Popped into this event at GoMA last Saturday. It’s the kick off for the next group show there Ripples on the Pond, which will be excellent, starring as it does loads of rarely seen works on paper and film, all by women, from the collection. Including a few pieces of mine. The show opens at the start of May. Updates to follow.

A Poetic Primer, A Poetic Measurement

Ripples on the Pond

Modern Edinburgh Film School presents an in-conversation and film screening primer for the exhibition Ripples on the Pond on the subjects of works on paper, moving image and women and film and collecting the ephemeral taken from its essay A Poetic Measurement published by Affiliate: Thinking Collections (a University of Glasgow programme funded by Creative Scotland).

Reflecting on the subjects of landscape, portraiture, play and feminine presence it presents a timeline of practices from the film poems of Margaret Tait active in film from the 1950s until her death in 1999 through generations of her influence, highlighting artists working and emerging in Scotland. It finds shore in practices in diverse geographic locations in San Francisco, USA and Melbourne, Australia and works made from 1970s to the present day. Reflecting on the exhibition’s subjects as well as themes of consciousness, perception and poetry are the film academic Dr Sarah Neely who will reflect on the essay and its selected moving image artists giving a broader and deeper context of Scotland, its women artists and their relationship to the camera and the screen.

In turn the talk will hear from visual artist Anne Colvin whose works in moving image mediating on time, frame, texture and gesture draws on a combination of found footage and her own film explorations. Ripples on the Pond will be screening – over the course of its duration – two of Colvin’s most recent film works which while reflecting on her growing body of moving image work will discuss its proximity to the poetics, intimacy and intellect of Margaret Tait’s cinema.

Ripples on the Pond is an exhibition of works from the Glasgow Museums’ Collection. It takes as the starting point recent acquisitions from the Glasgow Women’s Library 21 Revolutions series, relating them to other works in the collection and sparking questions about gender, themes and media choice in relation to women’s practice and visibility.

Ripples on the Pond is also a conversation between the works in the collection on paper and moving image and the invitation to Modern Edinburgh Film School and LUX Scotland to programme artists screenings within and beyond the gallery space. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to be part of that conversation and the exhibition can be seen as an essay that is to be read, re-read, critiqued and rethought, unsure where the ripples might end. The programme by Modern Edinburgh Film School can be seen as sister essay: responding to, commenting on, critiquing the holdings and re-imagining a collection through conversations with other works.

Dr Sarah Neely is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling, where she is member of the Centre for Scottish Studies and the Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies. Her recent research focuses on the work of Scottish women filmmakers and experimental filmmaking in Scotland.

Anne Colvin is a Scottish artist based in San Francisco who works primarily with the moving image. Drawing on a combination of found footage and her own filmic explorations, Anne’s work has a heightened awareness of time, frame, texture and gesture.