SEÁN ELDER Curatorial Fellowship 2023-25

Feeling Still in a World Which Runs

Download the programme in PDF format HERE.

This programme supports four new commissions by artists living and working across the United Kingdom; Mathew Wayne Parkin, Kirsty Russell, Nicola Singh, and Marlene Smith, as well as an exhibition of existing work by Anne-Marie Copestake and Mouaad el Salem.

Instead of relating the practices of these artists through a curatorial framework or rationale, this programme instead intends to support the creation of new work by artists at key points, whose practices are both informed and contextualised by the conditions under which they live and work.

The title of the programme comes from a sentence in Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Years’, (se sentir immobile dans un monde qui court) in which the author reflects on changes within her body and mind, and the impact of time’s passing around her.

This programme is curated by Seán Elder, Cubitt’s current Curatorial Fellow (2023–25), and is supported by Arts Council England.

This Day Won't Last (2020) by Mouaad el Salem

Two Films About Love
with works by Anne-Marie Copestake & Mouaad el Salem

Exhibition: 8 September – 4 November 2023

For the first public presentation of this programme, two films are brought together in Cubitt’s gallery space; A love (2019) by Anne-Marie Copestake and This Day Won’t Last (2020) by Mouaad el Salem. Both films use close-looking and observation of different, precarious communities to meditate on the nature of love and its political affects.

MOUAAD EL SALEM is director, activist and lead character of the debut film This Day Won’t Last. Mouaad lives and dreams in Tunisia. He has the impression he’s wasting his life in a place where he can’t be himself. He hopes to attend a film school someday to develop his talent and to make more films.

ANNE-MARIE COPESTAKE lives in Glasgow, working with moving image, sound, sculpture, print and performance. Attentive to temporary and longer term communities, narrative and emotion, her work is concerned with entangled social political conditions surrounding individual and collective choices, or a lack of choices, and an exploration of environments that may contribute essentially to these conditions.

Image: The Artist

I can fit a fist inside my mouth
a solo exhibition by Mathew Wayne Parkin

23 March – 18 May 2024

In a new solo exhibition, Parkin presents new sculptural and film work emerging from an impulse to explore the ways that accessibility and censorship come into play within interpersonal conflicts.

MATHEW WAYNE PARKIN is an artist, writer and sodden suspicious faerie. They often work with experimental moving image as part of an expanded practice that encompasses exhibition making, relationships, writing and programming. Parkin is particularly interested in autobiography, intimacy and speech. Resisting dominant and professionalised forms of media and moving image production, Parkin embraces DIY and home video techniques, as well as queer crip analysis.

Kirsty Russell, Runners and vents, 2024. Installation view. Courtesy Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Photo: Sally Jubb

Practising Bodies
a solo exhibition by Kirsty Russell

07 June – 03 August 2024

Kirsty Russell (b.1990) is an artist living in Aberdeen. Her work is concerned with support, and structures that underpin and maintain. With reference to the women in her family who work in positions of care, she often returns to the physical and emotional weight of the work that they do and to the repetitive nature of maintenance. Her work expands into places of care, such as hospitals and schools, through project worker and other supporting roles.

Recent exhibitions of Kirsty’s work include Platform: 2021, Edinburgh Art Festival (2021), A Spoon is the Safest Vessel, Glasgow Women’s Library (2019) and Common Positions curated by Sean Elder, for the Jerwood Staging Series (2019). In 2018 she was selected to undertake Syllabus IV, a collaboratively-produced alternative learning programme, jointly delivered by Wysing Arts Centre, Spike Island, Studio Voltaire, S1 Artspace, Eastside Projects and Iniva. In 2019 she was a Jerwood Bursary recipient. Kirsty is currently a Talbot Rice Resident, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh.

Kirsty also founded Underpinning, a discursive platform which invites others to share their practice through workshops and events. The project operates from Kirsty’s home in Aberdeen.

Ad(dress) Rehearsal -Wesley (2014) Marlene Smith

Ah, Sugar
a solo exhibition by Marlene Smith

22 August – 18 October 2024

Co-commissioned with Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art
Autumn 2024

Marlene Smith’s solo exhibition will include new sculptural and drawing work, emerging from the artists’ ongoing interest in the material and bodily qualities of sculptural practice and inquiries into the cyclical nature of social histories and familial entanglements.

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 ‘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.

Wheels and Water I (2022) - pencil & oil pastel on coloured inkjet print

A solo project by Nicola Singh

Spring 2025

Todmorden-based artist Nicola Singh presents a solo project developing new work in exhibition and performance related to ritualistic practices of vocal improvisation and meditation.

NICOLA SINGH is British-Panjabi performance artist and experimental vocalist, working between experimental new music and visual art. She uses text, sound and improvisation to explore the complexities of South-Asian diasporic identity. Her practice also incorporates film, drawing and movement practices.

Nicola is an associate-artist with Migrants in Culture, a migrant-led design agency made up of artists, designers, researchers and organisers with experiences of migration, diaspora and racialisation.

As part of their programme, Seán Elder is also extending a commitment to making Cubitt’s space available for usage by artists, workers and communities in a way that is sustainable for our small team.

Please email [email protected] to see if we can help support future activities.

This programme is supported by Arts Council England.

Marlene Smith’s solo exhibition is co-commissioned by Reid Gallery,
The Glasgow School of Art, where it will travel later in 2024.

SEÁN ELDER is a curator and writer from the Scottish Highlands, currently based in Birmingham, UK. Educated at Schools of Art in Birmingham, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, Elder recently completed a doctoral research project examining the roles and potentials of affect within curatorial writing practices. Previously they were Associate Curator at Grand Union, Birmingham, and has worked independently with a number of organisations and artists to develop writing, exhibitions, screenings, and events.

Elder has grown from, through, and with relationships with artists including; Gordon Douglas, Rami George, Benny Nemer, Kirsty Russell, Tako Taal, Rehana Zaman and many more, with organisations including; Jerwood Arts, London; Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee; Grand Union, Birmingham; BALTIC 39, Newcastle; The Stuart Croft Foundation; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Hospitalfield, Arbroath; BEK, Bergen; LUX Scotland.

"Towards the end of Annie Ernaux's The Years, the author describes herself in a phrase that could be translated as 'feeling still in a world which runs.'

What is evoked in reading this is a sentiment which has returned to me repeatedly in thinking about the artists and practices I hope to support during my time at Cubitt - developing relationships with artists whose awareness of the difficult and changing conditions that surround living and working in this current moment are instrumental to their practices.

I am excited to contribute a chapter to Cubitt's ongoing curatorial history which can at times feel like a multi-authored tapestry, and particularly to enable artists from around the UK to benefit from its position as a key voice in social and political contemporary art programming in London."

elle qui se sent immobile dans un monde qui court, Les Années (2008). Paris: Éditions Gallimard.

The Cubitt Curatorial Fellowship is unique opportunity of research and curatorial experimentation in the field of visual arts based on a 24 month residency at the renowned Cubitt Gallery, the only such scheme in the UK. The Curatorial Fellowship has pioneered an individual model and developed into a major platform for curatorial development, leading Cubitt’s reputation as an experimental, artist-led institution for nurturing, showcasing and reimagining emerging practice. Since its inception in 2001, the Fellowship has supported 13 curators & collectives at pivotal points in their career and propelled the work of over 400 emerging artists and curators, many that are now shaping the art world.

Cubitt is an independent charitable organisation, consisting of a non-profit Gallery and Curatorial Fellowship, a large-scale, locally focused Education and Community Programme and affordable artists studios. Since its founding in 1991, Cubitt has run as a co-operative led by 30 practising artists, a diverse community of practitioners from a variety of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers.

The Fellowship provides an opportunity for learning and for professional development; the Fellow crucially delivers an individual perspective through a curatorial programme that sits in-between the artist-led and the institutional. Responding to the challenges and requirements of a small, independent organisation active on the London and international scene for the past 31 years, the Fellow is professionally invested in Cubitt as a member of staff, and draws from the incredible resources of the organisation, including its archives, education projects, partnerships and community of artist members.

Banner Image: A Love (2019) Anne-Marie Copestake