The Uncertain Futures Residencies
SaltSpace Residency Award
2023-24
The Uncertain Futures Residency programme ran from 2023 - 2024, providing four artists a six week residency in either woodworking, printmaking, photography or ceramics. These residencies provided each artist with a studio space, partnered them with a local organisation of the appropriate discipline with 1:1 tuition, mentoring from John Thorne (Sustainability Co-ordinator at The Glasgow School of Art) and full artist fees.
This was Saltspace's biggest project yet, spanning across two years from development to completion, receiving over 85 submissions and funded by Creative Scotland.
The year of residencies culminated in a group exhibition at Saltspace Gallery, alongside artist talks and supporting events. Scroll down to learn more about our residency artists and check out the Uncertain Futures Exhibition.
The Artists
Bel Pye
Printmaking Resident
Partenered with Print Clan
Bel is interested in the everyday art we make to survive hostile times. They began their visual arts journey as a participant of Project Ability’s ‘ReConnect’ program. This body of work is an attempt to document and respond to the stickers covering their local streets in Govanhill, South Glasgow.
These stickers contain a mix of political slogans, calls to action, and advertisements for local businesses. Many are scratched off, scribbled over or covered up by people holding opposing views. This work was created during Bel’s residency with the textile screen printing studio Printclan, and is made entirely with repurposed fabrics.
@chronic_queer
Iryna Zamuruieva
Photography Resident
Partnered with Streetlevel Photoworks
Iryna’s writing and photography explore human-environmental relationships at different scales. For her “geranium is falling and landing elsewhere” project she spent time around the Pentlands’ and Garelochhead’s military training areas and worked with analogue photography, plant-based image development and writing. Iryna here is interested in how militarized landscapes are made and sustained. Her work explores feminist approaches to landscape photography across Ukraine and Scotland.
Iryna's images are taken in Ministry of Defence training grounds. From these sites Iryna has picked plants and used them without the development process of her photographs.
@iryna_zamuruieva
Jemma Mitchell
Woodwork Resident
Partnered with GalGael
Jemma Mitchell's current practice explores certain materials in their raw form. Intervening at the moment of maximum potentiality, she subverts the raw form through a contemplative sculptural arrangements.
Working with materials of plywood, oakwood, timber, cloth and concrete she explores themes of harmony, balance of arrangement, post-collapse and objecthood.
@jemmamitchelll
Oren Shoesmith
Ceramics Resident
Partnered with Glasgow Ceramics Studio
Oren Shoesmith is an artist, poet and mystic living between Glasgow and Cornwall. Over the course of the Uncertain Futures project he has explored cairns; a collection of stones which exist between the murky overlaps of burial site, votive offering, and a mark of land sovereignty.
Through tongues, harnesses, rings and rock anuses he has looked to articulate a material language of gender dissidence and trans grief. This body of work began its life at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop through their Caregivers Residency and ended at Glasgow Ceramics Studio as a part of the Uncertain Futures programme. The work has been made possible through a collection of caregivers, support workers and artists who have given their time, labour and wisdom.
Uncertain Futures Publication
This publication is the culmination of works and experiences of the four emerging artists who were selected from over 85 applications to take part in our Uncertain Futures residency programme, alongside a selection of works from our wider member base responding to the uncertainty of our current state, for example the cost of living crisis, climate emergency and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, though artists were free to interpret in other ways.
The publication contains contributions from all four residency artists; Bel Pye, Iryna Zamuruieva, Jemma Mitchell, Oren Shoesmith and features work from ten artists & SaltSpace members; Evi Evangelou, Hannah Absalom, Irina Tall, Leon Hart, Luke 'Luca' Cockayne,Olivia Juett, Shelia MacNeill, Sophie, Sorin Bath, Xinyi Yang, and an introduction from John Thorne Sustainability Coordinator at Glasgow School of Art.
The publication was designed by Xinyi Yang
Thank you to all those who contributed to this publication.
The Uncertain Futures publication was kindly funded by Creative Scotland.
Click here to get a free digital copy of the Uncertain Futures publication!