Jesse Jones ‘The Tower’ | Lawrence Abu Hamdan ’45th Parallel Exhibitions

Talbot Rice Gallery announces two new exhibitions to open on June 23, 2023: Jesse Jones and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, with an intervention by Hephzibah Israel.

Jesse Jones’s new film, performance and sculptural installation, The Tower, is the second part in a trilogy beginning with Tremble Tremble (commissioned for the Irish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017). The Tower conjures the words of women burned as heretics before the first witch trials in the sixteenth century. Jones’s work delves into the lost knowledge of women’s ecstatic visions through the writing and song of medieval female Christian mystics, and evokes the strange, isolated imaginaries of anchorites and hermits along with troubling histories of religious and state incarceration of women.

Sited in Talbot Rice Gallery’s iconic neo-classical Georgian Gallery, Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s most recent film installation 45th Parallel—examining political grey areas in international legislature—is situated above the University of Edinburgh’s Law School Library. Shot on location in the only cross-border theatre in the world, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House is a geopolitical grey zone that bisects the border of Canada and the United States.

In the upper balcony of the Georgian Gallery, Hephzibah Israel presents The Nature of Difference, a series of newly commissioned textual works, produced in collaboration with graphic designer Fraser Muggeridge studio, that poetically explore the nature of translation and what it is to navigate borders. Dr. Hephzibah Israel is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies, University of Edinburgh.

The Tower was commissioned by Rua Red in Dublin as part of The Magdalene Series curated by Maolíosa Boyle, funded by The Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Ireland, South Dublin County Arts Office, and Rua Red. It has been further developed at Talbot Rice Gallery with the support of Creative Scotland, Edinburgh College of Art, Culture Ireland and Ron Christaldi. 45th Parallel was commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol; the Toronto Biennial; Mercer Union, Toronto; and the Western Front, Vancouver. Produced by LONO Studio and supported by Arts Council England and JustFilms / Ford Foundation. The exhibition at Talbot Rice Gallery is supported by Creative Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art and is curated by Melissa MacRobert.