Phoebe McBride announced as the recipient of the online commission for Aberdeen based artists

A mountainous landscape at sunrise, the sun’s light creating lens flare over a pale blue sky and dark hills. — Phoebe McBride, ‘Intangible Landscapes’, 2021. Image courtesy the artist.

We are delighted to announce Phoebe McBride as the recipient of our online commission for an Aberdeen based artist. The commission offers an emerging artist working with moving image the opportunity to develop a new work over four months with support from LUX Scotland.

The work will be presented on the LUX Scotland website in March 2023 and available online for two months. As part of the commission there will be an online discussion event with Phoebe in March 2023.

The new moving image work, titled ‘On Becoming a water bat: echoes of an unseen world’, will explore rituals of loss and healing through an imagined transformation into a Daubenton’s bat. Due to the climate crisis species, such as the bat, are being forced to evolve at a faster pace. The work is interested in this as a metaphor for premature evolution through loss – be that personal, or collective – from the pandemic and climate crisis. It asks how we can be with grief and crisis. What are our needs as individuals, as communities and as beings?

Phoebe McBride said:

“I am thrilled to have been offered the commission. The support from LUX Scotland will be invaluable in further developing my practice in moving image and allowing for dedicated time to work on a piece that I am very excited about.”

The commission is part of LUX Scotland’s 2022 Aberdeen Programme, a programme of public activity of development opportunities for early-career artists and curators in Aberdeen.

Phoebe McBride

Phoebe McBride is a visual artist and creative practitioner based in Aberdeen, Scotland. Her research is involved in using fiction as a method to explore real, imagined and inaccessible spaces. Recent projects include ‘Through Smoke and Varnish’ – an immersive installation shown as part of Wonderland Festival and ‘Intangible Landscapes’- a body of work developed through an environmental arts placement mapping fire break trails in rural Cyprus.

She holds a BA Hons in Fine Art Painting and Printmaking from Glasgow School of Art (2017.)

Image description: A mountainous landscape at sunrise, the sun’s light creating lens flare over a pale blue sky and dark hills.

Partners

The Aberdeen Programme is supported by Aberdeen City Council Creative Funding.