September 2021
This is our busiest month of the year so far, and we are delighted to welcome international artists, curators and writers back to Cove Park for the first time in over 12 months! Travelling to Cove Park from Taiwan, Senegal and the Netherlands respectively are writer Enkaryon Ang, curators and writers Dulcie Abrahams Altass and Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy (RAW Material Company, Dakar), and writer Gregor Verwijmeren.
Our international residencies run in parallel with those for artists based throughout the UK, taking part in both our awarded and independently funded programmes: visual artist Henry Coleman, writer Laia Jufresa, interdisciplinary artist Hang Linton, poet Morag Smith, maker/designer Jenny Steele, artist and filmmaker Camara Taylor, and ceramicist Natalie Wood.
We are also delighted to host glazier and illustrator Tessa MacKenzie on a residency supported by The Radcliffe Trust, artist and filmmaker Tako Taal through the Talbot Rice Residents programme, and artist Alkmini Gkousiari on an Emerging Visual Artist residency supported by The Bridge Awards.
September also sees the continuation of the Crisis Residency Programme, a series of residencies for early career visual artists in Scotland, launched in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and supported by Freelands Foundation. We are pleased to welcome Thomas Abercromby, Caitlin Dick and Natsumi Sakamoto.
Cove Park's new Outdoor Classroom is unveiled on site this month! Commissioned as part of our Future By Design programme, the classroom is a spectacular structure designed collaboratively by architectural scientist Mae-ling Lokko, architect Tom Morton, and young professionals in Ghana and Scotland.
We are happy to share news of our collaboration with RAW Material Company, and to announce the artists participating in the residency exchange. Read on for details of a special event at Cove Park with RAW's Programme Curators Dulcie Abrahams Altass and Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy on Wednesday 22 September.
Finally, we are pleased to announce the musicians joining us in October as part of the Making Tracks residency, and to share news of the free workshops taking place this month led by artists Harriet Jenkins and David Sherry.
Please scroll down for more!
Image: Cove Park's site and the Jacobs Building (photography, Juliana Capes)
Future By Design
An Update on Cove Park's Outdoor Classroom
Wonderful progress is being made on Cove Park's Outdoor Classroom! Due to the skills, commitment, and hard work of a wonderful group of young architects, landscape designers and engineers, the gridshell roof is now complete, planting is well underway and the mycelium is beginning to grow!
This spectacular new space has been designed by architectural scientist Mae-ling Lokko (Ghana) and architect Tom Morton (Scotland), with young professionals in Ghana and in Scotland, as part of Cove Park's Future By Design programme. The project is supported by and developed in collaboration with British Council Architecture Design Fashion, and pivots around the impact of climate change upon water.
The Classroom will host public events about the environmental crisis and the positive change that our collective intelligence can make. It will be a space open to the artists taking part in our residency programme, visitors to Cove Park and our local communities. We look forward to welcoming everyone soon and will announce our public programme connected to the project, both at Cove Park and online, in October.
Image: The build of the Outdoor Classroom, Cove Park, September 2021
RAW Material Company at Cove Park
We are delighted to welcome RAW Material Company Programme Curators Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy and Dulcie Abrahams Altass to Cove Park this month. This residency is part of an institutional and artists' residency exchange devised by Cove Park and RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal. Our collaboration was announced in February this year and we are pleased to now share news of the artists taking part. Cove Park will host Saint-Louis/Senegal-based photographer Ibrahima Thiam in November and December 2021, and RAW Material Company will welcome Canada/Scotland-based visual artist Juliane Foronda in the spring of 2022.
If you would like to know more about RAW Material Company and its internationally acclaimed programme, please come to a special event at Cove Park on Wednesday 22 September, from 4-6pm. This free event is an opportunity to meet Fatima and Dulcie and to learn about the organisation's current and future projects. For more information or details on how to travel to Cove Park, please contact Alexia Holt. The event will also be recorded and will be available online via Cove Park and RAW Material Company's websites.
Image: Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy and Dulcie Abrahams Altass (photography, Kerry Etola Viderot)
Making Tracks
Residency & Fellows Announcement
Cove Park is delighted to host for the first time Making Tracks, an environmentally-focussed international music exchange programme, based around an annual UK residency and tour.
We are pleased to share names of the Making Tracks Fellows, a cohort of eight national and international musicians, all of whom will take part in a two-week residency at Cove Park, before embarking upon a UK tour on 27 October. The Fellows are: Iona Fyfe (Scotland), Simon Leleux (Belgium), Azin Zahedi (Iran/Germany), Robert Bisha (Albania/Italy), Thamires Tannous (Brazil/Austria), Liz Hanks (UK), Ahmet Ozan Baysal (Turkey/UK), and Brigitte Hart (Australia/UK). Read more about all of the Fellows here, and we look forward to welcoming everyone to Cove Park next month.
Image: Making Tracks 2021.
The Argyll Beacon:
Programme Announced
Earlier this year, Cove Park and ACT (Argyll & the Isles Coast & Countryside Trust) were named as one of the seven Climate Beacons that are taking shape across Scotland in the run-up to and beyond the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this November.
We can now share further details of the Argyll Beacon Programme, a series of free public events, workshops, and commissions that will begin in September this year and continue until the summer of 2022. This programme has been devised collaboratively with ACT, making full use of both the resources and expertise of both organisations, and will bring together artists and cultural practitioners with environmentalists and climate change activists. Read more here.
A Call for Argyll Beacon Artists is now live! If you would like to develop and lead workshops at Cove Park for children, young people and their families/carers, or Artists in Schools workshops connected to the theme of Scotland's rainforests, please read the Brief for Artists on our News page.
Images: Above: workshops at Cove Park, summer 2021 (photography, Caitlin Hegney); below, Argyll rainforest (photography Stan Phillips).
Saturday Studios in September
Our regular series of Saturday Studios continue this month with two special workshops on Saturday 25 September, 'Forage, Fire, and Feast', led by Harriet Jenkins, and 'Local Bird Species Headpiece', led by David Sherry. Harriet and David are both former residents and these free events promise to be great fun. Each workshop will run twice, for different age groups and families. To find out more and to book your free place, please visit our Eventbrite page.
Image: Forage, Fire, and Feast Workshop, Harriet Jenkins, September 2021
