27 November 2025
Our final Spin visit of the year takes us to the Talbot Rice Gallery to see their new exhibition The Children are Now, where we’ll be joined by curator James Clegg.
The Children are Now is a group exhibition exploring how children relate to the big challenges we face today. Through artworks that capture the power of children’s imagination and play, it looks at themes such as apartheid education, war games and generational trauma. The exhibition asks how history keeps repeating itself, even though children have the creativity to imagine a different future. Artists include Bob and Roberta Smith, Francis Alys, Monster Chetwynd, Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Ane Hjort Guttu.
There is also a growing movement that challenges the way society sees and treats children. Known as ‘childism’, this approach highlights and tackles discrimination against children, encouraging us to rethink their role in society and value their perspectives as vital to understanding the world. This idea gained real momentum in 2024 when Scotland made the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child part of national law, giving children stronger legal rights and greater recognition as individuals in their own right.
31 October 2024
pass shadow, whisper shade brings together new work by the six participants in the 2024 Satellites Programme: Clarinda Tse, Emelia Kerr Beale, Hannan Jones, Josie KO, Katherine Fay Allan and Rowan Markson.
The title borrows from an Irish proverb, ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’, roughly translating as ‘people live in each other’s shadows’, or, ‘we rely on each other for shelter.’ Both a shade and a shadow, this kind of shelter encompasses the positive and negative aspects of being part of a community, living in the shadow of each other and our ancestors.
Across a range of distinctive and individual practices and media, the works signal something of the complexity of inheritance, raising questions of how we process and make sense of that which we inherit, the expansive multiplicity of legacies passed down by and through earlier generations.
28 March 2019
We make a return and timely visit back to the Talbot Rice Gallery to discuss their new exhibition, Borderlines.
The exhibition was originally conceived by Tessa Giblin, Director of the Talbot Rice Gallery, to coincide with the UK’s scheduled departure from the EU on the 29 March 2019.
This group exhibition features work by ten international artists or duos which invite us to consider the conceptual, geo-political, economic and cultural impact of borders.
Artists include Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan whose sculptural work and film documents the complex evolution of a project in which the artists followed the movement of European sugar. Willie Doherty’s film work Between (Where the Roads between Derry and Donegal Cross the Border) portrays the 20 points between County Donegal and the City of Derry where roads cross the border separating the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Amalia Pica responds to the bureaucracy of applying for British citizenship in Joy in Paperwork, 2016.
29 November 2018
This month we invite you to see Tremble Tremble by Jessie Jones, the Irish representation at the 2017 Venice Biennale, installed in the Talbot Rice Gallery. We will be joined by assistant curator James Clegg who will introduce the exhibition.
Approaching modern gender politics through a dramatic aesthetic, Jesse Jones’ piece evokes a multitude of associations, cultural links and triggers. For the making of this work, Jones drew from recognisable political references, such as the very title. Tremble Tremble references the 1970s Italian women’s protest of the same name, which called for wages for housework. Referring to the medieval prosecution of witches and also to the historic Repeal the 8th movement in Ireland this summer, she has created a layered and dense visual narrative which sits somewhere between theatre, film and sculpture.
The group exhibition At the Gates is shown alongside Jones’ work and consists of work by fellow women artists exploring feminism, self-empowerment and current social and political events. Often brushing up against the law, or institutions of power, these artists and their projects demonstrate the impact art can have when it becomes part of a public discussion.
30 May 2013, 6-7.30pm
For our May Spin event, we will make a return visit to Rhubaba Gallery and Studios to talk about the group exhibition, It’s a Beautiful World.
We will be joined for the discussion by the exhibition’s curator and long-time Rhubaba committee member, Peter Ammore and exhibiting artist Jennie Temple. The exhibition includes work by studio artists and artists Rhubaba has previously worked with including: Rupert Ackroyd, Jiri Kovanda, Oscar Charles Laughridge, Fiona Mathison, John Smith, Emma O’Sullivan and Jennie Temple, all of whom, in these works, have highlighted moments of mystery and wonder found within their immediate surroundings.
The artists share an inquisitive and contemplative sensibility exploring the experience of being fascinated by particular objects and situations. Peter will speak to us about the theme behind the exhibition, the artworks and plans for the future.
25 February 2010 at 6pm
This month, we will explore the Collective Gallerys latest exhibition Documentalist – an international group show presenting work that explores blurred boundaries between fiction and reality through drawing, sculpture and film.
Chris Evans deliberately muddles the roles of artist and patron, genius and muse. Evans will show two sculptural pieces Warm Hermaphrodite and Repeat Horizon, both of which form visual motifs created by Evans in response to interviews with four elderly Italian politicians. All were asked about sacrifice and after a life in the public eye, on the choices they made.
Deimantas Narkevicius will show his film Revisiting Solaris. Trained as a sculptor, Narkevicius has developed a practice, based on video and film that explores fascinating, problematic and overlooked passages of recent post-communist European history, including his personal history of living and working in Lithuania during the soviet era and after.
Suzanne Treister’s practice deals with notions of identity, history, power and the hallucinatory. She will present Alchemy, a series of works which transcribe front pages of international daily newspapers into alchemical drawings, reframing the world as a place animated by strange forces, powers and belief systems.
Joining us to explore individual works and to discuss each artist’s relationship to the title Documentalist will be Kate Gray, Director of The Collective Gallery.
29 October 2004 at 6pm
We have wanted to visit Stills Gallery for some time, and this exhibition – the culmination of a series of 18-month artists’ residencies – is the perfect opportunity to do so. Director of Stills, Deirdre MacKenna, will give us a tour of the facilities (Stills is much more than a gallery) and fill us in on the significant opportunities offered by their residency programme.
We will hear from Chris Dooks about his filmmaking career, art practice and interest in Buddhism. Chris is actually a dedicated and serious Buddhist, but he has an irreverent approach to the practice and a gift for entertaining speaking that makes the whole thing particularly accessible. His work is absorbing, amusing and deeply humane. So, in a rather unexpected continuation of a Spin theme – following Luke Watson’s photos last month of Kagyu Samye Ling, the Tibetan Buddhist Retreat near Lockerbie – we will see the beautiful and strange film that Chris made in its grounds. He is also showing a second work in installation form. The Seventeen Perfections of the CD Burner is a ‘Lost Buddhist Scripture of Scotland’ channelled to the artist in a Glen Lyon B&B. As Chris will explain, ‘this scripture conforms to the rules known to every teenage boy i.e. the rules for making the perfect compilation tape . . .’
Incidentally, one of Chris’s previous films, Demixed, made in the Northern Region Film and Television Archive, can be seen at http://www.isisarts.org.uk/dooks.html
In this, the first of two residents’ exhibitions to be shown at Stills, we will also see the work of four other artists, some of whom Spin members might remember from previous outings. The little gem of an exhibition by a group of retired people at Newhailes House this summer was organised by NGS Education and facilitated by Nicky Bird and Sam Hill. Here, you will see Nicky’s collection of vintage photos bought on EBay, Questions for Seller and Sam’s sweet (and sometimes explicit!) interactive animation addressing children’s questions about sex and reproduction. Spin-Off London has just come from seeing, at Pilot, Sam Clark‘s wine glasses, jumping and vibrating to piano chords. Here she shows Lure, an array of glasses that magnify mysterious objects trapped behind them. Along with Jessie Blindell‘s dramatic new photographic tableaux of melodramatic family scenarios, these works are all engaging, thoughtful, emotive and witty, and sit together remarkably well.
