ART EXHIBITION: 22-27 JULY (OPENING NIGHT THURSDAY 21 JULY @ 6:30PM)
We so loved sharing The Hen Collective’s first retrospective, that we’re doing it again!
The Hen Collective Retrospective 2 is a group exhibition featuring the work of Reb T, Leah Moodie, Hannah Killoh, Tsitra Park, and the Hens themselves: Tiree Taylor, Sophie Pywell, Ana Geissler, Agnes Roberts and Eva Magdić Govedarica.
The Hen Collective is a female-led art collective based in Edinburgh that provides a free, safe gallery space for hens, femmes and thems. This exhibition brings together four artists featured by the collective this year.
Opening night registration links below.
DETAILS
Opening night event: Thursday 21 July
The opening night will be run in two sessions with a short film screening at each:
Session 1: 6:30-7:30pm Eventbrite link here
Session 2: 8-9pm Eventbrite link here
Exhibition: 22-27 July, 11am-6pm (closed Sundays/Mondays)
Address: Blunt Knife Co., 41 Thistle Street, Edinburgh
THE ARTISTS…
Reb T’s paintings take inspiration from the repetitive format of social media platforms. Modern technology creates a distancing in communication – it’s done online rather than in person. Reb T uses stencils to create repeat motifs within her work. Each layer of paint reduces the visibility of the initial stencil, creating a subtlety that re-invites the intimacy lost. The repetition of this task reflects that of performance action; Reb T’s labour of creating lost intimacy manifests itself through her paintings. Performance is an integral part of Reb T’s practise, often employed as acts of defiance or opportunities to regain control after being in powerless situations.
Leah Moodie is from the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland (b. 1999). Having recently moved to Glasgow after graduating from BA Painting at ECA in 2021, she now works from a studio space in her flat. Leah makes work that explores aspects of domesticity and questions our perceptions of the British "home" environment. She is concerned with creating an emotional connection between her pieces and the viewer through attempting to trigger nostalgia and/or familiarity. Influenced by homesickness anxiety, her work aims to create a conflicting atmospheric of comfort and unease, resulting in her surreal aesthetic.
Hannah Killoh is an Edinburgh based illustrator, book designer, publisher and photographer. After completing a BA Hons Photography degree at Edinburgh College of Art, Hannah moved to Japan for three years to work as an English teacher. While in Japan she explored her passion for illustration, book design and photography. It was also during this time that Hannah learned Japanese and now frequently uses Japanese typography in her work. Since 2017, Hannah has been living and working in Edinburgh as a Publishing Assistant for the National Galleries of Scotland and also works as a freelance designer and illustrator.
Drawn to the relationship between artwork and audience, Tsitra Park uses sociality as a medium to explore art facilitation as a method of practice. Their focus is situational and people-led, capturing the ‘mise en scène’ of art making and art viewing. Their work collaboratively generates situations which question art and social practice, using intuition and spontaneity within found materials and surroundings to facilitate this. Tsitra highlights the artifice in everyday happenings by finding humour in it, positioning artistic perspective as something to be observed and considered.
Tiree Taylor is an Edinburgh based, Scottish visual artist and painting student at ECA. Influenced by Naïve art and modern Scot’s storytelling practices her work takes an honest, tender, glance at the lives of figures within. A strong theme of Narrative weaves through her practice and acts as the foundations for her passion for character-building. Tiree takes inspiration from the naïve sincerity of her stories and drawings from primary school and aims to replicate that same simple and unfiltered openness in her current practice. By applying humour to her work, Tiree aims to ease the severity, and cynicism, of certain heavy themes in order to encourage, and welcome, conversation and engagement.
Sophie Pywell is an Edinburgh based artist currently studying at ECA. Her interest in classical art is the basis of her practice with a key focus on her modern, feminist perspective of the world. Sophie finds a playfulness within her work through her use of colour as her belief is that art can still be fun despite the pressures she has faced while studying painting. Sophie’s painting in this exhibition explores beauty in simplicity and the female form. Female figures are very prominent in Sophie’s work as she aims to reclaim and embrace her own body and the allure of the natural form.
Ana Geissler (she/her, b.1997 Cali, Colombia) is a third culture artist based in Edinburgh. Influenced by folkloric art and storytelling, her paintings emerge from found objects and images that weave together disparate natural elements. Her current research seeks to tip the lens away from the anthropocentric to create discomposed landscapes where flora and fauna rule.
Agnes is an Art Student based in Edinburgh, a lot of her art is focused on nature and folklore combined with the restless desire to replicate a feeling of a moment lost to memory. Agnes loves trips to the seaside, watching Eurovision and listening to cheesy indie-pop music.
Eva Magdić Govedarica is a Croatian film student currently studying at Edinburgh Napier University with a particular focus on experimental and documentary filmmaking. Her work archives the spontaneity of life and captures the beauty in the mundane through the reflections, distortions and geometry around her. She is interested in narratives of family, home, exile and womanhood in which she explores her own lived experiences as well as those of others. The camera acts as her third eye, endlessly spotting what otherwise might go unnoticed.
