Themes including colonialism, how cultures survive or transform in the face of globalisation, and a vampiric take on queer histories intersect and overlap at the Talbot Rice Gallery show.
The works, which include eye-catching and thought-provoking drawings, sculptures, film and dance, are the culmination of the 10 artists’ two-year residency with the gallery.
The Talbot Rice Residents exhibition will coincide with a separate exhibition taking place at the gallery with artist Candice Lin.
Both exhibitions will be on display from 16 March to 1 June 2024.
Residents programme
The Talbot Rice Residents exhibition features artwork from Alaya Ang, Crystal Bennes, Renèe Helèna Browne, Ross Fleming, Maria de Lima, Sekai Machache, Emmie McLuskey, Thulani Rachia, Kirsty Russell and Matt Zurowski.
Talbot Rice Resident, Ross Fleming
The residency has provided space, mentoring and financial support to support the advancement of the artists’ craft and careers.
It has been funded by Freelands Foundation, an organisation which provides creative and professional development for emerging artists across the UK. The show marks the conclusion of a five-year project which has seen Talbot Rice support 20 emerging artists.
Artistic talent
Alaya Ang’s work presents a work that evokes the tensions within migration and labour.
Representing their own family heritage, the work also includes references to Samsui women, Chinese immigrants who ended up as labourers in Singapore and Malaysia between the 1920s and 1940s.
Crystal Bennes examines commodities trading through a series of installations that expose the impact caused by the globalisation of trade.
Bennes guides people through her research and exposes tax avoidance, bribery, political manipulation, environmental destruction and harm to Indigenous populations.
Another artist, Renèe Helèna Browne presents a series of drawings that reflect on the teachings of the dog trainer Cesar Millan who practised ‘alpha theory’, which positions humans as dominant, to train animals.
Browne found that Millan’s ideas introduced coercive values into their relationship with an adopted puppy, leading training to fail.
Eye-catching works
Dance is the focal point of artist Emmie McLuskey’s collaboration with choreographer Janice Parker.
Talbot Rice Resident, Matt Zurowski
In ‘The A – Z of Movement’, McLuskey’s screen prints create a new vocabulary to help the viewer explore the broader potential of their own body’s movement.
Centred on Scottish Gaelic culture, Matt Zurowski’s ‘Farewell to the Familiar Earth’ takes its title from a Gaelic poem by Calum MacLeod.
Zurowski uses film footage, songs and prints of the nettle plant to explore the entangled relationship between humans, nature and technology.
Kirsty Russell’s artwork focuses on acts of care and support, making reference to the women in her family who work in positions of care.
Her installation repurposes velvet curtains that originally hung in her grandparent’s home. Russell also used moulds of her mum and sister’s hands to capture their presence.
Creative videography
Ross Fleming’s ‘No Place Like Homme’ contemplates isolation, survival, surveillance and the search for the other.
The artist uses the vampire to remap queer histories and identities, telling the story of the creature’s life at historical events such as the Black Death and the global AIDS epidemic.
Sekai Machache’s film, Mutambi, draws upon their Zimbabwean heritage to create a healing dance performance in the context of the powerful spaces of Mount Stuart mansion house and gardens.
Taking place in the richly-decorated Victorian House on the Isle of Bute, the work brings together a symbolic narrative on wealth and colonialism.
Maria de Lima’s ‘This Map of Affections’ centres on a knowledge exchange event held on the Isle of Skye in 2022, which was attended by representatives of indigenous and traditional peoples from Pará in northern Brazil.
Candice Lin’s exhibition, The Animal Husband, will also be on display at the gallery
Land rights, solidarity and women’s voices are central to de Lima’s work, which explores the colonial erasure of traditional cultures and languages, private ownership and capitalism.
Candice Lin
A separate exhibition at the gallery will feature work by Los Angeles–based artist Candice Lin.
In her first solo exhibition in Scotland, Lin explores the complexities of human and animal co-existence.
Lin uses surreal and ambiguous imagery in a series of sculptures and film to offer bold and unsettling perspectives on human and animal relationships.