reFresh Residency
Collaborative Collage Workshop, North Uist
Taigh Chearsabhagh, Lochmaddy
March 2022
As part of the reFresh residency programme at Taigh Chearsabhagh, I led a collaborative collage workshop exploring emotional expression through material reuse.
Participants came from across North Uist and brought a mix of found and waste materials: textiles, paper, thread, and other scraps, which they worked with in intuitive and deeply personal ways. Each person was invited to respond to different emotional states through painting, gluing, cutting, stitching, and layering. The resulting individual collages were then arranged together by the participants to create a larger collective piece. which was displayed in the gallery.
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Hands Across The Sea Conference
Film- Poetry, Hybridity and Cultural Resilience in the Scottish Highlands & Islands and Western Brittany
24th - 25th March 2022, An Lanntair, Stornaway, Isle of Lewis
Collaboration, Innovation & Blue Humanities in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland and Western Brittany
I was invited to take part in Hands Across the Sea, a two-day international conference exploring creative and cultural resilience in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland and Western Brittany.
As part of the event, Gabby’s audiovisual work Call to Ritual was shown on the large theatre screen at An Lanntair.
The conference brought together artists, writers, poets, and academics for rich conversations on landscape, ritual, sea cultures, and creative hybridity.
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One World Series Exhibition of Recent Work at Nicolls, Glasgow November 2021
This work grew slowly in my studio during the pandemic, beginning with many small exploratory painted-collage pieces, gradually evolving into a series of larger works.
I followed an intuitive process of painting, layering, cutting, and assembling hand-painted papers. The act of making became a kind of ritual, a way of grounding emotion and processing change.
Alongside this series I began collaging wooden bangles in ways that echoed the themes and motifs which were appearing in the larger painted-collages.
Collaborations:
I shared my painted papers and final images with my daughter, Gabby Biazotti, who created a sound-vision piece 'Call to Ritual'. Her film animates and layers images of the painted papers and final collages with sound, movement, and layered voices.
Another collaboration was with artist and academic Rosalind Blake who wrote a beautiful response to the exhibition titled 'Soul and Cell', which was included in the show.
‘Call to Ritual’ - by Gabby Biazotti
'Soul and Cell’ - by Rosalind Blake
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