
The Seeing Hands | Katie Schwab
EXHIBITION
8 October 2022 – 5 March 2023
In October 2022, Collective’s City Dome will be a site of play, filled with a large-scale interactive exhibition by artist Katie Schwab, who participated in Collective’s Satellites Programme in 2015.
With a special interest in early-mid twentieth-century design and craft, Schwab’s practice is emphatically hands-on, collaborative and participatory. In the City Dome, she will layer textures, touchable surfaces and sculptures to create an exhibition that will invite tactile engagement and learning through play.
People of all ages are welcome to drop-in to play, look and gather in the exhibition with facilitated sessions during our regular Friday drop-in Play sessions.
Schools, nursery or community groups are welcome to contact Collectiveto book time to experience the exhibition.
This artwork is a joint commission in partnership with Bluecoat (Liverpool).
We are delighted to announce the participants of Satellites Programme 2022 following our open call and selection process earlier this spring.
Satellites is Collective’s development programme for emergent creative practitioners based in Scotland and lies at the core of our mission and creative vision. We aim to support participants to better understand and navigate the sector; equipping them to sustain a creative practice and foster criticality through peer development and reflection.
This year’s practitioners were selected by artist Rabiya Choudhry, curator Sara Greavu, and writer and artist Jeda Pearl:
Thomas is a Glasgow-based artist and curator. His work often focuses on complex questions concerning gender, race, sexuality and class, and centres around the challenging of societal power structures. Recent projects include The School of Abolition; You’re Never Done, and the Glasgow Seed Library.
Kaya is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Perth. Kaya works with analogue photography, film, writing and sound to explore the rose-tinted memories of working-class upbringings – her own included. Kaya has worked with Creative Dundee on the Full Picture commissions and held the position of Socially Engaged Artist in Residence 2021 at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute.
Matthew is a Glasgow-based artist who creates succulent and vibrantly coloured sculptures, drawings and paintings concerned with the ideologies of nature. He also explores the relationship between plastic and queerness. Recent exhibitions and events include Shocked Quartz, Ugly Duck, London (2022); First Outing, Abingdon Studios, Blackpool (2021), and Air Diving, 16 Nicholson Street, Glasgow (2021).
Rabindranath X Bhose is an artist and writer based in Glasgow. He graduated from the School of the Damned D.I.Y. MFA in 2019. His work centres around sacred transness, spiritual transformation, and (healing from) trauma. Recent projects include In Touch, Embassy Gallery (2021) and group show Platform: 2020, Edinburgh Art Festival (2020).
We are excited to support these practitioners over the coming months. Some of the new works produced will be presented as public events, exhibitions, publications and workshops: watch this space!
Join us on Saturday 25 June from 2—5pm to celebrate the opening of The Beast, a new work byRuth Ewan.
Ruth Ewan presents an unearthly moral tale centred on the obscured history of the iconic Scottish/American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. This new installation tells the story of Carnegie’s ruthless accumulation of wealth and the place he bought in history via an uncanny encounter with his palaeontological namesake, Diplodocus carnegii.
The Beast comprises of a new animation and archival material which explores intersecting ideas around ecology, extinction, wealth, power, time and the history of capitalism.
The script for the new animation has been developed with Marxist magician Dr Ian Saville. The conversation – featuring the voices of Dave Anderson as Carnegie and Keeley Forsyth as Diplodocus carnegii – reveals a provocative and layered history.
This is an open event and all are welcome. Much of the event will take place outdoors in our ‘Play Shelter’ so please dress for the weather! Numbers inside the exhibition will be monitored so a short wait may be required. Drinks are generously provided by our neighbour Bellfield Brewery.
The Beast by Ruth Ewan was commissioned and produced by Collective, with funding and support from the University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
Join us on Friday 17 June from 6—8pm to celebrate the opening of backwash, an exhibition of new work by Glasgow-based artist Camara Taylor.
backwash can refer to the cleaning of filters, the receding of waves, backward currents or the reverberations of an event. It is also a name for the saliva-infused liquid at the bottom of drinking vessels.
In this exhibition of new video and mixed-media works by Camara Taylor, forming part of Collective’s Satellites Programme, these fluid actions are mixed with ongoing explorations of silt, slop and snaps.
This is a free event and all are welcome. Much of the event will take place outdoors in our ‘Play Shelter’ so please dress for the weather! Numbers inside the exhibition will be monitored so a short wait may be required.
Collective’s Satellites Programme is supported by Baillie Gifford. backwash is supported by The Elephant Trust.
