Swell by Robyn Woolston
Created in the months following a brain tumour diagnosis, Swell inhabits the threshold where medicine, trauma and entanglement converge. At the brink of a life upended, where personal illness mirrors planetary crisis, the intimate exchange is grounded in the words of an acute medicine specialist.
Robyn Woolston
Swell
Robyn Woolston (2026, Scotland) 9m
A film made in the months following a brain tumour diagnosis, exploring how medical practice, entanglement and trauma intersect when confronting life-changing events.
Commissioned for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025, exploring the theme Comfort & Disturb.
About the Artist
Robyn Woolston is a visual artist whose work encompasses installation, photography, moving image and print. Often working in archives, non-gallery spaces, across community settings and within sites of cultural or environmental resonance. Her early practice focused upon reconfiguring large-scale discarded materials to critically examine the environmental impacts of globalised supply chains – from resource depletion to greenhouse gas emissions.
Comfort & Disturb
Explore commissioned artworks from the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025 by Erin McGrath, Robyn Woolston and Rylan Gleave.
Our theme of Comfort & Disturb references the famous Cesar A Cruz quote about art as activism, the idea that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. It is a simple expression of the power of art both to challenge and to console, often having a transformative effect on people and societies.
Swell by Robyn Woolston
SISTOR by Rylan Gleave
