Display by Holly Graham
‘No winder you canna catch fish’ by artist Holly Graham is the next exhibition to take place in Display** from 26 October - 8 November 2020.
‘No winder you canna catch fish’ is a new body of work by artist Holly Graham, developed in response to Gaada’s project ‘Weemin’s Wark’. The work takes as its starting point an oral history account held by the School of Scottish Studies Archives. In the audio excerpt, recorded in 1961, Katie Laurenson speaks of the history of annual Shetland festival Up Helly Aa, noting how the sun-worship custom of processing ‘sungaits’, via the path of the sun, was later replaced by a route mapped in the opposite direction – ‘widdergaits’. Through a verbatim poem that touches on these digressions from tradition, and an accompanying collection of materials that speak of contemporary conversations surrounding calls for festival inclusivity reforms, Holly considers tangled ideas of resistance and push-back, natural courses or cycles, constructions of myth, and the passage of time.
Holly Graham is a London-based artist, working predominantly with print and audio. Much of her work looks at ways in which memory and narrative shape collective histories. Holly undertook her BFA at Oxford University in 2012 and graduated from MA Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 2014. Recent exhibitions and projects include: While the Piled Cumuli Sail Galleon-Like Above – I, Barratt David Wilson Homes for Cane Hill Park, London (2020); #FridayFact, Goldsmiths CCA, Online (2020); To Us It Just Looks Like A Lemon: Bothy Residency, Southwark Park Galleries (2019); On Board II, Art Licks & Espacio Vista, Madrid (2019); BOUNDS, Skelf, Online (2019); The Oval Window, Gerald Moore Gallery, London (2019); The Romance of Flowers, Kingsgate Projects, London (2018); Common Third, Copperfield, London (2018); Carefully Cleansed of Labour and Softened by Cooking, Compressor, London (2018); and Sweet Swollen, Jerwood Visual Arts: Project Space, London (2018). Holly is Head of Artist Development at Turf Projects, Croydon, and is Co-Founder of Cypher BILLBOARD, London.
This new body of work has been developed in response to Weemin's Wark, Gaada’s 2021 Visual Art Programme in partnership with Glasgow Women’s Library and local equalities group Up Helly Aa For Aa. Weemin’s Wark is funded by Creative Scotland.
**Display is a new distanced outdoor gallery space located outside the Gaada workshop in Burra Isle, Shetland. Gaada welcomes visitors to view the current Display within the gravelled area outside the building, however we politely request that at this time, visitors do not enter the building without prior appointment. This ensures Gaada is able to continue maintaining a safe working environment within the workshop.
Image: Widder [detail], 2020, Holly Graham
