The online exhibition is now live! You can see it here.
The exhibition is part of a research project at the University of Glasgow. On their web site they describe the motivation behind this exhibition, which involved twenty people. Approaching spring 2021, the research team realised they would be looking at life one year on from the start of the first lockdown and felt it was time to reflect on lessons learnt. They decided to draw from the ‘mail art’ movement that began in the 1960s to expand their network within Scotland. They sent blank postcards to colleagues in academia, in organisations and among artists around Scotland, in addition to those outwith Scotland engaging with Scottish landscape. Participants were asked to use each postcard as a canvas on which to express – in images, words, or other forms – the changing nature of the landscape in their lived perception.
The exhibition collects these postcards together in a map with a timeline. Together they provide us a glimpse of landscape experiences across Scotland (and beyond) and highlight a variety of interactions with landscapes under circumstances of limited mobility. What have we discovered about adapting to new circumstances? Are there lessons that can be fruitfully taken forward? In what ways can immobility bring new insight? What media and technologies do we already have at our disposal for meeting and enjoying landscapes together without moving from one place to another?
It is essential in the face of the impending ecological catastrophe that we begin researching and reflecting in earnest on alternative ways to quench our desire to experience and share old and new landscapes without contributing to the progress of this catastrophe.
Organisers: Minna Törmä, Nathan Woolley, Saeko Yazaki and Deborah Dixon
Participants (in alphabetical order): John Bonehill, Marie-Claire Cameron, Anne Campbell, Tina Fiske, Ysanne Holt, Marnie Keltie, Hayden Lorimer, Ailsa MacFarlane, James Moore, Stephanie O’Rourke, Roxane Permar, Alan Spence, Steven Timoney and Harry Watkins