STILL / WATERS /
RUN
/ DEEP

SARAH CASEY + GERRY DAVIES +

25th May - 9th June

Science, Fiction and Folk
Drawn from Water’s
Unseen Landscapes

‘Still / Waters / Run / Deep’ explores the perception of water beyond the surface. The unseen nature of water; so mysterious it can only be imagined, water as understood by our ancestors, a source of life and fear, and consequently worship, water as an expression of both deep time and of our anthropocene epoch. 

Artist Gerry Davies’ ‘Flood Story’ and ‘Raft Story’ drawings, made with liquid graphite on Mylar drafting film, conjure visions of futures in which the places we call home have been drowned in the rising sea levels.

Sculptural drawings by artist Sarah Casey, include several new works created for this Tidespace exhibition. ‘Emergency!!’ is a series of fragile, often sculptural, meltable wax drawings. Other works include portraits of post-glacial landscapes, drawn into rock flour created by glacial erosion, and sourced from these landscapes. All bear witness to the speed of melt and emergence of change in glacial landscapes.

Also collaborating with Tidespace, Folklore Museums Network Founder, Peter Hewitt, creates a documentary sound piece - interviews about local water sources and wells of near mythical status, charting changing landscapes and morphing folk tales.

Top: Gerry Davies, 'Sunken Woods', Liquid graphite on Mylar, 2023.

Above: Sarah Casey, 'Ablations Series (Mont Mine)' Risograph, 2023 

Above: Sarah Casey, Wake series (detail), Rock flour on glass, 2024


24th May 6-8pm
PRIVATE VIEW


2nd June Sunday 4pm
EXHIBITION Tour + Talk (+wine)
Science, Fiction and Folk Drawn
from Water’s
Unseen Landscapes

with Peter Hewitt and
artists Sarah Casey and Gerry Davies

RURAL YOUTH
PHONE PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION

This competition is an opportunity for 14-25 year olds, using a camera phone, get what you’ve got to say about ‘home' out there, exhibited, seen and discussed!
Enter by email by 5th February 6pm, latest!

PEOPLE + PLACES = HOME
If an image is worth a thousand words -
What is it you want to say about where you live.
For this competition, what can your images tell the audience about ‘home’, the region, its people and places, the positives and the challenges? And how does your image tells your message / story? 

The Prizes
ENTER for FREE and your image could be exhibited & WIN £100!

PEOPLE + PLACE = HOME

You can submit up to 2 images per category.
The two categories are:
PEOPLE  If you had to leave Dumfries & Galloway forever, who would you picture, as part of your life and how you think of home, friend, family, a local person?
PLACES Show some-one who has never seen it, the feeling of a local environment, outside or indoors, how you see home, a river, a room, village, Dumfries and Galloway, any place that is important to you.

All details below for what to include to enter.

  • You can submit up to 2 images for up to 2 categories, which are:
    • PEOPLE
    If you had to leave Dumfries & Galloway forever, who would you picture, as how you think of home, friend, family, a local person?

    • PLACES Show some-one who has never seen it, the feeling of a local place, outside or indoors, how you see home, a river, a room, village, a place that is important to you.

    —————————————

    PRIZES
    • Commended photographs will be exhibited as the online exhibition at Tidespace

    • Highly Commended will and displayed as outdoor projected exhibition at Tidespace

    • £100 is awarded to the Winning image

    Awards and Winners - Announced February.
    Exhibitions - February/March at Tidespace 

  • RULES

    • 14 -25 years olds living (or previously living) in Dumfries & Galloway can enter

    • You can submit up to 2 images for up to 2 categories: People and Places.

    • Photographers can submit photographs that were created collaboratively in pairs. If in pairs each image submitted should have both surnames and full names listed in email. 

    • Format as a jpg at the highest possible resolution available for the phone being used. 

    • State if an App was used in making the image and if so which one. 

    • For images and portraits that clearly feature particular people, permission by must be asked for and granted. 

    ——————————————————

    What to include in your email with your images:

    • Email Titled:
    SUBMISSION for Rural Youth Phone Photo Competition

    • You can submit up to 2 phone photos per category for People and Places.

    • Each Image must be: Labelled with Name/s of Photographer/s. Title of the Image/s in the email. Once images have been emailed these images may be used by Tidespace for the exhibition and for promotional material in print and online.

    • Include the info below in the email:
    _Photographer/s Name/s:
    _Image/s Title/s:
    _Photographer/s Age/s:
    _Photographers/s Region: eg. Thornhill

    • You are welcome to submit text (approx 3 paragraphs) to accompany each of your images

    • Please include how you found out about the competition

    • send email to: info@tidespace.uk

    ——————————————————

  • Judges are interested to see: 

    • Images that tells a story, the way you see the people, the places, that make up life in the region for you.

    • A variety of ways of seeing things, images that have a connections to you and that you’ve hopefully had fun creating, images that are personal about things that matters to you.

    • Images that come about from seeing and seizing the moment/s, fast or slow that happen around you - making the most of your camera always being on you, in your pocket!

    TIPS
    Making an image is a bit like telling a story. The look and the mood of your image can help get across the message of the story want to tell e.g. sad, happy, still, energetic, upfront or mysterious. Below are a few tip that can help your image have a bigger impact.

    • The composition - the way everything is arranged around one another - can make the image feel balanced or imbalanced, still or dynamic.

    • Particular colour can create a specific message or mood.

    • Light and dark- can help express what you are trying to say by picking highlighting something you want to emaphasize, or make mysterious the things that are less clear, what is in shadows, or a silhouette.

    • Focus - clear, sharp crisp, or blurred and soft say different things depending how you use it, eg. blur can be romantic, mysterious, or sudden movement.

    • Near and far. A close shot the information can come from the surfaces, colour, textures shape. A wide shot can have so much in it you need to direct the viewer to what you want to focus on eg. with composition eg perspective lines leading your eye in, or with light, colour, being central, or cropped.

    • Within the image’s frame/boundary, what is included, excluded or partly cropped in or out of of the shot, can help tell the viewer the story you are trying to tell.

    • Tips on ICM (Intentional Camera Movement)An article with links to lots of different ICM photographers across the world:

    https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/intentional-camera-movement-photography-part-1-introduction

    Useful Apps - people generally use Slow Shutter Cam on the iPhone and FV5 on androids, easy to use.

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slow-shutter-cam/id357404131

    https://www.camerafv5.com

    Pointers on iPhone ICM: https://mcanany.net/icm-with-the-iphone/

    ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

    A selection of global and Scottish photographers that Coulson & Tenant, Leeming & Paterson appreciate

    Savannah Crosby https://savannahcrosby.wixsite.com/mysite

    Margaret Mitchellhttps://margaretmitchell.co.uk

    Sophie Gerrard https://www.sophiegerrard.com/work/

    Andreas Gursky https://www.andreasgursky.com/en

    Peter Dench http://www.peterdench.com

    Matt Black https://www.mattblack.com

    Stephen Shore http://stephenshore.net/index.php

    Katie Ione Crane https://katieionecraney.com.

    Edward Burtynski https://www.edwardburtynsky.com


Rural Youth Photography Phone Competition Judges this year are - award winning photographers Coulson+Tenant and Leeming+Paterson.

The four judges work globally and locally and live in Dumfries & Galloway. They are really looking forward to seeing different and personal perspectives from each young person. “Have fun, try things out, make an image that shows your own way of seeing by the way you tell your story."

Judges are interested to see:

• Images that come from seeing and seizing the moment/s or life happening around you - making the most of your camera always being on you, the phone in your pocket!
• Images that tells the viewer a story, about your own personal perspective on life, things that matters to you, the people and places, that make up the identity of what makes home for you.

• Trying different ways and methods of looking to show the story you are trying to tell. Images that have a connections to you and that you’ve hopefully had fun creating.

Tidespace

Rural Youth Photography Phone Competition
“This is an fantastic opportunity for young people in Dumfries & Galloway, to accessibly have their say, using a camera phone, about the positives and the challenges of where they live, and who they share their lives with. This competition provides a platform for how young rural people see ‘home’ and for their stories to be seen, recognised and rewarded” Tidespace

Competition Judges

  • DR. SASKIA COULSON is a photographer, videographer and researcher. Since she was young she has traveled the globe with her photographer parents. Saskia studied Fine Art Photography at Glasgow School of Art, a Masters in Managing in the Creative Industries and a PhD from the University of Dundee. She has worked with high profile galleries and institutions on a number of projects exploring complex global issues through creative thinking. Saskia wanted to bring her experience and academic knowledge back to image making forming Coulson & Tennant Productions Ltd. with her husband, Colin Tennant in 2018.

  • COLIN TENNANT Born and raised in Dumfries, after a Fine Art Photography degree at Glasgow School of Art he worked for Dumfries and Galloway council as their visual arts development officer. Two years later he begun his freelance photography and filmmaking career. For the last 12 years, the last 5 of has been in partnership with his wife and artist Saskia Coulson under the collaborative name Coulson & Tennant, he has been working for a range of local, national, and international clients and organisations and is connected to many local arts organisations in Dumfries and Galloway. He describes his artistic style as a cross between documentary and fine art.



  • TED LEEMING Part environmentalist, geographer & anthropologist Ted uses photography and other media as a means to test, process and express ideas. Historically a more traditional and global landscape photographer. Ted Leeming’s work now focuses on raising consiousness, in partnership with his wife Morag Paterson, they aim to provoke responses and crucial conversations about land use, biodiversity & climate.

  • MORAG PATERSON
 Has lived in Galloway for 30 years, originally hailing from Aberdeen. Passionate about methods of expressing place and the natural environment, Morag’s in depth exploration takes many forms, a spectrum of photographic and mixed media techniques and processes. As these varied results have evolved Morag and her creative partner husband Ted Leeming’s work together has involved fewer forays into projects away from home and their work has become progressively hyper-local.

Rural Photo Festival

COAST LIGHT

COULSON + TENNANT  /

LEEMING + PATERSON

5th - 14th October

EXHIBITION / TALKS/ PROJECTS

Exposing Global and Local Landscapes

COULSON + TENNANT  / LEEMING + PATERSON

FOUR PHOTOGRAPHERS - TWO CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

5th-14th October

PRIVATE VIEW 7th October 6:30pm
+ LIGHT FESTIVAL
7:30pm onwards out in Kirkcudbright

Coulson + Tennant / Leeming + Paterson rural landscapes and portraits will be projected out to the streets, from 6:30pm becoming part of the Kirkcudbright Light Festival from 7:30pm onwards

Exhibition

Talks

PHOTOGRAPHERS TALK
7th October
4:30-6pm
at Tidespace
SOLD OUT
Exhibiting photographers Coulson + Tennant / Leeming + Paterson present their work and discuss global and local perspectives on their rural landscapes and portraits with Tidespace curator, with Q&A and glass of wine afterwards.

PHOTOGRAPHERS TALK
In Conversation with Ben Smith
of A Small Voice

14th October
6:30-7:30pm Online

Coulson & Tennant / Leeming & Paterson, the exhibiting photographers at Tidespace, will be in conversation with Ben Smith of photographer’s favourite podcast ‘A Small Voice’, about their images created globally and much closer to home in Scotland, and their methods, mediums and meaning.

YOUTH PROJECT
October - December Age 14-25

Coulson + Tennant / Leeming + Paterson and Ben Smith will be working with regional schools on a competition centred around defining identity in the landscape. This will culminate in a projected exhibition across the region, and online exhibition at Tidespace.

Michael Johnson

TIDESPACE EXHIBITIONS, TALKS & EVENTS

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Recent TIDESPACE Events

EXHIBITION

LINES

Michael Johnson

LAND

Michael Johnson

LAND

LINES

6th-29th May 2023

Michael Johnson’s intensely responsive new body of work expresses his radical perspectives and personal engagement with and within Galloway’s coastal landscapes.

Significant changes triggered by Covid lockdowns, in Michael Johnson’s life and relationships, drew him from his urban focus to the south-west Scotland of childhood holidays. Vividly recollecting the freedom and significance of connection to the natural world he experienced in the coastal pastures of The Machars as a child, felt urgent enough to revisit as an adult and as an artist. And Michael Johnson has been outside drawing in the Galloway coastal landscape almost every day since the Autumn. 

A response to the un-still landscape, each day in each location, each intensely observed A4 drawing captures what he witnesses passing: shifting sand, people out walking, weather, tide, seasons, light and shadows, his own emotions. Michael Johnson goes beyond the plein air artist’s arm’s-length observations, capturing more than specifics of time and place.

Michael Johnson’s view is multi-perspectival, open and raw, hinting at a wonderfully mixed heritage: R.B. Kitaj, David Hockney, Stanley Spencer, Arthur Boyd and Hieronymus Bosch. As the individual drawings accumulate, held down by the nearest handful of sand, branch or rock, they are laid out on the land like a mosaic puzzle. These site-specific drawings become a map of unfolding experience, resonating both uniquely and universally. Collectively, a bigger, elemental picture emerges, with a spiritual dimension. In the spaces between reality, the outlines of pre-historic forms arise. The Pagan’s Green Man, Mother Earth, Adam & Eve; each seemingly negotiate their relationships with ‘The Garden of Eden’. 

“Walking and drawing for me involves sketching from life, from memory and also improvising as I go. Cumulatively these sequences reflect a particular mood or rhythm. Sometimes images may just emerge, unrelated apparently to what I may be looking at.  If I am fortunate, they can be a good surprise and their energy transfer to the making of the next and so on. Always reality intervenes: a passing person, a bird flying past, the light on the sea. In my mind may be a loose theme or background mood but usually there is no strain towards illustrating it. On the contrary, the process delights in dancing away from anything too prescribed.”

Michael Johnson considers deep connections to the memory of place: present, past and future. He gathers the landscape as a sequence of uniquely experienced moments, simultaneously a personal journey and a timeless human expression of our relationships with all living things, the universal whole.  

TIDESPACE’s Spring focus is on those
with a defining relationship
with LAND

TIDESPACE EXHIBITIONS LAND LINES Artist Michael Johnson’s new body of work, created in the last three seasons, is intimately connected to the land, inspired by and created in situ in the Dumfries & Galloway landscape. 

TIDESPACE AUTHORS TALKS
 WORDS FOR LAND
What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land
 
Focusing this series of authors talks on the people with the most significant relationship with the land of all, farmers, TIDESPACE will be talking to Tidespace Writer In Residence Bella Bathurst and to Farmer Authors from Dumfries & Galloway; David & Wilma Finlay, Jamie Blackett and Patrick Laurie. 

TIDESPACE TALKS

WORDS FOR LAND

What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land

The WORDS FOR LAND TIDESPACE TALKS series takes it’s due from the subtitle of, and begins with a conversation with, Writer In Residence Bella Bathurst about her latest book FIELD WORKS - What Land Does To People & What People Do To Land. Bella Bathurst’s acute first hand observations reveal the relationships with and within the land, from one generation to the next, and how rapidly they are changing. Her wide-ranging interviews gives a multitude of voices to the challenges of surviving modern farming.

“Field Work is a journey into rural Britain to meet the people who work in the fields, butchers’ shops, abattoirs, greenhouses and barns that produce our food… It tells the story of the author, Bella Bathurst, moving to a cottage on an 180-acre hill farm in Wales and beginning to see for the first time the life of a farmer up close …Highly researched and deeply thoughtful, it guides us through complex rural issues that are hardly ever well explained and which rarely escape simplistic ideological judgements … Field Work is by turns funny, enlightening, frustrating, and deeply sad.” James Rebanks

The series of authors talks continues by reflecting the rural coastal landscape of the Solway Firth that TIDESPACE sits within, through talks with Dumfries & Galloway Farmer Authors; David & Wilma Finlay, Jamie Blackett and Patrick Laurie. These Farmer Author’s connection to this particular landscape, its livestock and wildlife, for generations, result in deeply personal portraits. All contend, with differing and parallel perspectives, with the local, national and global changes affecting farmers, and the natural world.

TIDESPACE WRITER IN RESIDENCE

BELLA BATHURST

12th MAY 6pm

Dumfries & Galloway

FARMER AUTHORS

DAVID & WILMA FINLAY

with JAMIE BLACKETT
28th MAY 6pm
POSTPONED

David and Wilma Finlay run Rainton Farm and Cream o’ Galloway in south west Scotland. Pioneering cow-with-calf dairy farming at scale, the Finalys launched The Ethical Dairy brand in 2018, after reintroducing traditional cheesemaking to the farm.

A Dairy Story is a jointly written alternating memoir, of Wilma & David’s 25 year journey from conventional dairy farming to an organic, 100% pasture, regenerative, cow-with-calf dairy. At the forefront of a global movement to transform an industry, Rainton Farm is the largest cow-with-calf dairy farm in Europe.

A Dairy Story was launched in July 2022 with the hope of popularising ethical dairy farming, and making cow-with-calf dairy as normal as free range eggs.

JAMIE BLACKETT

with DAVID & WILMA FINLAY
28th MAY 6pm
POSTPONED

Jamie Blackett is a farmer, conservationist, author and columnist. Following a half career in the Coldstream Guards, Jamie returned home to Dumfriesshire to run the Arbigland Estate on the Solway Firth. Jamie inherited an arable farm, which is now predominantly a New Zealand style pasture-fed dairy.
Jamie Blackett’s book
Red Rag to a Bull, Rural Life in an Urban Age established Jamie as a commentator on rural issues giving him a third career as a freelance columnist and broadcaster. Land of Milk and Honey, Digressions of a Rural Dissident, the sequel to Red Rag to a Bull, give’s Jamie Blackett’s particular farmer/ journalist’s perspective on the trends, opportunities and threats facing the British countryside.

PATRICK LAURIE

13th JUNE 6pm
SOLD OUT

Patrick Laurie runs a small farm in the Galloway hills. His blog, Working for grouse is a diary of conservation in hill farming. Patrick’s book Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape was a Times Bestseller, one of the Times and Sunday Times Nature Books of the Year 2020, and shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing and the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year Awards. 

As well as writing and farming, he is involved in a number of conservation projects on upland farms across Scotland and the North of England.

TIDESPACE PROJECTIONS

LIGHT & DARK
Ross Fleming

The origins of Halloween/Samhain, the pagan new year's night, come from just across the Irish Sea from Kirkcudbright Bay, opposite Tidespace. The ancient Celts believed the veil between contrasting times and realms; summer and winter, past and future, light and dark, life and death is at its thinnest on this night. Tidespace will be collaborating with artist Ross Fleming, emphasising the light and dark in his narrative work, from meticulous and detailed, to inky, responsive and revelatory, to celebrate Halloween/Samhain.


Come along to witness the light and dark of Ross Fleming’s evocative work from the street, projected throughout the 31st October 2022, this special spooky night! You can see more of Ross Fleming’s work at TIDESPACE

IN COLLABORATION WITH TIDESPACE, ARTIST EMMA VARLEY HAS CREATED THIS EXCLUSIVE ARTWORK COCOON TO COINCIDE WITH KIRKCUDBRIGHT’S FESTIVAL OF LIGHT.

PROJECTED REALITIES
DUSK till DAWN
October 6th - 8th 2022

Emma Varley’s areas of interest have focused on the female form and our relationship to art and nature.

‘Cocoon - Unreal Objects’ is a virtual sculpture made from a body of work triggered by the restrictions of the artist’s creative processes during Covid19. Creating with Midjourney, an AI software used by Architects and Game designers, Varley uses keywords to define how search engines target and mine the world-wide-web for tagged images.

“I’m inspired by the ‘strata’ that connects layers of materiality between the natural and virtual worlds, the ‘one and zeros’ of the neural network that codes and bonds algorithmic layers existing as data locked in a cloud of technology. My Cocoon Series explores sculptural forms evoking natural and hand-made materials; carved wood, porcelain, paper, gold leaf, wire and woven gossamer fabrics. The structural clusters loop, fold, twist and furl jostling for pictorial space.”

Directing and responding to what is generated, Emma Varley carves out a form from texture, light and context, moulding a sculpture made of pixels from the infinite possibilities of the internet, concluding only when she defines the artwork sufficiently evolved.

Projected onto TIDESPACE’s backlit-screen-like-window, the material of this virtual sculpture is made entirely from the images we upload and consume around the globe.

@elvarley311

TIDESPACE TALKS

Tidespace is hosting a series of talks by local authors with new books out, for whom the significance of ‘Place’ and the relationship to the natural world is formative. From the hills and tides of Solway’s Galloway to the Fjords and volcanic mountains of Iceland, each author reveals the physical and cultural landscape that defines their modern rural life.

Sarah Thomas

Sunday 11th September 2022

AUTHOR READING, Q&A, BOOK SIGNING, REFRESHMENTS
ARTWORKS OF ICELAND BY PATTI LEAN

TIDESPACE writer-in-residence, Sarah Thomas, talks about The Raven’s Nest, her ecological memoir set in Iceland's Westfjords, described by Robert Macfarlane as “Deeply thoughtful, vivid, enquiring… A fascinating journey”.

Sarah Thomas will talk to Tidespace about falling in love with Iceland’s landscape, culture and an Icelander called Bjarni, and how the earth itself can help us find our way home.

The Raven's Nest is Out Now with Atlantic Books 
available now at Gallovidia Books of Kirkcudbright, The Old Mill Palnackie and all major bookstores and online.

Narrated by Sarah Thomas The Raven's Nest is also available via Audiobook:  Audible and Amazon

SOLD OUT

Alan McClure

AUTHOR READING, Q&A, BOOK SIGNING, TEA&CAKE

Sunday 28th August 2022

Galloway Author Alan McClure will be in conversation about the significance of the local landscape and the natural world in his new series Callum & the Mountain and Callum & the Other.

Callum and the Mountain - It’s a quiet wee village, Skerrils. Not much going on. Shingle beach, pretty walks, peaceful library, exploding school, talking dogs, carnivorous monuments, interfering all-powerful nature spirits and a mountainous secret too baffling to tell… Join Callum Maxwell and his pals for the strangest, scariest, most exciting summer of their lives... you’ll never look at the natural world in quite the same way again.

“Alan McClure’s Callum and the Mountain introduces a fresh voice, full of energy, humour and love of place. He writes with a performer’s instincts and an exuberant joy in language...” Joan Lennon

“A hugely imaginative children’s novel… It revels in the beauty and the power of the landscape, while allowing that landscape the chance to exhibit some very human characteristics... Alan McClure’s warm and skilful use of Scots, words like glaikit and peely-walley pop up throughout the book... adding richness and a sense of place.” roaringreads.co.uk

TIDESPACE EXHIBITIONS

Making Her Mark:

BODY / PAINT /
LAND / SCAPES

Patti Lean & Denise Zygadlo


2nd June - 2nd July 2022

TIDESPACE EXHIBITIONS

 
 

MAKING HER MARK features the work of two established artists from the region, Patti Lean and Denise Zygadlo. These artists contrasting work illustrates their commitment to exploration and process, through their particular form of mark making.

PATTI LEAN treads gently in Nan Shepherd’s footsteps, pushing herself to see as responsively as possible, often abstracting the environment around her to its very essence on the canvas. Working with sketchbooks but essentially from memory, Patti paints her experience of the particular; geography, landscape, season, a moment of light. She expresses these in colour, form and mood, both in response to Dumfries and Galloway and more recently in Finland. “I grew up as an artist against a backdrop of landscape and the Scottish Colourists: I attended a group for several years with local artist Archie Sutter Watts RSW. “I regard the canvas as an open arena, it is as much about paint as it is about a subject so, rather than the canvas as a ‘window-on-the world’, I’m more interested in painting as the medium for the shared experience, the conversation within it.” 

DENISE ZYGADLO uses her body performatively, pressed up against her stage, the ‘window’ of the photocopier’s glass, as a dancer might in a spot-lit room. Simultaneously both model, artist and director, Denise works within the narrow confines of her ‘frame’.  Defining which moment and what her body expresses, and when the light glides over her, this is her ‘moment mark making’. Fascinated by identity and memory, in relation to fabric, she explores and expresses the ghosts within the clothing of ancestors long after they were draped around our ever changing bodies. She then uses these performative pieces to puzzle together and re-imagine a new figurative and fabric composition, using collage, transfer printing, drawing and paint on canvas.

 

Patti Lean & Denise Zygadlo


Making Her Mark:

BODY/PAINT/


LAND/SCAPES

2nd June - 2nd July 2022

Exhibition Extended Online
till 23rd September


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