‘anywhere in the universe’ – Rabiya Choudhry, Kate Davis, Sean Edwards, Onyeka Igwe, Yuri Pattison

Saturday 28 January 2023 19:05
Saturday 30 September 2023 20:05

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‘anywhere in the universe’ is a new project that addresses the public library, looking at their present, past and future through a series of artists’ commissions by Rabiya Choudhry, Kate Davis, Sean Edwards, Onyeka Igwe, and Yuri Pattison. Launching in early 2023 with the work of Rabiya Choudhry, each of the commissioned works will be presented incrementally and sited in different locations across Glasgow.

Each artist will approach the library from differing positions and perspectives, from the nature of the buildings, or the systems that they use to organise information, to their social purpose. The project engages with libraries as essential spaces for knowledge exchange and community-building; as inspirational portals for imagination, belonging and civic identity; and as spaces for refuge and radical renewal.

Rabiya Choudhry has produced new illuminated signage for East-End libraries which are of particular significance to the artist. The signs borrow Carnegie’s motif of a flaming torch; a feature of many Carnegie library buildings as well as an emblem used as the bookplate for Carnegie’s own private library collection. In Choudhry’s work, the signs bear the words of African-American civil rights activist and organiser, Ella Baker (1903–1986) who worked to instigate societal change through individual and grassroots community empowerment. Baker’s words ‘give light and people will find the way’, invokes a spirit of togetherness and inspires hope for change.

Onyeka Igwe will develop a series of performances informed by pedagogical plays and socialist-realist participatory theatre to think through ways in which meaning is made collectively and examine how we tend to think about institutions. Working with a group of non-professional actors, the performances will address histories of institutional formation, revision and development within Glasgow’s municipal libraries, including early debates for and against free libraries, committees involved in selecting and banning books from the libraries, and recent community consultations.

Yuri Pattison’s sculptural video installation situated in the Mitchell Library will explore the shifting history of access to information. Paying attention to the establishment and management of libraries and various technologies that have systematised, contained and distributed knowledge, Pattison’s installation draws connections from the chained libraries of the Middle Ages, to the ‘open stacks’ model pioneered at Carnegie Libraries, encompassing more recent digital trends and the rapid reorganisation and encircling of knowledge through networked technology, artificial intelligence and corporate power. Speculating on the future trajectory and structural language of knowledge sharing, Pattison makes clear the political, material and social impacts of digital technology and the increasing privatisation of everyday life in our data-driven age.

Further details on projects by Kate Davis and Sean Edwards will be announced in 2023.

Yuri Pattison, ‘sun_set pro_vision’ (2020 — 2021). Vulcan game engine software, modified Dell PowerEdge R620, GeForce GTX 1650 GPUs, uRADMonitor MODEL A3 atmospheric monitor, HD digital signage monitors, Dexion slotted angle, aluminium EUR pallets, Dell PowerEdge R420 server chassis, “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World” (London: Benj. Motte,1726) book, decapped GPU chip, cables, ethernet switch, padlock. Courtesy of the artist and mother's tankstation, Dublin & London. Photo: Ros Kavanagh. Commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin.

Glasgow has a particularly rich network of libraries, from many small, neighbourhood lending libraries, to the vast Mitchell Library – one of the largest reference libraries in Europe. Several of the local ‘district’ libraries were endowed by Scottish philanthropist and industrialist, Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) in the early 20th century, some of the 2,811 lending libraries he created world-wide (Carnegie’s work during his lifetime was not without issue, with his extreme wealth built on aggressive industrial practices and racial segregation in US libraries). The district libraries were intended to provide free access to books and represented new technology in the distribution and systematisation of knowledge, whilst providing ‘relief from the pressures of daily life’ in specially designed buildings with high windows, vaulted ceilings, and ornate designs, described at the time by Carnegie as ‘palaces for the people’. The remaining Carnegie libraries in Glasgow, where still in use as such, have evolved and diversified to serve their contemporary communities.

Today, despite the drive to transpose many forms of knowledge online, there remains a distinct role for libraries. They are some of the last truly civic spaces in the heart of our communities: non-monetised, inter-generational spaces of exchange and refuge open to everyone, offering access to information, facilitating communal empowerment and advocacy, attributes that have been consistently brought into sharp focus over recent years and during the Covid-19 pandemic when many were closed.

Talking about his love of books to The Art Newspaper, American artist Charles Gaines explained that in his youth he had never been introduced to the true power and significance of African art; “but then I started reading some books,” he says, “and, obviously, books are the most ingenious invention in the history of anywhere in the universe.” It is through that notion, of holding books in the highest regard and valuing the possibility of discovery, of the adjacent, the tangent and the surprising, that our public libraries will be explored, unfolding as new bodies of knowledge.

Onyeka Igwe, ‘a so-called archive’ (2020). Film still. Courtesy of the artist.

About the artists /

Rabiya Choudhry was born in Glasgow in 1982 to Scottish and Pakistani parents. Choudhry studied at Edinburgh College of Art to MA level, graduating in 2006. She lives and works in Edinburgh.

Choudhry’s work explores the themes of identity and cultural displacement in contemporary British society with a darkly comedic approach. Her work expresses the complicated coupling of eastern and western cultures in richly vibrant portrayals of the different autobiographical portrayals. She makes paintings including large scale canvases, miniatures, murals, small painted sculptures, textiles and text-based artworks.

Recent exhibitions include ‘TESTAMENT’, CCA Goldsmiths, London (2022); ‘ambi’ with Fiona Jardine, Raisa Kabir, and Hanneline Visnes, CCA Glasgow; ‘Fabric of Society’ with Raisa Kabir, Jasleen Kaur and Rae-Yen Song, Glasgow International (both 2021); ‘BIG BROON STRESSED OOT EYES’ commissioned by Tramway, Glasgow (2020); ‘Coco!Nuts!’ (solo) Transmission Gallery (2018) and ‘DCA Thomson’, Dundee Contemporary Arts (2016-17).

Choudhry’s work ‘Dad’ (2018) is on permanent display at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow after a major acquisition through the Contemporary Art Society’s Rapid Response Fund in 2020.

Kate Davis (b. New Zealand, lives and works in Glasgow) works across film/video, drawing, printmaking, installation and bookworks. Questioning how to bear witness to the complexities of the past, Davis’ artwork is an attempt to reconsider what certain histories could look, sound and feel like. This has often involved responding to the aesthetic and political ambiguities of historical artworks and their reception.

Solo exhibitions include: Neuer Aachener Kunstverein; A-M-G5 at 20 Albert Road, Glasgow; LUX, London; Stills, Edinburgh; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand; The Drawing Room, London; Temporary Gallery, Cologne; GoMA, Glasgow; Galerie Kamm, Berlin; Museo de la Ciudad and La Galeria de Comercio, Mexico; Tate Britain, London; and Kunsthalle Basel amongst others.

Recent group exhibitions and screenings include: ‘Termite Tapeworm Fungus Moss’, CCA Glasgow; ‘Chips and Egg’, The Sunday Painter, London; 35th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival; ‘Class Reunion’, MUMOK, Vienna; ‘A Slice Through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings’, Modern Art Oxford; ‘The Driver’s Seat’, Cubitt Gallery, London; The Margaret Tait Award 2016/17; Cinenova Presents ‘Now Showing’, LUX Cornwall; LUX/ BBC Artists and Archive commission; ‘GENERATION’, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; ‘HOUSE WORK CASTLE MILK WOMAN HOUSE’, Glasgow Women’s Library; ‘Art Under Attack’, Tate Britain; ‘The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing’, Hayward Touring Exhibition; ‘Art Sheffield 10’ (collaborative commission with Jimmy Robert); and ‘Das Gespinst’, Stadtisches Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach.

Sean Edwards (b. Cardiff 1980), graduated with an MA from the Slade School of Art in 2005, and is currently Programme Director for Fine Art & Photography at Cardiff School of Art and Design. Edwards’ work investigates the sculptural and political potential of the everyday, often using remnants and fragments of previous activities as a starting point. In many of the works there is a sense of objects being in-progress, indeterminate and open to change. The work intertwines simple sculptural objects, mixed media installations and audio-visual components with personal family and political histories.

He represented Wales at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and was awarded the Turner Prize Bursary in 2020 for the installation ‘Undo Things Done’.

Recent solo exhibitions include 'chased losses', Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2022) ‘distant borrowing’, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2021); ‘Undo Things Done’, Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham, Senedd, National Assembly for Wales and Bluecoat, Liverpool (both 2020); ‘Drawn in Cursive’, MOSTYN, Llandudno and Network, Aalst, Belgium; ‘Putting Right’ Limoncello, London (both 2014); ‘Resting Through’ Kunstverein Freiburg (2012); and ‘Maelfa’ Spike Island, Bristol (2011). Group shows include ‘British Art Show 9’, Hayward Touring and ‘The World We Live In’, Southbank Art Centre, London (both 2022); ‘Olaph the Oxman’, Copperfield Gallery, London (2019); ‘49a’, Limoncello, Woodbridge (2016); ‘This is Your Replacement’, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2016); ‘Un Nouveau Festival 2015’ Centre Pompidou, Paris; and ‘Finite Project Altered When Open’, David Dale Gallery & Studios, Glasgow (both 2015), amongst others.

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She lives and works in London, UK. Her work is animated by the question “how do we live together?” with a particular interest in sensorial, spatial, and non-canonical ways of knowing. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural “figure-of-eights”, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives.

Solo exhibitions and commissions include ‘Ungentle’ (with Huw Lemmey), Studio Voltaire, London; ‘The Miracle on George Green’, Highline, New York (both 2022); ‘a so-called archive’, LUX, London; ‘THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM’, Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada, (both 2021), ‘There Were Two Brothers’, Jerwood Arts, (2019), and ‘Corrections’ with Aliya Pabani, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada (2018). An upcoming solo exhibition, ‘A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver)’ will open at MoMA PS1, New York in March 2023.

Recent group exhibitions include ‘Reconfigured’, Timothy Taylor, New York 2021; Archives of Resistance, Neue Galerie, Innsbruck, Austria, (both 2021); ‘KW Production Series’, KW Berlin (2020); ‘New Labor Movements', McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; ‘[POST] Colonial Bodies II’, CC Matienzo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2019); there’s something in the conversation that is more interesting than the finality of (a title)’, The Showroom, London (2018); and ‘World Cup!’, articule, Montreal (2018).

In 2022 Igwe was nominated for the Jarman Award and shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022–2024. She was awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize; the 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film; and was the 2019 recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.

The practice of Yuri Pattison (b. 1986, Dublin, Ireland; lives and works in Paris) connects and materialises the intangible spaces between the virtual and physical through video, sculpture, installation, and online platforms. It explores how new technologies such as the digital economy and online communication have shifted and impacted the systemic frameworks of the built environment, daily life, and our perceptions of time, space, and nature.

Solo exhibitions include ‘clock speed (the world on time)’, mother’s tankstation, London, (2022); ‘the engine’, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2020-21); ‘trusted traveller’, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2017); and ‘user, space’, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2016). Selected recent and upcoming group exhibitions include ‘Ruhr Ding: Schlaf’, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Germany; ‘Radical Landscapes’, Tate Liverpool (both 2023); ‘Post Capital’, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022); ‘One Escape at a Time’, 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul; ‘No Linear Fucking Time’, BAK, Utrecht; ‘Proof of Stake' – Technological claims’, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg; ‘The Ocean’, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway; ‘TECHNO, MUSEION’, Bolzano, Italy (2021); ‘Long Live Modern Movement’, CCS Bard, Hessel Museum, New York (2020) and ‘Phantom Plane, Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future’, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019).

Kate Davis, ‘Charity’ (2017) 16min HD video, installation view Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Ruth Clark.

Project Details

Sean Edwards –

Yuri Pattison –

Kate Davis –

Onyeka Igwe –

Rabiya Choudhry –

Each artist project was accompanied by writing available from library locations for the duration of the project and from The Common Guild website for a limited time. The texts will be gathered together in a publication to be released in October 2023.

Video: Courtesy of The Ampersand Foundation. Realised by Piotr Sell.