CRAFTED SELVES: THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION

Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation opens at St Andrews Museum on 14 October 2023 and runs until 29 February 2024, touring to Kirkcaldy Galleries on 23 March.

The 13 Scotland based participating artists include Barbadian-Scottish visual artist, Alberta Whittle, who recently represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale, Zimbabwean-Scottish artist Sekai Machache who will represent Zimbabwe at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Chinese-Scottish ceramicist Viv Lee, Chinese-Scottish installation artist Rae-Yen Song and Iranian-Scottish visual artist Sara Pakdel-Cherry.


Image: Sara Pakdel Cherry, Six Feet Under. Image above: Sekai Machache The Divine Sky.

Showcasing artworks in contemporary art and craft, Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation takes its title from a continuing discourse between curator Cat Dunn and the 13 Scotland based artists featured - What does it mean to have a dual identity, and how is this sense of self reflected in work being made by Scottish craft artists today?

Featuring emerging and established artists and makers the exhibition will feature works in sculpture, painting, ceramics, textiles, installation, moving image films and creative writing responses. These artists showcased all in some way carry a dual identity. Many have a sense of their own self born from having a cultural heritage which is both Scottish and one which is rooted in another cultural home. The show also explores other dualisms and expressions of identity, including artists who express their, sexuality, disability, or trans and non-binary selves through their work.


Image: Emelia Kerr Beale, A Fountain of Tears, 2019, Wool, monks cloth, latex glue with heavy cotton backing, 173 x 126 cm. 

Our Selvedge pick from the line-up is, Emelia Kerr Beale, a Nottingham-born artist based in Glasgow. They work across drawing, sculpture and textile to process the complexities of illness and hold discrepancies and contradictions together in tension, creating moments where discomfort/pleasure/anxiety/joy coexist and interact. Through the use of motifs and text, they consider how imagination and repetition can be coping mechanisms. Their practice pushes for more expansive understandings of illness that reject neat categorisations and binaries. Emelia's research is rooted in queer theory and feminist disability studies, as well as lived and embodied experience.

Emelia graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2019. Recent exhibitions and projects include Platform, French Institute, Edinburgh, (2022); TH4Y, GENERATORprojects, Dundee (2020); Tonic Arts Life Under Lockdown commission for Western General Hospital, Edinburgh (2020); Bathing Nervous Limbs, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2021); and Disability Arts Online and Attenborough Arts Centre support commission (2021). Recent residencies include The Bothy Project, Isle of Eigg (2019); The Royal Drawing School Artist Studios, Dumfries House, Cumnock (2019 and 2021); and Hospitalfield’s Graduate Programme, Arbroath (2021-2022). Emelia is drawn to things that create space for collective (un)learning, and contributed to In Session fka GRADJOB (2019-2020); Eastside Project’s The Exchange (2020); and The Newbridge Project’s Collective Studio (2021-2022).

Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation is on show at St Andrews Museum from 14 October 2023 and runs until 29 February 2024.

Find out more:
www.onfife.com/venues/st-andrews-museum