As many of you know, each year Project Ability welcomes 4th year students from Glasgow School of Art to collaborate and work alongside our artists. Like everything else, this partnership had to pause over the last 2 years due to Covid. However, we are now delighted to share the work of Meadhbh Corrigan who managed to work remotely and join in online zoom sessions with ReConnect artists since the beginning of 2022! Meadhbh is a 4th year student in the Sculpture and Environmental Art department at GSA. We recently caught up with Meadhbh about the project:
‘Quilts’ A project by Meadhbh Corrigan x ReConnect
“For the past 8 weeks, myself and 5 members of the ReConnect Artist group have been meeting online for weekly workshops that I have been facilitating.
The themes of these workshops have centred around the idea of quilts, objects that represent care. Each week we have picked apart a different aspect of quilts and explored it in more detail. This has included their visual design – looking at the patterns and motifs that recur, the tactile nature of textiles, their association with the domestic space, and their potential to transform a space. We looked at the work of different African American quiltmakers and explored various community quilt projects, such as the AIDS Memorial quilt.
Each week I shared 3 artists connected with that week’s theme and provided a creative prompt that the artists used as inspiration to make something during the week. At the beginning of the workshop session, we would share what we had made with each other, and this allowed for some brilliant conversations and insights into each other’s work. All the participants were incredibly generous with one another, and despite the limitations of online meetings, we managed to create a generative, caring, and fun space together.
The initial aim of the workshops was to create a skill-sharing space, placing a focus on the talents already within the group. The workshop’s framework allowed the artists to organically share different pieces of knowledge with one another, in response to what we had each created. This ranged from artistic techniques in different media, such as watercolour and sewing, to recommendations for exhibitions to visit, information about local flora and folklore, to resources for buying art materials, artworks that might provide further inspiration, to personal stories and experiences, and much more. Everyone’s unique interests and talents were given an equal platform, allowing us to learn from one another in a non-hierarchical way.
I am so grateful to have been able to work with such an incredible group of artists, and I look forward to installing our final piece together when we complete our workshops.”
Meadhbh Corrigan
Below are some screenshots taken from the zoom sessions. We will soon be sharing more images of the quilt project over on our Instagram so make sure you’re following us to stay updated!
