Ayrshire round-up
From an off-site Jupiter Artland project to the latest Artists Rooms exhibition at the Dick Institute, SCAN looks at the contemporary art highlights from Ayrshire this Autumn.
In Ayr city centre, Jupiter Artland brings the uniquely dark and humorous visions of Rachel Maclean to a formerly vacant high street shop, in the form of her immersive installation Don’t Buy Mi. A surreal toy shop where nothing is for sale, the artwork features Maclean’s animated film upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop nestled between broken toys, abandoned fixtures and closing down signs.
The latest iteration of JUPITER+, Jupiter Artland’s offsite creative learning programme, the project also supports a number of 16-to-18-year-olds from across Ayrshire, who form the JUPITER+ORBIT Youth Council. Over the autumn, these young people are working with school groups in an adjacent creative learning space, where they are creating a collaborative artwork showing the change they want to see in their community. This peer learning programme is supported by a series of public workshops with the likes of Art Director Tom Joyes and Interactive Designer Tom Flint.23 December 2023
Don’t Buy Mi is at 53 High Street, Ayr, until 23 December 2023.
More creative learning opportunities are being offered by Ayr-based Narture, a studio, cafe and bakery in Ayr founded by father and daughter team Robert and Saskia Singer. The project originated in 2020 with a desire to regenerate empty shops into creative spaces. Now, the duo’s award-winning sourdough loaves generate income for arts projects, with workshops in creativity, wellbeing and sustainability taking place in the Narture Studio, an old library building, which also houses artists’ studios.
This Autumn, visitors can take part in workshops in riso printing, ceramic collage and analogue film processes at the studio, and keep an eye out for pop-up Narture events taking place in spaces around the town.
Visit the Narture website for more information.
Following recent showcases of work by the likes of Bill Viola and Gerhard Richter, the latest Artist Room’s exhibition at Kilmarnock’s Dick Institute is dedicated to Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed. Featuring sculpture, neon, painting and video from the artist’s thirty-year career, the exhibition is a testament to Creed’s ability to transform everyday life and objects into magical experiences, in which the audience are central to the meaning.
Artist Rooms: Martin Creed is at the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, until 6 January 2024.