RRS: In Conversation with Marlene Smith and Camara Taylor

RRS: In Conversation with Marlene Smith and Camara Taylor
6 – 7:30pm Thursday 5th December
Online Conversation (Zoom)
Free but ticketed – Book via Eventbrite

Join us online for an artist talk and discussion with Marlene Smith and Camara Taylor as they share insights from their recent solo exhibitions, Ah, Sugar and [mouthfeel]. Together, they’ll explore the materials central to their practices and the personal and social histories they reveal.

Ah, Sugar by Marlene Smith is an exhibition taking place in GSA’s Reid Gallery. It brings together newly-commissioned photographic and sculptural work that demonstrates the artist’s ongoing interest in the material and bodily qualities of artistic practice. The works present act as inquiries into the cyclical nature of social histories and familial entanglements.

[mouthfeel] was an exhibition of new and recomposed work by Glasgow-based artist Camara Taylor, which took place in Tramway, Glasgow.  Camara’s practice builds around their research into archival documents, images, and fragments of language. They look particularly to those historical traces that register Black presence as a fugitive undercurrent of Scotland’s entanglement with racial capitalism.

Marlene Smith is a British artist and curator, and one of the founding members of the BLK Art Group. She was director of The Public in West Bromwich and UK Research Manager for Black Artists and Modernism, a collaborative research project run by the University of the Arts London and Middlesex University. She has recently exhibited work as part of ‘Women in Revolt!’ at Tate Britain; ‘The More Things Change’ at Wolverhampton Art Gallery; ‘Cut & Mix’ New Art Exchange, Nottingham; ‘The Place Is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain’ Nottingham Contemporary.

Camara Taylor is an artist and – – – based in Glasgow. They work with their various selves, collaborators and organisations to produce still and moving images, texts and other things that might act as moments of stasis in an enduring unravelling of—

Recent projects include [mouthfeel], Tramway, commissioned by Glasgow International 2024; backwash, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2022) ; a rant! a reel!, Cubitt Gallery, London (2021); holus-bolus, 17th Edinburgh Art Festival; IMG_5917 produced with Sulaïman Majali and commissioned by the Artists’ Moving Image Festival 2021 and suspiration! commissioned by The Newbridge Project, Gateshead, 2021. Camara was a Committee Member at Transmission Gallery from 2016 to 2018 and Programme Coordinator of the Race, Rights & Sovereignty series at The Glasgow School of Art from 2017 until 2021. Currently they are a member of Collective Text.

This event is part of the Race, Rights & Sovereignty ‘What Will Be the Cure?’ strand. ‘What Will Be the Cure?’ is a programme strand geared towards artists and practitioners who wish to collectivise, experiment, and conspire towards transformative change. Race, Rights and Sovereignty is a programme supported by GSA Students Association in partnership with GSA Exhibitions.

Left Image:’Ah, Sugar’ by Marlene Smith in Reid Gallery 2024, Photo Alan Dimmick.
Right Image: [mouthfeel] by Camara Taylor in Tramway 2024, Photo Matthew Arthur Williams, courtesy of the artist and Glasgow International.