Events
David Dale Gallery and LUX Scotland present…
1 June — 31 August
2021
Online
David Dale Gallery and LUX Scotland are excited to present a series of three monthly online screenings in collaboration with Natasha Ruwona, Siri Black and Saoirse Amira Anis, three Scotland-based artists working with moving image. From June to August, a different artist each month will present a recent moving image work of their own alongside a film that they have selected from the LUX collection. The film programmes will be hosted on David Dale Gallery’s website and will be available to watch for free for the duration of each month. In addition, each artist will present a contextual event to explore themes within their practice.
This is the second screening programme organised by David Dale Gallery and LUX Scotland. The first iteration was produced in collaboration with Hannah James, Sulaïman Majali, Alexander Storey-Gordon and Winnie Herbstein in 2019– you can see more about this project here.
Programme:
JUNE – Programmed by Natasha Ruwona
Natasha Ruwona, UMBILIC, 2021. 14 minutes, 57 seconds
UMBILIC is a moving-image essay film that uncovers an expansion on the current discourse of Hydrofeminism through a mapping of research into water, in line with a Black Feminist Geographical framework. An excavation into Scotland’s Black history, this work began in 2020, incidentally the Year of Scottish Coasts and Waters (which has been continued into 2021). What can we learn from water? Fluidity, impermanence, ease of movement, care, methods to listen, tenderness – we can liquify ourselves, and look to water to guide us, provide answers, inspire questions. UMBILIC is an offering – forever incomplete.
Ben Rivers, Look Then Below, 2019, 22 minutes, 30 seconds
The film conjures up futuristic beings from an eerie smoke filled landscape and the depths of the earth. Look Then Below was shot in the vast, dark passages of Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset. The netherworld of chambers, carved out over deep time, once held remnants of lost civilisations, now foretell a future subterranean world, occupied by a species evolved from our environmentally challenged world. Part three of a trilogy of speculative films with text written by Mark von Schlegell.
Discussion-based workshop with Natasha Ruwona and residues of wetness 6pm,29 June. Tickets and more details coming soon!
JULY – Programmed by Saoirse Amira Anis
AUGUST – Programmed by Siri Black
Poster by Phoebe Kerr.
NATASHA THEMBISO RUWONA
NATASHA THEMBISO RUWONA is a Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher and film programmer based in Glasgow. They are interested in Afrofuturist storytelling through the poetics of the landscape, working across various media including; digital performance, film, DJing and writing. Their current project Black Geographies, Ecologies and Spatial Practice is an exploration of space, place and the climate as related to Black identities and histories. Natasha is interested in different forms of magic and is in particular drawn to the power of the moon. They are the current resident for Alchemy Film and Arts where they are researching Tom Jenkins – Britain’s first Black Schoolteacher, and the migratory patterns of salmon through the lens of queer ecologies.
SAOIRSE AMIRA ANIS
SAOIRSE AMIRA ANIS is an artist based in Dundee. She uses her art practice to investigate personal therapeutic processes and how this relates to the ways we share our vulnerabilities with each other. She is interested in the potential that lies in caring for ourselves and others, and the extent to which this nurturing can benefit us both personally and politically. This is informed by the calls for radical community-based approaches to governance and care that run through most queer Black feminist thought. Dancing is often a staple of her practice as an expression of joy, self-care, and love.
SIRI BLACK
SIRI BLACK is an artist based in Glasgow. She works across analog and digital photography, film and sound to create installations that seek to trace instances of the couching of state power with technological prowess. Important is the detritus left in the wake of accelerated progress; the gaps of archives, the not so easily translate-able entanglement. Her research is often conducted through collaborations with other art practitioners and scientists.
She is currently an artist in residence at the year long “New Forms of Togetherness’ Digital Residency supported by the Goethe Institute and the Alliance Francaise. She has recently shown work as part of Present Futures Digital Festival and Radiophrenia, Glasgow. Recent exhibition include, Our World – The World to Come, 16 Nicholson Street, Glasgow (2020); Tunnels, Spirals, Lattices, Cobwebs, Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow (2019); Too Little too Late, Outlier Gallery, Glasgow (2019).