Three Aberdeen based artists have been commissioned to make work with local communities inspired by the theme of this year’s Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
IN OUR SPACES is a new Outer Spaces commissioning programme supported by Creative Funding from Aberdeen City Council. Working in conjunction with the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, Outer Spaces have commissioned three socially engaged visual artists to create new work, using the theme of this year’s festival ‘In/Visible’ as their starting point.
Aberdeen based artists Kirsty Russel, Maria Muruaga and Lauren McLaughlin will receive a £3,000 fee, the use of a vacant, public facing commercial property and support from the Outer Spaces team.
Over the next four months, the artists will hold workshops with community groups in Aberdeen, exploring different aspects of mental health, using their own practice as a point of connection. The artists will draw from their experience throughout this time to create new work.
An exhibition of the three commissions will be displayed in an Outer Spaces property in Aberdeen city centre in March 2025.
Outer Spaces is a charity that matches artists needing temporary studio or project space with vacant commercial property at zero cost. They create artist development programmes and other projects to engage communities and audiences where their spaces are located.
Selected Artists
Kirsty Russel
Kirsty Russel is a visual artist working with structures, sculpture and events that explore various social and cultural systems of support. She is concerned with the ways in which our bodies run up against existing political structures, and the continuous exertion this puts on them. Russel’s use of textile practices in her work is drawn from their relationship to community. People have always gathered and connected over domestic craft and textile labour. These creative and social spaces invite people to share stories and make visible their individual and collective struggles.
For the IN OUR SPACES commission, Russel will deliver a series of embroidery workshops that will introduce different stiches, techniques and examples of making within communities around the world. Participants will be asked to consider how they can make visible their own stories, and stories of their communities, and how they can communicate these through embroidery.
For the final exhibition, the artist will develop a new textile work, making use of scraps of fabric and thread discarded by the workshop participants. The work will then be embroidered in response to outputs from these workshops.
Maria Muruaga
Maria Muruaga is an Aberdeen based artist, that works principally with photography and clay to explore sociocultural aspects of human interaction, individual and collective identity. Her socially engaged collaborative practice is informed by her rich Venezuelan heritage and Basque-Spanish roots.
For the IN OUR SPACES commission, Muruaga will develop new work in collaboration with people going through their own journeys of recovery or renewal, following displacement, new diagnosis or ongoing health problems. Through an open invitation, participants will include friends and family members, and people whose first language is not English.
The artist will guide a series of ceramic workshops with participants to realise a collaborative sculptural piece. Muruaga’s intention for the workshops is to offer participants the opportunity to use creativity as a medium to connect and heal with others that share similar experiences.
Play will be used as a seed point to explore the tactile properties of clay and to break down barriers. Muruaga will also use photography to capture the creative and social process, bringing into focus the collective act as part of an ongoing therapeutic inquiry. These photographs will form part of the IN OUR SPACES public exhibition in March 2025.
Lauren McLaughlin
Lauren McLaughlin is an artist, writer, curator, and cultural producer based in Aberdeen. She is the founder and director of Spilt Milk Gallery, a social enterprise whose mission is to support the work of artists who identify as m/others. Her practice is rooted in a desire to represent the undervalued and overlooked experiences of mothering, caregiving and gendered work through a feminist lens.
For the IN OUR SPACES commission, the artist will develop a project with Aberdeen based mothers who have experienced poor mental health. Working with mothers at either end of the spectrum of mothering (new mums and those with older adult children) Lauren will utilise a number of creative writing and drawing methods during workshop sessions. Participants will be encouraged to consider their relationship with maternal identity, visibility, emotional labour and the impact on their mental wellbeing.
For the final exhibition, Lauren will use the work produced during these workshops to inform a new performance piece and series of screen prints aiming to make visible the mothering, caregiving and labour of these mothers, and the lack of support systems in place to ensure mothers’ positive mental wellbeing.
Image: Maria Muruaga
