The Small Gallery, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary
21st June – 9th September 2023
‘Sown’ is a group exhibition showcasing a selection of work from 10 emerging artists from across Scotland and highlights the wealth of talent currently coming out of Scotland’s art schools, from Glasgow School of Art to the Centre of Island Creativity UHI in Shetland. Their specialities range from darkroom photography to painting and printmaking.
Emma Caldow
Emma Caldow graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2022. During her degree, she was the recipient of various awards, was shortlisted for the Generator Projects’ Graduate Showcase and was selected as a finalist for the Visual Arts Scotland Graduate Showcase. Emma’s practice focuses on Site-Specificity and Sustainability.
“Working on beaches across Scotland, Emma currently explores the interaction between the Cyanotype Process and Environmental Elements, to create subtly conceptual artworks that capture the Scottish Coastline. Each work has been formed by exposure to the rushing tide, flickering sun and blustering wind, to truly capture a moment in time.”
Thomas Firth
Thomas Firth is an Edinburgh-based photographer who graduated from Napier University in Edinburgh in 2022. His work usually focuses on a hyper-naturalistic style, stemming from his passion for both documentary and directorial styles of photography.
Thomas’ background in animation laid a lot of the groundwork for his passion for photography, having a huge impact on his voice as an artist. The ambition of his work is always to make the audience feel some kind of emotion or follow a story, a purpose that helps audiences identify with his work. Firth has shown an interest in both documentary and constructed photography as a means of achieving these goals.
Jake Gatehouse
Jake Gatehouse is a multidisciplinary artist specialising in photography. Jake graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2021 having studied the Fine Art Photography programme. Since graduating he was a selected artist in the Futureproof 2021 exhibition at Stills Gallery, was selected for the New Contemporaries 2023 exhibition in the Royal Scottish Academy and was awarded NHS Lothian Charity Tonic Arts Award in 2023.
Jake is currently working on a long-term series of Submerged Self-portraits ‘These Systems Are Not Static’.
“The project is an ongoing investigation into how we perceive and interact with our environment but also the implications of image making at this time of climate and political crisis.”
Kayleigh Kellas
Kayleigh Kellas is a Moray-based artist concerned with curiosity. Using play as a catalyst for her colourful oil paintings, Kayleigh uses an energetic process of layering and sanding to create accidental landscapes for viewers to jump into and interpret. Kayleigh graduated from Moray School of Art in 2022 and was selected for the New Contemporaries 2024 exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy.
“I am a fun-seeking painter, working primarily in oils. Each gesture placed informs the next, in an energetic dialogue-like creative process, where ‘happy accidents’ are encouraged, as the painting reveals itself layer by layer. It is within these layers that an accidental landscape begins to form, in between the quick marks and the considered lines; between the accidental and the intentional. Childlike mess-making combines with a technical, editorial eye.”
Isabel McLeish
Isabel McLeish is a visual and socially engaged artist based in the Scottish Highlands. Her practice explores our innate connection to nature and themes of place, rurality, ecology and care. Her work is informed by personal experiences of immersion in landscapes, the culture, history and ecology of the Highlands and Islands and the rhythms and cycles intrinsic to the planet. Isabel graduated from Grays School of Art in 2019 and the Centre for Island Creativity UHI in Shetland in 2021 with an MA in Art and Social Practice.
Throughout 2022, Isobel collaborated with Circus Artspace to celebrate the ancient wych elm tree at Beauly Priory. The project aimed to encourage dialogue about the implications of climate change, disease spread and ecological loss in the Highlands as well as celebrate our relationship with the ancient Scottish tree.
Hanna Cutt
Hannah Cutt is an Aberdeen-based artist originally from Shetland. Hannah graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2022, receiving the John Smith Bequest Award and the RGU Art & Heritage Purchase Prize in Fine Art. Hannah is now studying for an MA in Fine Art at Gray’s.
“My practice involves an exploration into the strange limbo between girlhood and womanhood. Haunted by the past, I attempt to forge connections with these spectres of my childhood, in hopes of confronting the conflicted relationship I have with my inner child.”
Rowan Flint
Rowan Flint is a multimedia artist from Aberdeenshire, who graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2016. She has since worked in a variety of technician roles, producing installations and immersive pieces for different venues.
“I am a painter and experimental printmaker. I paint portraits in oils and explore the world around me through collage, colour and print. I work on paper, wood chiffon and installations within found spaces to create alluring yet somewhat uncomfortable environments for a viewer to experience.”
Emma Hall
Emma Hall is an Aberdeen-based artist. Emma graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2022 and received the Freeland’s Foundation Painting Prize and RSA David Michie Travel Award.
“I think of myself as a botanical painter… for me, the garden is always a type of virtual landscape, which in part is intentionally constructed but also shaped by the unintentional. My paintings are the same; they often grow and change over time. There’s resilience and fragility held simultaneously within the garden space, it’s a space that can reflect back at us the seasonality of being alive.”
Lizzie Lilley
Lizzie Lilley graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2021, winning the RGU Arts and Heritage Stand Out Work and Purchase Award. She was also awarded the RSA John Kinross scholarship and was announced in April 2022 as the Fleming Collection’s Emerging Scottish Artist of the Year in partnership with Scotland House, London. Lizzie is a joint winner of the David and June Gordon Memorial Trust and has been selected for New Contemporaries Exhibition 2023 at the Royal Scottish Academy.
Lizzie’s work is concerned with the slow abstraction of photographic imagery, a responsive process through which images of perceived social significance are interrogated and distilled. Photographs with a focus on historical events of social or cultural significance are a springboard for an instinctive process which can take days, or months, to complete.
Joey Sim
Joey Sim is an artist based in Torphins, Aberdeenshire. She graduated from Gray’s School of Art with a BA (Hons) in painting. Joey’s work is informed by the landscapes of her home in the North East of Scotland.