The Liminal Zone
Open Evening: Monday 7th March 5pm-7pm
Opening Times:
Tuesday 8th March 11am-4pm & 5pm-7pm
Thursday 10th March 11am-4pm
Friday 11th March 11am-4pm
Tuesday 15th March 11am-4pm & 5pm-7pm
Wednesday 16th March 11am-4pm
Thursday 17th March 11am-4pm
Saturday 19th March 11am-4pm
Place: The Rockfield Centre
Ages: Open to All
Cost: Donations on entry
Art exhibition
The Liminal Zone research project explores the seashore as a metaphor for the interface between teaching and art.
This exhibition draws together arts-based responses to this metaphor in a range of media including paint, photography, sculpture, writing and sound by staff from both the University of the Highlands & Islands and other Scottish colleges and universities.
For further information search ‘Liminal Zone Research Project Inverness’.
Contact: Mandy.Haggith.ic@uhi.ac.uk
Exhibiting Artists
Novelist and Poet
Lecturer in Creative Writing
University of Stirling
Dr Liam Bell is a novelist and senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Stirling. He has written two novels, So It Is and The Busker, and a third, Man at Sea, is forthcoming in June 2022.
His teaching often engages with ideas drawn from his writing, including exploration of form and content, political and historical fiction, and the boundaries between genres.
Visual Artist
Lecturer in Art and Design
Perth College UHI
Alex Kershaw is a Contemporary artist who has been lecturing in art and design for over 22 years at Perth College UHI, where she is Course leader for NQ Art and Design. As an artist, she is inspired by nature and the weird and wonderful species in the woodland around her have given her a fascination for exploring her own version of the Romantic notion of the Sublime – aspects of nature which are often terrifying yet contain a mesmerizing beauty. She is also inspired by nostalgia, and music from the 80s has a strong influence on her and her art and is a constant companion when working in her studio.
"These two artworks were inspired by some fascinating rockpools that I discovered on Elie beach. Rockpools are in a constant state of flux, being on the edge of sea and shore, their contents shifting and adapting to life in liminality. I chose to work in an achromatic palette, creating metaphorical pieces using charcoal and sea water, as I feel the balance between personal creativity and teaching has many grey areas and also many overlaps with exciting possibilities."
Visual Artist
Lecturer in Fine Art and Art and Environment
Taigh Chearsabhagh, Lewes Castle College UHI
Rosie Blake is a visual artist working primarily with print, photography, and text. She teaches on a range of courses in art from NC to Postgraduate level. She is based at Lews Castle College Taigh Chearsabhagh campus in North Uist.
“My approach to the metaphor of the seashore is underpinned by the sense of porosity between teaching and creative practice. Porosity, movement, flux, change, and the sense of revealment – things (ideas, revelations?) are washed up on the shore, sometimes they get tossed around in the waves for a while before eventually ending up in the sea or the land for good.”
Multidisciplinary Artist
Lecturer in Education, Art and Design
Inverness College UHI
Rosie Newman is a multidisciplinary artist, environmentalist and socially engaged artist. Her practice has led her to work creatively with a wide variety of materials, technologies, and people. She has a particular interest in connecting people to the natural world and to the places where they live. She is the Research Associate in the Liminal Zone project.
“Inspired by my coastal hometown, Song Tides is part of an evolving project that utilises steel bars, suspended in the water column off the local harbour. Over prolonged periods of exposure and submersion, these capture the patterns of tidal change and the alchemistic play of the air, moon, sun, and sea, on the surfaces of the metal. I am interested in the transitional states of materials - that change even whilst being exhibited - and how this is reflected in the changes in perception of those who participate in the practices as the artworks take shape. The curved shaped sculpture was inspired by the notion of the bell; on the one hand, a practical necessity to celebrate or raise the alarm and on the other an object that creates a sound that transcends the listener to a higher state. Orchestrating this balance, between the practical and the inspired, captures the essence of the Liminal Zone.”
Independent Experimental Writer/Performer/Educator
Dr. Tawnya Selene Renelle is an experimental writer and creative writing educator from Bellingham, Washington in the USA. She currently lives in Glasgow, Scotland where she has completed her DFA in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and is the founder and director of Beyond Form Creative Writing, a hub dedicated to experimental forms. She has a forthcoming pamphlet Orangeapplepress and in May 2019 she published her poetry collection this exquisite corpse with Calenture Press.
“I know very little about tides. I don’t know their proper names. I don’t know the rules. I only know the rhythms. I know the tides on instinct… The thing about low tide is that the shore was once below the water. The shore is always there. My practice as an educator is always there. The educator is always under the surface of the creator, the creative, the writer. To create is to educate whether this is of the self or the work. Creative work has always left something behind. Both exist in a day. The sea always leaves behind on the shore.”
Writer
Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing Inverness College UHI
Dr Mandy Haggith lives in Assynt and is a keen sailor and swimmer. Her books include four poetry collections, a poetry anthology, a non-fiction book and five novels, mostly written at sea. She is the Principal Investigator of the Liminal Zone project.
“The tidal zone stands for a range of different boundaries and edges in my life: work and play, teaching and art, art and science, past and future, life and death, and menopause, in which the waning influence of moon on womb is both loss and gain. As a poet, I’m fascinated by how metaphors enable us to think new thoughts. The liminal zone is particularly fertile, with its endless shifting, rhythmic pulsing and endless play with edge, interface and line. I am inspired by barnacles, foreheads cemented to rocks, yet dancing and resilient among the tidal ebb and flow. ‘Gannet’ is a poem exploring the metaphor of seabird as teacher, who dives from her college cliff-face into an ocean of creativity.”
Participatory Art
Senior Lecturer
Queen Margaret University
Anthony Schrag is an artist and researcher based somewhere in Scotland. Currently, he is Senior Lecturer of Arts Management and Cultural Policy and also the Programme Leader of both the MA Arts Festivals and Cultural Management and of the MA Applied Arts and Social Practice at Queen Margaret University. He is a member of the Centre for Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Research Centre, leading the Practice Research Cluster: Finding and Using Creative Knowledge.
“My artist work occurs in a participatory manner, and central to my practice is a discussion about the place of art in a social context and have exhibited/performed nationally and internationally, including residencies in Iceland, USA, Canada, Pakistan, Finland, The Netherlands and South Africa, among others. My research generally, explores the intersection of institutions and artists and the public in regard to participatory projects, especially in regard to policy and how/why organisations support participatory projects. Current research projects include attention on Arts and Health, as well as Arts activities within rural/remote contexts. The artist Nathalie De Brie once referred to my practice as 'Fearless'. The writer Marjorie Celona once said: ‘Anthony, you have a lot of ideas. Not all of them are good.’”
Photographer
Lecturer in Photography
North East Scotland College
Steve Smith has worked as a photographic lecturer at North East Scotland College, Aberdeen, for the last fourteen years. Prior to returning home to take on this teaching responsibility, he worked in London, primarily as a fashion and portrait photographer, working for clients such as i-D Magazine, The Telegraph, The Times and Instyle Magazine. His photographic work is broad in discipline and includes portraiture, landscape and recently moving image; often exploring issues around identity and exploration of the interplay between nature and man’s attempt to order and control.
“The liminal Zone project was fascinating. The project allowed personal reflection of my teaching practice and concluded to celebrate the necessity of self-expression, in the production of photographic work, assessing its direct positive impact on my teaching. The three images presented within this exhibition represent the struggle and conflict between the two disciplines, (creative practice/teaching), and the negative impact physically and mentally on one’s wellbeing, whilst also being a positive catalyst to the birth of ideas and often the beginning of one’s creative journey.”
Creative Director of M:ADE (Moray: Arts Development Engagement)
Lecturer in Critical Studies and Professional Practice within Fine Art Degree
Moray College UHI
As a practitioner, Stacey Toner leads community-based projects and facilitates strategic research through local organisation Moray: Arts Development Engagement. As a lecturer, she delivers Critical Studies and Professional Practice within a Fine Art Degree.
“As a practitioner and lecturer, I investigate the mutually beneficial between formal education and industry provision, as for me they are utterly intertwined. The liminal zone metaphor is relatable and one that has shifted my train of focus lately; I now find myself looking more intensely are how we think, feel, and behave, as a way to understand how a more authentic and consciously creative way of being might manifest”
Musician/Composer/Lecturer
Lecturer BA (Hons) Applied Music, MA Music and the Environment
Lews Castle College UHI
Anna-Wendy Stevenson is a musician and composer living on the island of Baleshare in the Outer Hebrides - an environment rich in oral Gaelic musical tradition and source of inspiration for her practice and teaching.
“My offering to the liminal zone project - Suite Uist showcases a multi-dimensional collaborative artistic and education project with my own compositions arranged and recorded with Dorset musicians– Alex Roberts and Dan Somogyi and students and graduates from the BA Applied Music. These recordings exemplify the overlapping of my creative and pedagogical practices. The project itself demonstrates engagement with multiple authentic environments to create rich spaces for learning.”
