On Wednesday 21st February and Saturday 3rd of March from 1:45-4:00pm we are thrilled to be welcoming Glasgow’s own worldwide exhibiting artist Jasleen Kaur in a “double bill” of conversation and presentation with esteemed thinker and fellow artist Ruth Ewan.
The event, organised by GWL’s Seeing Things initiative, is comprised of two back-to-back special sessions from the GWL programme. From 2-3pm, Kaur will engage in an exploratory conversation with Ruth Ewan in Talking About Making: Objects, Museums and Feminist Memory. In the talk, the two women will be discussing their respective work and art, their inspirations, and the differences and similarities between them. Conversation will bounce between ideas and philosophies, exploring the message behind the women’s work, delving into Kaur’s fixation around the malleability of culture and how an object can hold and become imbued with a sense of a place’s social and political history and Ewan’s preoccupation with the relationship between historical ideas of utopian and radical ideologies and how they might challenge and highlight certain aspects of the way we live today.
Then, from 3-4pm, we will be screening Films by Jasleen Kaur, showcasing some of Kaur’s short films. Much like her object art, Kaur’s film theory is centred around issues concerning objects through time, social histories and the art of making through cooking. Kaur will also be showcasing her new souvenir recipe book, created in collaboration with the From Glasgow Women’s Library series which aims to kick-start a new legacy of celebration of souvenirs from women’s history. From Glasgow Women’s Library itself is part of Craft Scotland’s exciting ‘Meet Your Maker’ programme in collaboration with esteemed design curators Panel.
Jasleen Kaur is a Scottish-Indian artist who is now frequently based in London’s Royal College of Art, where she is a visiting lecturer. Through her experience growing up immersed in a melting pot of traditions between Scottish, Indian and British-Indian culture, Kaur has become fascinated by the idea of culture and objects as malleable and highly trans formative things. Her work is devoted to trying to view everyday objects in new ways, and re-purposing them to realign their associations with everyday tasks. Through this transformation, her work parallels the continuous change of life, ideas, viepoints and socities, exploring how our collective and personal histories are evidenced in the materials and objects we create and value at the time. In particular, her refurbished objects showcase an inherent hybrid aspect to national identity, culture and custom and encourage us to reconsider an object’s usage in our everyday routines.
This is perhaps best represented in one of Kaur’s most acclaimed works – the beautiful Cairns. Cairns is an incredibly personal series consisting of three touch lamps composed of bricks, chrome artefacts and man-made rock that have been specifically and artfully re-purposed to commemorate and mimic a ritual of Kaur’s parents, who would embark on a month-long act of carefully preparing a special candle, known as a joth or ghee candle, and place it on an unused slice of land surrounded by a small make-shift shelter of whatever tiles and concrete were available to them on site. Kaur’s parents had been advised by a saint to light the joth at sundown for thirty days to ward off negative energies. Through this empahsis on spirituality and ritualistic culture, Kaur is able to highligh the juxtaposition between Indian and Western rationale through an exhibition that expresses a merging between two cultural ideas, values and logic.
Ruth Ewan was born in Aberdeen but now lives and works in London. A mixed-media and multi-form artist, Ewan’s work takes the form of many interests and forms including installation, print and performance. Celebrating life’s radical thinkers and philosophers, Ewan passionately encourages participation and collective collaboration throughout her various form of art, and is therefore inherently vibrant, engaging and fun. One of her most eminent works is A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World (2003 –), an installation which invites visitors of all demographics to select tracts from an ever growing collection of over 2,200 politically motivated and inspiring songs. Through works such as A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World, Ewan aims to highlight overlooked and under-appreciated areas of political ideology and social history, hoping to give forgotten thought a new life and revitalize suffocated viewpoints by emphasising their relevance, still, to today’s world.
Both sessions with these incredible, inspiring women will be truly special, and definitely not to be missed.
This event is open to all and is free to attend. Please book online or call us on 0141 550 2267. If you have booked a place and are no longer able to attend please let us know so that we can make your place available to someone else.
