Tag: newsflash

Fife Contemporary – Covid-19 Update

It’s hard to believe in some ways that we’re now into our 7th month since lockdown began in late March. The stockpiling of toilet rolls, tins of tomatoes and pasta has eased as most of us have got used to a different rhythm to life and we truly hope it’s not about to start again.

Fife Contemporary has been more fortunate than venue-based arts’ organisations who rely heavily on ticket income to keep all the wheels turning. However, we have had a major exhibition (Lines from Scotland) stuck in limbo – it was only open to the public for a matter of days before lockdown began. We’ve also had to cancel various public events, which is of course a great shame.

But we’ve found other ways to keep busy…

Online content – it’s virtually the way to go

If you follow our social media or receive our email newsflash, you’ll hopefully have noticed that we’ve been adding much more content to our website. Here’s what’s new so far:

• Lines from Scotland Online – INSIGHTS 1-10 (featuring some of the participating artists & curator Amanda Game) available now and several more to look forward to!
• Care Making for Good – an online exhibition to celebrate the first Phase of our project with Fife carers.
• Fife Portraits for LGBT+ History Month 2019 – to mark Fife Pride which was to have taken place on 4 July, we published this online exhibition of photographic portraits made last year by 2 LGBT+ youth groups in Fife.
• 100 Buttercups Education Pack – inspired by Laurie Clark’s beautifully drawn flower portraits & featured as part of Engage’s Children’s Art Week 2020.

There is more coming shortly to this web space, including the next in our series of Materialise exhibitions, supporting recent craft & design graduates/new makers.

And there’s more!

If you receive our newsflash, you may have noticed a change of content and style. This was partly in the pipeline anyway as our Artist Development Officer Stefanie Cheong took over the reins from me on 1 April. But with supporting artists still at the forefront of what we do, lockdown meant it was important to focus on how artists are surviving – see her new Artist Stories’ series.

Our blog now includes a variety of posts from Diana and Susan and more On This Day content from Arlene.

Looking forward

We are continuing to plan with our partners and are delighted (relieved?) that Lines from Scotland re-opened safely at DCL&G in Dunfermline in mid-August. In addition, we’re looking at blending virtual experiences with real ones, and how we can continue to reach audiences with Craft Pods’ exhibitions.

Join us for a celebration of Black History Month on 29 October 2020 on Zoom.Meanwhile, keep safe and well, and please get in touch with us by email or social media as we continue to work from home.

– The Fife Contemporary Team

Artist Stories No 2 Kate Downie

Fortnightly during this time of isolation we will be sharing some stories from our artist community to uplift, inspire and keep us all connected. We have Kate Downie, Fife based painter telling us about a ongoing project with her mother.

“These pictures are the fruits of a ‘parallel painting’ project made by myself, artist aged 61, and my mother aged 94, during the past few months.

It started as a ‘thing to do with mum’, living alone in a Glasgow tenement flat, even before the Covid 19 outbreak. I would set up a subject or an idea for a drawing or painting, which we would both work on side by side for 15 or 20 minutes each time. The process has not been easy for her as she battles with diminishing levels of sight, hearing, mobility and memory. The world has shut down around her and despite frequent visits and support from family and carers, she has been becoming increasingly isolated.

Just before the lockdown on March 23rd my partner and I took Mum to live with us in Fife, where we have continued our parallel painting in the Birchtee Studio to complete this small body of twinned paintings.  Through this process I have gained invaluable insights into the ocular distortions of advanced macular degeneration and early dementia. Despite all of these issues my mother gets pleasure from the act of painting and drawing and for minutes at a time is deeply absorbed and entirely happy.”

This project has also been featured in Great Scots in Isolation, which is a series of short 1-2 minute films by Scottish Gallery artists from Scotland, UK and internationally. The series can be viewed and enjoyed in this link here.