The Glasgow School of Art

Close Of Play: Climate Emergency and Creative Action

Sustaining a photographic practice in an ecological crisis

2pm, 3 December 2021 – book online via Eventbrite

This Close Of Play event brings together photographic and lens-based practitioners from Fix Photography Collective, The London Alternative Photography Collective and The Sustainable Darkroom. The event is hosted by GSA MFA. 

The talk provides a platform for conversations around issues of sustainabiity in terms of photographic materials and processes and will consider some of the questions surrounding the role of photography in an ecological crisis. It will also reflect on ‘the Collective’ as a means to support and enable practice, education and action. 

FIX Photography Collective is an artist-run collective founded by Christina McBride and Jess Holdengarde in Glasgow. The collective aims to bring together a community of lens-based practitioners who share a commitment to analogue processes, a concern for the natural environment and a commitment to expand new, exciting and more sustainable processes and materials within photography. 

The London Alternative Photography Collective was founded by Melanie King in 2013, and has grown from a small group of analogue and alternative photography practitioners to a collective which produces large-scale symposiums, exhibitions and workshops. 

The Sustainable Darkroom is an artist-run research, training and mutual learning programme, to equip cultural practitioners with new skills and knowledge to develop an environmentally friendly photographic darkroom practice. 

The event is an opportunity to hear more about practices and initiatives currently in place and how individuals  might wish to participate, support or expand ways of working.

The Glasgow School of Art’s yearlong series of online public talks, 'Close Of Play: Climate Emergency and Creative Action’ explores the ways in which creative actions and multi-disciplinary practice can address the climate emergency, sustainability, and climate justice. Each talk is hosted by a different department at the GSA.

Bios:

Hannah Fletcher is an artist, working with cameraless photographic processes, She is the founder of The Sustainable Darkroom and a facilitator of sustainability within the arts. She is also co-director of London Alternative Photography Collective. 

Jess Holdengarde  is a South African artist based in Glasgow and a recent graduate of the MFA at The Glasgow School of Art. She works predominantly in photography, film and auto fictional narrative. Her current practice investigates the entangled relationship of precarity and temporality with the natural environment. Jess is the co-founder of FIX Photography Collective. 

Melanie King is a visual artist and practice-based researcher at the Royal College of Art. She is interested in the relationship between starlight, photography and materiality. She is the founder of The London Alternative Photography Collective. 

Christina McBride is a Glasgow-based artist with a committed practice in analogue media and alternative printing processes. She teaches part-time on the MFA and Fine Art Photography programmes and is co-founder of FIX Photography Collective.