Between Shetland and Norway, 2020

Artist-Lecturers from GSA's School of Fine Art were invited to exhibit artworks across three different locations in China for a touring exhibition ‘Sharing a View: Contemporary Art from Glasgow’. Artworks by thirty-two members of Fine Art staff were included, incorporating 114 artworks by lecturers across the Departments of Painting, & Printmaking, Sculpture & Environmental Art, and Fine Art Photography. The artefacts contributing to this exhibition by Brind & Harold were connected with their ongoing research into questions of territory, agency, boundaries and representation of place. The exhibited photographs emerge from this research and document geographical locations using phenomenological experience of place, as opposed to fixed points in space. Two images depict cloud cover: one photographed flying eastwards from Shetland to Norway; the other taken from the land, looking westwards from Norway towards Shetland. The third image is taken from a ferry en route to Shetland: at the point where the Atlantic meets the North Sea. Rather than finding borders between those territories, spaces of liminality were the focus: in the air, on the land and between the sea and the sky. A wall text that accompanies the images comprises terms used to describe conditions of the sea and visibility, or lack thereof. Exhibited works by Brind & Harold comprised: 'The sea off Shetland – Looking east' 2016 Archival Digital Photographic Print 70 x 50 cm 'Sky above Shetland' 2017 Archival Digital Photographic Print 120 x 108 cm 'Sky above Telavåg, Norway' 2018 Archival Digital Photographic Print 120 x 108 cm 'Between Shetland and Norway' 2020 - Overarching title Painted wall and vinyl text Variable depending on space available The exhibition was curated by Xiaoai Wang and organised by Professor Alistair Payne (Head of Fine Art at the time), in collaboration with John Quinn (School of Fine Art). The exhibition was the culmination of the GSA's relationship with Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA), which began with the 2017 LAFA exhibition ‘SoFA Presents: East and West Walk Forward: Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (China) Teachers' Exhibition,’ curated by Xiaoai Wang, in the Glasgow School of Art’s, Reid Gallery. Exhibition premiering at: Luxun Academy of Fine Arts 23 Oct 2020 - 7 Nov 2020; then touring to: The Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 20th Nov – 4th Dec 2020; Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, 29th Dec 2020 - 28th Jan 2021