There are a host of brilliant events and openings happening  this month in GoMA, including the next installment of the Moving Image Season, Gallery 1. Clyde Reflections, an audio-video installation by the collaborative art/science team artist Stephen Hurrel and social ecologist Ruth Brennan, was selected by the curatorial team as beautiful and thought provoking work to continue the programme in the main gallery. It also relates to ongoing conversations that the gallery has been having about climate change, Glasgow and the visual arts while hosting Early Warning Signs, by Ellie Harrison and for Glasgow Green Year 2015.

 “We are delighted that Clyde Reflections has found a temporary home at GoMA as part of the upcoming Moving Image Season. Our approach to producing this film was to interview a diverse range of people connected to the Firth of Clyde as a way of gathering different perceptions of this important marine environment. It seems fitting that the film will be seen in a central gallery that attracts such a broad range of people, and in a city that is connected to the subject of the film by the River Clyde that flows through it.” Stephen Hurrel and Ruth Brennan, 2015

Clyde Reflections is a meditative, cinematic experience based on the marine environment of the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. This new thirty-three minute film opens up space for contemplation by reflecting the unfixed, shifting nature of relationships between people and place.

Produced by Hurrel and Brennan, the film features underwater and microscopic footage, combined with voice recordings of people who have a close relationship with, or specialist understanding of, the Firth of Clyde. These include a retired fisherman, a marine biologist, a diver, a marine conservationist, a spiritual leader and a physical oceanographer.

By engaging with people who connect deeply with their environment, Clyde Reflections presents a multi-perspective representation of a particular marine area in order to challenge a simplistic representation of this environment. The film provides a creative example of how ‘landscape’ is not a fixed entity, or separate from people, but is dynamic in terms of its socio-ecological properties as well as how it can be perceived.

Since 2011, Hurrel and Brennan have produced work which reveals a multi-layered reading of place. Previous collaborative work includes Sea Stories, an innovative online cultural map of the sea, based around the island of Barra, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, and the full-colour publication Belonging to the Sea, based around the islands of Arranmore, off Donegal in Ireland, and Barra (co-authored by Iain MacKinnon and Ruth Brennan, photography by Stephen Hurrel).

For links to all these collaborative projects see: mapping the sea

Clyde Reflections was commissioned by Imagining Natural Scotland with funding from Creative Scotland’s Year of Natural Scotland 2013 with additional funding from SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science) and support from MASTS (Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland).

Events for Clyde Reflections

Clyde Reflections – Artists’ Talk
2pm, 30 May
Gallery 2
Stephen Hurrel and Ruth Brennan will discuss their collaborative art-science projects to date. This includes a publication, an online cultural map of the sea and the film Clyde Reflections, which negotiates boundaries traditionally defined as Art, Nature and Science.

Moving Image Season: Clyde Reflections Seminar
12.30 -4.30 pm, 13 June
Gallery 1
Book tickets here

Join us for a seminar developed with artist Stephen Hurrel and social ecologist Ruth Brennan bringing together academics and thinkers to explore social-ecological aspects of Clyde Reflections and the connection to current discussions on human-nature relationships.

Speakers
Prof Andrew Patrizio, Professor of Scottish Visual Culture, University of Edinburgh
Prof Sian Sullivan, Professor of Environment & Culture, Bath Spa University
Stephen Hurrel, Artist & Filmmaker, Glasgow
Ruth Brennan, Social Ecologist, Scottish Association for Marine Science, Oban
Chris Fremantle, independent researcher and producer, writer and initiator of ecoartscotland