Kirsty Russell: Practising Bodies

8 Jun-3 Aug 2024

PV 7 Jun 2024, 7-9pm

Overview

Preview: Friday 7 June, 7-9pm.

Exhibition: 8 June – 03 August 2024

Aberdeen-based Kirsty Russell’s first solo exhibition presents new work that draws correlations between handling practices for textile conservation, processes of sculptural casting and the manners by which people are moved and handled in care and nursing practices.

Since 2022, Russell has been undertaking conversations with Nurses and Healthcare Workers, departing from a shared interest between herself and her mother and sister, who both work in the NHS. For her newly-commissioned exhibition at Cubitt, Russell presents new sculptures, textile work, and video, developed with these members of her family, as well as a group of Healthcare Workers in Aberdeen, where she lives.

A large-scale curtain work, digitally embroidered whilst on residency at Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh) is mirrored in group embroidery work documented in a nearby video, whilst bronze sculptures, whose development by Russell and her mother are also depicted in this same video, are scattered throughout the gallery space.

In the video, hands move deftly, familiar with human bodies and grappling with new processes of craft and making, whilst conversations shift from labour, ideas of skill, gender, and, the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The participants who feature have been working with Kirsty Russell on a number of gatherings, demonstrations, and workshops showing their solidarity with fellow Health Workers in Gaza and Palestine.

Departing from these many conversations, this project expands on Russell’s existing sculptural and hosting practices through sound and film to deepen her research on material interactions that occur in moving, supporting, and engaging with the human body.

KIRSTY RUSSELL  (b. 1990) is an artist living in Aberdeen. Her work is concerned with support, and structures that underpin and maintain. With reference to the women in her family who work in positions of care, she often returns to the physical and emotional weight of the work that they do and to the repetitive nature of maintenance. Her work expands into places of care, such as hospitals and schools, through project worker and other supporting roles. 

Recent exhibitions of Kirsty’s work include Talbot Rice Residents Exhibition, Talbot Rice Gallery (2024), Betwixt, Mimosa House (2024), Platform: 2021, Edinburgh Art Festival (2021), A Spoon is the Safest Vessel, Glasgow Women’s Library (2019) and Common Positions curated by Sean Elder, for the Jerwood Staging Series (2019). In 2018 she was selected to undertake Syllabus IV, a collaboratively-produced alternative learning programme, jointly delivered by Wysing Arts Centre, Spike Island, Studio Voltaire, S1 Artspace, Eastside Projects and Iniva. In 2019 she was a Jerwood Bursary recipient. From 2022–24 Kirsty was a resident at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh.

Kirsty is one fifth of Tactics for Togetherness, an artist group exploring collaboration and resource sharing.

Banner Image: Kirsty Russell, Runners and vents, 2024. Installation view. Courtesy Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb

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