To celebrate what we’ve achieved so far in Art Is Everywhere, North Lanarkshire Council are running a weekend celebration at Bellshill Cultural Centre. There will be a full programme of events and workshops to get involved in beginning Friday 24th March. More details to follow! I’m delighted to announce that we’ll be taking the reins for our showcase:

Meet The Artists Sunday 26th March, 2 – 6pm

TICKETS ARE FREE – BOOK YOUR TICKET

A key part of Art Is Everywhere has been connecting with artists living and working in North Lanarkshire. We want to fill the area with amazing art that is accessible and everywhere. To get the ball rolling, we invited artists to apply for grants to produce work that is relevant to their community and made people think differently about what art is. We managed to fund eight projects in the fields of photography, film, community arts, dance, mixed-media and performance art.

In this session, you’ll hear from the artists involved, take part in workshops with them, see some of them perform and get up close with the people who made it happen. You’ll also have a chance to hear about their vision for the arts in North Lanarkshire.

We’ll be presenting work by the following artists:

 

David Gilliver Art is Everywhere (if you look closely enough)

A minature beach scene made from spilt milk and a sponge with windsurfers.

David Gilliver graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2001 after studying Fine Art Photography. He is a respected professional photographer and artist, specialising in long-exposure ‘light painting’ and macro photography, recently taking the top spot in the macro photography category at the British Photography Awards, 2022

For Art Is Everywhere, David has produced a series of miniature scenes or ‘dioramas’ that question our relationship with the place in which we live, touching upon broader themes such as plastic pollution, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Instagram: @dgilliver
Facebook: David Gilliver Photography
Web: www.davidgilliver.com

Eilidh Manson Junk to Funk

 A flower made from recycled aluminium cans.

Eilidh Manson has a background in Public Art and Fine Art, and a passion for reusing discarded objects. She works as a visual arts tutor and mixed-media artist engaging with communities across North Lanarkshire. She has a reputation for making something out of nothing, taking things out of context and causing forms of disturbances. She has a passion for giving old things a new life.

For Art Is Everywhere, Eilidh worked with community groups across North Lanarkshire turning discarded items into pieces of art. This process of collaboration has reignited her interest in making people see things differently.

Socials: coming soon! 
Web: coming soon!

Emma Ferla Referlished Trash Art

Artist Emma Ferla sits in front of her bottle top mural.

Emma Ferla is an artist and jewellery designer who recycles plastic into pieces of art and jewellery. Emma believes in educating communities about plastic waste and the climate challenge, and she does this by creating pieces using waste materials as a starting point for climate conversations.

Inspired by the woodlands and nature reserves that surround her home, Emma has created three pieces of art for Art is Everywhere. Overall 527 bottle tops were used, equating to 2.6kgs of plastic waste.

Instagram: Referlished
Facebook: Referlished

Overdrive Dance Status: Changed

A boy does a one-arm handstand in a river surrounded by sprays of water.

Overdrive Dance Company engages male identifying young people with dance and creative movement.  The company is open and inclusive in its ethos and strives to remove barriers to participating in the arts.

Working collaboratively with two young dancers from the area, they reshaped Status:Changed – a contemporary dance performance choreographed by Hayley Earlam, into a stunning dance film set in various locations around North Lanarkshire. The piece is a response to young people’s feelings towards their place in the world. This film extends this viewpoint with a focus on feelings of disconnection and connection.

Instagram: OverdriveDanceCompany
Facebook: OverdriveDanceCo
Web: overdrivedance.co.uk

Holly Worton & Yas Mawer Working (C)Lassies

Performance artists Holly Worton and Yas Mawer dancing in Strathclyde Park.

Holly Worton and Mawer are multi-disciplinary and performance artists respectively. Holly explores the use of materials, physical exhaustion, conversation and play to interrogate the relationship between her experience and the wider world. Yas works with themes such as feminism, class, mental health, and ecology (among others).

Working C(Lassies) is a site-specific performance art piece that took place in Strathclyde Park. It explores stories of Working Class women across the North Lanarkshire area. Through childhood games, music and audio, Holly and Yas navigate their way through the complexities of what it was like to grow up as a working class women and how that has changed over time. They spoke to several Working Class women in the North Lanarkshire area and their stories are shared in an audio piece that frames the performance. They dance, they laugh, they play and they reflect on the joy and difficulty of being working class women.

Instagram: hollywortonartist
Instagram: yasmawerartist

Kim Beveridge What does it feel to be a young woman in North Lanarkshire today?

Three young women dancing on steps.

Kim Beveridge graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 2005, with a first class BA Honours in ‘Time Based Art’. Since then, she has been living in North Lanarkshire and working as a digital artist, filmmaker, AV designer for live performances, and part-time lecturer.

For Art Is Everywhere, Kim created and filmed a series of dance performance pieces in collaboration with New College Lanarkshire Performing Arts students Mikah Edwards, Jodie Logsdail, Olivia Brew and Emma Mitchell.

Inspired by the online communities found on social medial platforms, the piece explores themes of self-exploration, class and place, with dance taking a central role as an early form of self-expression for young people. Emerging from the creative process were questions young creative people must consider about their future; whether to stay in North Lanarkshire or to leave.

Instagram: nlcfilmtv
Vimeo: kimbeveridge

Ryan Pollock Bluebird

A cameraman films two council workers in their van through the windscreen.

Ryan Pollock is a 23-year-old writer and filmmaker from Wishaw. Gritty, engaging and beautifully shot, Bluebird tells the story of an unfulfilled litter picker, searching for the meaning that his life has always seemed to lack, and growing concerned at a volatile domestic situation in the neighbouring flat.

Bluebird is inspired by a multitude of local characters, wanderers, and strangers who struggle quietly through hard, solitary lives in these kinds of places. Lonely, trapped, forgotten people, surrounded by violence; disillusioned, lost and angry.

Bluebird was filmed almost entirely in the soon-to-be demolished neighbourhood of Gowkthrapple in Wishaw. Ryan hopes that Bluebird can, at least in some small way, immortalise it.

Socials: coming soon! 
Web: coming soon!

William Elliot Positive Images of Ageing

Photographer William Elliot poses with his camera in front of two of his recent pieces.

Bellshill resident Wullie Elliott took up photography at the age of 67. Five years on, he’s developed a considerable mastery of the craft, pursuing his interest in documentary photography.

For Art Is Everywhere, Wullie has created a stunning series of portraits showing older people in a positive light. From ‘Margaret’ at her sowing machine to ‘Raymond’ with his French horn, Wullie’s work depicts older people doing the things that they love, which provide them with purposeful living in later years.

500px Gallery: wullbehere