Disrupting Spaces: Sharing Practice

Glasgow International

This sharing event brings together the practices of three artists within our Glasgow studio network - Gianni Esporas, Olivia Priya Foster and Amy Louise Lawrence – whose work collectively spans sculpture, installation, film, writing, performance and choreography.

Responding to Martinican writer Édouard Glissant’s concept of ‘Trembling Thinking’ and its embrace of fluid, relation and non-fixed perspectives, this event takes as its starting point the buildings Outer Spaces occupies in a meanwhile capacity across the city, and especially the Merchant City. The majority of these buildings are spaces usually unaccessible to the public, now home to artists, creating new work and projects. Esporas, Foster and Lawrence will share their practice, processes and projects underway in these locations, reflecting on our relationships to space, identity, and history.

Amy Louise Lawrence works as an artist, curator and producer across projects that create sites for pleasure and ‘messiness.’ Her interrelated projects are a social commentary on 'othering' with the sticky idea of ‘healing or catharsis' and place-making at the core. Collaborative projects with ensembles of people and bodies navigate lived experiences of performances of identity; melting together into different kinds of gatherings using intimacy, remedying and foraging as tools for collaboration.  Often working in public space with natural/found elements and daylight cycles; as a backdrop to conversations between bodies and ownership. Explorations unfold across site-specific interventions, curated gatherings, food and herbalism-based works, ceramics and usable objects, illustrated mapping and artist-film. Amy reimagines intimate histories and structures at ‘play,’ creating a glitchy patchwork of racial and gendered social politics,  bringing visibility to forms of institutionalized structural labour. Projects act as a form of tribute and are always dedicated to people passing through her life.

Olivia Priya Foster is a Scottish artist who graduated from Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art in 2024. Their practice is deeply autobiographical, exploring experiences of queer rurality through a POC lens. Raised on a sheep farm in Argyll, Foster frequently incorporates materials gathered directly from the landscape they grew up in, using them to interrogate ideas of land, diaspora, and displacement within Scotland. Their work places strong emphasis on materiality, reflecting on the impact of human intervention on the environment. Through installation, video, performance, and audio, Foster examines their dual cultural identity and responds to the politics of land and resources.

Foster was awarded the Chair Medal for ‘Best in School’ by GSA and has since been selected for RSA New Contemporaries and VAS. They have also received The Skinny Prize, alongside the RSA Art Prize and Maclaine Watters Medal. They have also participated in residencies such as Cove Park and the Bothy project.

Gianni Esporas is an artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow. Her practice stems from utilising hair as an abject material. When this component is extracted from the source, it generates questions around colonial hierarchies, the white gaze and postcolonial futures to the surface. She holds a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice (Moving Image) from Gray’s School of Art and an Mlitt in Art Writing from Glasgow School of Art. She has previously shown work at Generator Projects, Spectra Festival, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival and Fruitmarket Gallery.

With thanks to Thinking Culture, University of Glasgow

Images:

1. Amy Louise Lawrence, BLACK EATING CLUB, part of HUNGRY GHOSTS,

commissioned by Compass Festival FLINT LEEDS Gathering

2. Gianni Esporas, TH4Y (2022)

3. Olivia Priya Foster, photo: Gemma Dagger