With support from Celebrating Fife 2010; Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, usually known for organising exhibitions in Fife’s major galleries have turned their attention to spaces out with the gallery. A series of artists’ residencies based on the Fife Coastal Path will be running from September to November. Local groups in Buckhaven, Springfield and Newburgh are working with a painter, a film media artist, and a ceramicist to make artworks which mean something to their communities.

Alan Grieve, Tracey McConnell-Wood and Frances Priest are working with Fife residents and Fife Coast and Countryside Trust rangers on different stretches of the coastal path. They will be walking, sketching, filming and designing to create a booklet, a short film, and ceramics.

The booklet, with Dunfermline based artist Alan Grieve, is working in conjunction with NHS Fife with people experiencing mental health problems on artworks relating to the East Neuk. The final booklet will be full of the produced drawings, paintings and sayings that take the reader on a journey round the coast.

A group from Fife Council’s Adult Resource Centres are working with Newburgh based media artist Tracey McConnell-Wood to make a film. Flotsam and jetsam found on beachcombing expeditions between Aberdour and Newburgh will be animated and set to coastal music specially written for the project.

Edinburgh based ceramicist Frances Priest is based with Buckhaven Community Centre: working from their own pottery studio the group will design and create a set of carpet bowls with wildlife decoration based on the local marine environment and Fife’s famous Wemyss Ware.

Project co-ordinator, Babs McCool of Spacesuit said, ‘All three artworks will give different and imaginative perspectives on the coastal path, and celebrate Fife’s special seaside places’.

Once completed, the booklet will be available through various community outlets, the film will be available to download, and the carpet bowls will be displayed at Buckhaven Community Centre and other local venues.

Information on where people can see these artworks will be available in November from Fife Contemporary Art and Craft’s website www.fcac.co.uk

For more information on all three artists residencies please contact
Angie Turner at FCA&C on mail@fcac.co.uk or by telephoning 01334 474610.

Download Word document of press release here [312KB]

For a press release on Alan Grieve’s project ‘Postcards from the Edge of Fife’ click here or go to our News page [304KB]

For a press release on Tracey McConnell-Wood’s ‘Five Fife Beaches’ project, click here or go to our News page. Click here to go to FCA&C’s YouTube channel to watch the ‘Five Fife Beaches’ film.

Check out Frances Priest’s blog on her ‘Buckhynd Braes Bools’ (carpet bowls) project

EVENT – on Thur 25 November, 1-3pm in Buckhaven Community Centre, come along to watch these unique bowls in action. Tea & cakes to be served and all welcome!