I watch as the low ceiling becomes translucent, I can see the blurred entities above me muffling and shuffling unaware of my presence beneath them. I watch, eyelashes flicker like a reel, recording their silent steps, their inaudible exchange of words and handheld objects. I could scream, but not here, not to them. Instead, I join those who stand beside me. Together we shout, together we exclaim, together we say no.
The Wardlaw Museum’s gallery is currently host to a multitude of multidisciplinary contributors–artists and archives. Their art a myriad of mediums, a collection of different vessels with different passages but all with the same message. Unified and equal, this array of shapes and their backgrounds share the same ceiling and the same flooring; but, for us hominids, our bodies and societal histories equivalate our value, no matter the fact of our living under the same sky and on the same earth.
I entered a Raffle and won a Franki. Raffles examined this inequality in her work as a photographer and campaigner, creating seemingly normal scenarios only to be juxtaposed by text extrapolated from the Edinburgh District Council Women’s Committee’s own conducted research. To imagine the woman pictured, in her empty living room except for the high heels by her feet, the teacup under her hand, and the magazine by her flank. As this is depicted in front of a box tv, I can’t help but transpose George Orwell’s telescreen unto it. It’s square eye observing the woman, only to send the truncheon wielding men after her…
“She lives with a successful businessman, loving father and respected member of the community. [image of women relaxing on the living room floor] // Last week he hospitalised her.”
The shape Raffles’s lady of leisure takes mirrors another work in the room; Mercedes Azpilicueta’s textile collage of woman, now and then, before and after, sewn into the real and digital fabric dioramas. The tapestry hoisted so close to the ceiling, it’s tassels like hundreds of fingers reaching towards the ceiling, yet they can’t reach; while its lower portion occupies the floor. A quiet chant vibrates through the tufts, the sound drowned out by the invisible barrier, soniferous and silent. The work touches upon the desensitisation of media and content, the editing and cropping, dissolving the fact of the act led by women protesters1.
Chiming alongside Azpilicueta is Alberta Whittle from the opposite wall, she invites me to absorb the sequence of recordings and images displayed on the wall, her liquid voice a siren luring me in. I hear her, I hear her words with my ears and my eyes. In yellow, the transcript dances across the blue wall, her breathy voice takes the form of a ripple in structure, breaking past the orthodox. This piece does not turn me into a zombie, it gives me a consciousness.
We highly recommend visiting this exhibition before it ends May 11th!
Opening times:
Weekdays (from April) 10am – 5pm
25 January – 11 May 2025
Location:
Wardlaw Museum, St Andrews, 7 The Scores, KY16 9AR
Written by A-J Reynolds
- Gibbs, T., HASTA. Say No! at the Wardlaw Museum (2025), https://www.hasta-standrews.com/reviews/2025/3/21/say-no-at-the-wardlaw-museum ↩︎
Gal bag. 