IMAN TAJIK developed a two-year residency project working with Art Walk Projects, beginning in 2020 with a durational performance ‘Where the Body Meets the Land’ on Portobello Beach as part of our socially distanced All At Sea programme.

Iman’s own experience of crossing geographical borders fuels much of his practice, with a strong desire to activate debate around the impacts of barriers and boundaries, including those also socially constructed. This series of site specific work resulting from his 2021 residency with Art Walk Projects responded to the locality of Portobello, situated on the edge of the city, bringing its position and relationship to the city centre, into focus.

Iman Tajik is an Iranian artist based in Glasgow whose work is anchored in a strong social interest connected to international movements for social change. His practice focusses on migration and freedom of movement bridging the gap between art and activism. imantajik.com

‘I Had a Dream‘ (Morton Street, Beach Groyne) 4th/5th Sept 2021
marked the many lost and unrecorded deaths at sea from migrants and refugees arriving through treacherous sea journeys, in search of a better life to another land many miles from their own, and more increasingly than ever, to UK shores. This momentary intervention (installed for the first weekend only of Art Walk Porty 4/5 Sept) referenced such journeys.

It was accompanied by a film from Tajik detailing the numbers of lost lives and missing migrants crossing by sea to the UK in 2020.

‘Welcome to the Border‘ (Promenade, near to Figgate Street) 4th to 12th Sept 2021 – introduced a temporary border at Portobello Promenade that generated debate and discussion around the notion of the border, as a line that divides and separates, rather than welcomes. 

Tajik invites the visitor to consider the crossing of the border. 
He calls for conversation through this work around how the boundary, literal or imagined, effects our sense of welcome, of being welcomed, with the divisive nature the border instils. 

The work also recalls Portobello’s own history around its boundaries; of a once separate geographical area, outwith the City of Edinburgh.

Border Sharing Dinner 
Portobello Promenade, Sept 2021

A public sharing of food across a temporary border line on Portobello Promenade Edinburgh. Commissioned by Art Walk Projects as part of Iman Tajik’s 2021 ‘Welcome to Portobello’ Residency. With thanks to all participants. Poetry ‘Bani Adam’ (Persia) from Saadi Shirazi’s book the ‘Gulistan’ (chapter 1, story 10, completed in 1258 AD) – spoken by Jane Lewis. Food – Judith Lamb. Videography – Rachel McBrinn.

‘Aliens Welcome Here?‘ (Portobello Kilns, Bridge Street) 11th/12th Sept 2021
On approaching the structure around Portobello’s kiln (waiting to be refurbished), we perhaps think of a UFO landed from outer space. What may first appear as Tajik’s playful take on this familiar local site, at the same time invites us to look again, and to reconsider the terminology around “alien” and its relationship to immigration and displacement. Dictionary definitions of alien include “a creature from another planet” as well as “belonging to another country”. The UK Aliens Act of 1905 declared that “undesirable immigrants” be denied entry to Britain. This act was amended in 1919, however the British Nationality Act of 1981 still defines an alien as a person who is not a British citizen. This powerful & compelling work by Tajik, brings sharp attention into focus around the use of such dehumanising language.

View accompanying images relating to this installation here

Above images – credit: Jon Davey

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Over the two-phase project (2019-21) a number of outdoor artworks, community events, kiln installations, walks+talks were run exploring the area of Western Portobello which once housed the decorator workshops and surrounding potteries. In 2021 the project culminated with the publication of a book ‘The Decorators of Portobello: In their own words‘ (Art Walk Press, Oct 2021), an exhibition at the Art Walk Hub & four nearby charity shops (Sept 2021), and a community multigenerational engagement project (led by Amy Johnstone) informing new audiences about heritage, working with local schools, and care homes.

The distinctive bottle kilns in Portobello, Edinburgh, are now the only physical remnant of a once thriving ceramics industry. But the voices of the women, who painted the distinctive thistle design on pots at the celebrated Buchan pottery, have remained largely unrecorded until now. This book celebrates five of Buchan’s former decorators, through their own words, personal photographs and other memorabilia. The Decorators of Portobello: In their own words makes visible a hidden social history of women that is still within living memory, where themes of life-long friendships, working responsibilities and conditions, are remembered alongside vivid memories of their craft.

Mairi Fortuna with Nicky Bird & Nicky Bird Artist Talk 2021
photograph credit: Ellie McMaster

Images: Installed cabinet, Art Walk Hub Exhibition 2021

List of Works & Events

2019-20

(Supported by Creative Scotland, Robertson Trust and City of Edinburgh Council)

Show & Tell, Portobello Library, Thursday 19th September 2019

Artist Introductory Walk/Visit, Portobello kilns, Pipe Street and Bridge Street area Saturday 16th November 2019

The Decorators, Portobello Kilns and Bridge Street, Saturday 29th February & Sunday 1st March, Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th March 2020. With the following site-specific photographic and sound works:

Outdoor photo-banner, 453cm (W), 242.5cm (H) door area 269.5 (H), Bridge Street Production: Eastern Exhibition & Display Outdoor Poster, 246cm (H) 178cm (W), Bridge Street Production: Eastern Exhibition & Display. Artwork by Rosy Naylor

Outdoor mesh wraparound banner around Kiln 1906, 386 metres. Production: Printvision. Artwork by Rosy Naylor

Sound work: three voices, three portable bluetooth speakers installed inside Kiln 1909

The Decorators’ Tea Party, The Wash House Community Centre Saturday 29th February 2020

Artist Walk/Talk, Portobello kilns, Pipe Street and Bridge Street area Saturday 7th March

2020-21

(Supported by Creative Scotland, National Lottery Heritage Trust & Historic Environment Scotland)

Assemble, Group Exhibition, Art Walk Projects Hub, Portobello
September 2021

Photographs (various sizes), Buchan pottery, memorabilia and Decorators’ statements 2 metre display case and 1 upright cabinet display case, with 4 upright cabinets in British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Salvation Army, and St Columba’s Hospice charity shops Production: Eastern Exhibition & Display

Community Mapping Workshop & Walk with the artist and AOC Archaeology Group 4th September 2021

Artist Walk/Talk with Mairi Fortuna, Art Walk Projects Hub and Portobello High Street 5th September 2021

Book Publication: The Decorators of Portobello: In their own words Launch, 8th October 2021

Community Engagement Programme (Oct to Dec 2021) working with Towerbank School, Edinburgh College Princes Trust Award Programme, Portobello Older Peoples’ Project and local Portobello Care Homes (kiln visits, clay workshops, pottery makers’ mark making, collage making and reminiscence packs made by many of the school children based on their grandparents first jobs which were gifted to care home residents).

Image: Book Launch at Portobello Bookshop
photograph credit: Alison Chisholm

Resources

Nicky Bird web page detailing the project
Porty Podcast The Decorators – Art Walk Porty Residence, November 2019
Porty Podcast The Decorators – Part 2, 29 February 2020
Artist Interview with Genevieve Fay, February 2020
‘The Decorators of Portobello’ residency with Nicky Bird, a-n The Artists Information Company, February 2020
The Afternoon Show, BBC Scotland, 5 March 2020

With special thanks to:
Pat Banyard
Mairi Fortuna
Irene Forbes
Irene Macintosh
Barbara Naughton
& Portobello Heritage Trust

Image (above & below): Site specific outdoor photo banner 2020
photograph credit: Ellie McMaster

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During her residency with Art Walk Projects, she created a series of three projects, culminating with:

Future Value 2021
Performances during Art Walk Porty
Bridge Street, Portobello

A new, semi-improvised, site-responsive performance piece, in collaboration with dance artist and performer Monica De Ioanni.

Future Value seeks to explore how we relate to, and are shaped by, the cityscape that surrounds us. Over recent decades, Portobello has undergone significant development. Its current physical appearance is a complex mix and sequencing of developers’ aspirations, changing land values and planning decisions, along with social, historical and demographic change. These dynamics are not specific to Portobello; they can be seen at work across Edinburgh, in other British cities and further afield.

As residents and citizens, we have agency over how local spaces are used and we can actively shape the places in which we live. Future Value proposes site-specific performance as a form of enquiry which can both help make sense of lived experience and create new relationships with the city and its suburbs.

Future Value is a term used in finance and investment planning to determine the likely future worth of assets. As the title of this project, it is used as a way of opening discussion about how we might define, and contribute to, a new form of urban value, grounded in the needs and desires we have for our local community – both now and in the future.

With a background in human geography, Deirdre Macleod has a longstanding interest in how cities work and how those who live and work in them experience urban physical and social infrastructure, its more or less hidden patterns, meanings, regulations and strictures. While previous work has explored these issues through forms of drawing, more recently she has begun to pursue practices associated with the interdisciplinary area of Experimental Geography. She is currently researching the potential for performative drawing to reveal, and influence, the hidden dynamics within the social life of cities. Working with movement improvisation is part of this developing practice.

Monica De Ioanni is a dance artist, performer, teacher, theatre maker and movement educator working in the UK and internationally. Over recent years, Monica has been leading site-specific work in urban spaces as a way of facilitating amongst participants and audiences a growing awareness of place; places that we embody everyday, places we use every day, places we “grasp” with our presence.

Deirdre and Monica share a common interest in artistic practice as social enquiry, but they have never previously worked together. In this collaborative project, they bring to bear their common interests in a way that extends their individual practices to create a new site-responsive work which is specific to Edinburgh, but with a wider resonance.

Flow Lines 2020
is a set of six performance pieces for anyone, anywhere, to perform. The six pieces draw upon minor gestures observed during the current period of immobility and social distance. Each starts from a score (a document which communicates the intention of the piece, but which is open to interpretation by the performer). It is up to the performer how, where and when they perform each piece and whether they make any sort of record of their performance.

From the Århus River
into the Kattegat
to the North Sea

In human geography, flow lines record the movement of people, such as commuters or migrants, between one place and another. In physical geography, flow lines on oceanographic maps describe how ocean waters circulate around the world.

Since the emergence of the Coronavirus in 2020, and particularly since lockdown, we moved differently within public space. Time outside became precious and, often, solitary and we were still unable to visit, and be physically close to, those with whom we did not live. At the same time, the pandemic highlighted the importance of urban public space to individuals and communities.

Designed as works for people to perform on their own (but in concert with others at a distance) each piece of work within Flow Lines draws upon observed gestures by solitary individuals. These movements and gestures have been observed within Portobello during the recent period of social distancing.

Each explores an aspect of the solitary condition in which we found ourselves in 2020, reflecting on our separateness and desire for connection.

A short set of instructions for performing each work were published online inviting anyone to follow the instructions and perform the work.

Deirdre approached other people across Scotland, the UK and internationally to invite them to participate in these performative works, to record their responses and, in dialogue with them, to develop ideas for further projects that will be published as part of the Flow Lines series.

Three of the Flow Lines scores are detailed below.
Photographs from the Flow Lines project were projected outdoor during Art Walk Porty’s All At Sea 2020 programme

From the Longcote Burn
to Eddleston Water
to the River Tweed
to the North Sea

‘FLOW LINES (1)’
June 2020

On your own, and maintaining a self-isolating distance of at least two metres from anyone nearby, make your way to a sea, or ocean, which is near you. If you live far from the sea, make your way to a nearby stream or river. A canal is also fine, as long as it eventually joins the sea. Take off your shoes and roll up your trousers. Stand in the sea, river or canal.

Bid goodbye to the water which laps around your ankles. Wish it farewell as it flows to other countries’ shores to meet the people who may paddle there.

Put your hand in the water and shake hands with all of those who are now linked to you by water, but whom you cannot visit, at the moment, by land or air.

‘FLOW LINES (2)’ Shadow Play
July 2020

On a bright, sunny day, go for a walk on your own.
Choose a time that is neither too early nor too late in the day.
Look for your shadow.
Take your shadow for a walk. Try to keep it in your sight.
Watch as your shadow slides up walls, falls into the road and breaks up among long grass.
If your shadow fades, wait for it to return.
Take your shadow to play on (the shadows of) the tops of lampposts, railings and trees.
Walk so that your shadow mixes with the shadows of other people.
When you have finished, say goodbye to your shadow and walk home.

‘FLOW LINES (3)’ Volley
August 2020

Find a partner. Stand as close as you are able to, at the moment.
Walk away from each other and stop. Turn to face each other. Ask your partner a question and listen to their answer.
Walk further away and then stop. Ask your partner another question and listen to their answer. You may have to raise your voices to hear each other properly.
Keep walking and stopping.
When you can no longer hear each other, stop and return to where you started.

Play | Relay | Replay 2020
Deirdre Macleod in collaboration with Christopher Kaczmarek (USA)

A public performance piece which linked two cities, Edinburgh and New York, through walking, gesture and play.

Artists Christopher Kaczmarek (New York) and Deirdre Macleod (Edinburgh) invited members of the public in both of their cities to join together in a project that combined whimsy and play with deeper themes of connection, separation and place. Gestures observed in one city were performed in the other, captured on video and played back in the spaces in the city from which they were originally gathered.

The resulting film was screened at Art Walk Porty in October 2021 in an outdoor public site in which some of the filmed gestured had been captured. Play | Relay | Replay was also shown at an international academic conference at Northern Arizona University, Arizona, US in April 2021 at which Chris and Deirdre presented their project work.

Deirdre Macleod explores material and other aspects of towns and cities, including the more or less hidden patterns, systems, regulations and strictures that operate within them. Her practice is informed by the discipline of Human Geography.

Within her work, she draws upon a range of fieldwork methods and observational strategies. Recently, she has begun to investigate how performative actions (for example, looking intently, rule-based walking and listening, playing made-up games and improvised group dance) can reveal, and help us understand, aspects of urban experience that might otherwise be hidden.

Deirdre studied Geography at the University of Cambridge and holds a Masters Degree in Politics from the University of Edinburgh. After working in public policy analysis and development for 16 years, she returned to study Painting at Edinburgh College of Art.

She currently teaches Art and Design and Access to Art and Design at the Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh. Recently she has been Artist in Residence at the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh.

deirdre-macleod.com

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heat.work.done 2021
Portobello Kilns Bridge Street
& Art Walk Hub group exhibition

This concluding installation of Jenny’s residency draws attention to the interior working space of the kiln, and to the skills and experience required by staff to produce consistent, high quality, saleable ceramic wares. She responds to the once hot smoky atmosphere that the coal fired kiln created and the skills needed in packing and stacking the kiln with heavy saggars and the ultimate experience of the ‘fireman’ who watched over it for the three day firing, gauging by eye the correct firing cycle and temperature changes.

Jenny is fascinated by the process of turning wet clay into a permanent useable object and has studied both physics and ceramics, adding to her curiosity and admiration for the workers who were able to judge by eye the temperature before contemporary heat measuring devices were used.

For her installation, she created two interventions inside the kiln.
Heat-o-meter a large constructed device to reference measuring the changing colours of the internal space of the kiln and temperatures associated with the different stages of the firing cycle.
Thermal gloves the making of thermal insulated heat gloves as a gesture to the hundreds of workers who had to improvise with makeshift wet rags wrapped around their arms and faces to protect themselves whilst unpacking the hot kiln.

Images: Jon Davey

(The title heat.work.done. refers to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics as a way of understanding the energy transferred in a given system, in this case the relationship between the temperature reached and the amount of time in the kiln and the effect on the ceramic ware)

Sea Masks 2020
As part of the ART WALK’S ‘All At Sea’ programme, Jenny created a series of masked forms relating to the precautions workers took to protect themselves from the heat as they unloaded the ceramics, installed along one of Portobello’s beach groynes.

The masks of course contained references to the new uncertainties around Covid-19 being navigated at the time, including personal responsibility and public health. From the ubiquitous blue clinical mask to the homemade, designer or impromptu, or unfortunately dumped, in our seas. Jenny is also mindful of the strategies people use to protect themselves during demonstrations protesting their freedom and rights against police and repressive authorities around the world.

Wind Forms 2019
Jenny installed a temporary sculptural installation along Portobello Promenade taking the form of a series of wind forms that built on the histories once surrounding this area dating from 1800. The sculptures she created reflected upon the rich but deadly and pollutant local colours that once used to be produced: Prussian blue, blood red, mustard and white lead, whilst highlighting continued human environmental impact.

List of Talks & Events
2019

Artist Talk, Portobello Kilns
Participatory Brick Stacking/Kiln Making & Beach Cooking event:
Jenny led an afternoon creating stack forms from reclaimed bricks, for later firing and cooking on the beach working with wild chef/forager Judith Lamb

2020

Make & Talk (socially distanced) event working with recycled materials to construct temporary works inspired by her installation

2021

Artist Talk, Portobello Kilns heat.work.done installation

Jenny Pope is a visual artist producing a range of work from small delicate objects to large-scale sculptural pieces. She is intrigued by the physicality of materials, making processes and the meaning of objects.

At the core of her working practice is experimentation with the limits and possibilities of materials such as porcelain, components of concrete, felt and paper. Through a process of research and serendipitous play into their physicality, structure and fragility she responds to the tactile viscous immediacy embodied in the substances. Her pieces are an exploration of the experience of mindfulness. She use the analogy of weathering of objects to suggest the uncertainty and changes we all face as human beings, as Robert Macfarlane describes ‘the appalling transience of the human body’. She explores ways to convey a continual attempt to be in the present moment in a world fuelled by busyness. Walking along the fluctuating and permeable edge of the seashore, she uses discovering objects at the tide line as both a meditative activity and practical taxonomy of found relics. By selecting and responding to the man-made fragments, she draws awareness to remnants of information, patterns of indents, holes and the repetitive worn surfaces from an object being used. Like artists Mark Dion and Robert Callender, her exploration also suggests links between archeology, taxonomy although she also examines the intuitive/primitive use of found objects as contemporary worry beads. One recent focus has been towards making objects in response to finding old bones, observing how the original functional orthopaedic structures have been altered by immense force of oceanic erosion. She highlights the commonality of calciferous constituents of bones with large-scale limestone rock structures also with dynamic water flow marks; wind eroded edges and minimal surface tension. Her current line of research leads towards the edge of textiles, creating personal sculptural spaces in response to the tension between comfortable containment and restraint. George Elliot’s idea of the ‘unmapped country within us‘ is drawn on navigational maps of the sea in an external embodiment of place.

jennypope.co.uk

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