Through Growing Global Networks, artist Bobbi Cameron was supported to travel to attend Vienna Art Week and Interdependencies: Perspectives on Care and Resilience within Visual Art Practice Symposium at Migros Museum Fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.
‘My aims for this international work were to contribute to the development of my work through dialogues that will shape the future life of this project.
I wanted to consider how I might extend the life of my work outside Scotland as I prepare a sound and film installation for the Glasgow International Festival, which is being developed with the Travelling Gallery, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Hospitalfield Arts in Arbroath, and Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.
I attended the symposium ‘Interdependencies: Perspectives on Care and Resilience’ at Migros Museum in Zurich, which resonates with my current research. I also met my mentor, Michael Birchall, in person rather than online. I also attended Vienna Art Week, where I visited many galleries and met many artists and producers.
All of this aided my thinking about a broad range of perspectives of care within contemporary art practice. This enabled me to discuss and more deeply consider the presentation of my developing work for its presentation in both Glasgow International and future iterations.
An additional value was the beginning of dialogues with the British Council team in Austria and Zurich about the practical support they can offer my practice in these places/networks. I further developed my own potential to practice more generally within a European context.
My current work is inspired by thinking about dementia as an experience of time travel and how this time travel is often encouraged with sound.
I am working with adults with dementia on the Scottish Slate Islands (where I live) and considering what it means to be able to exist in multiple places, times and experiences at once and what these journeys can do to enhance our physical experience of the world now.
The parallels between the works I saw during my research travels and my own experiences of working with shamanism have been useful to me, as has my consideration of how sound is also the portal through which we travel to different worlds, experiences, and times.
On a practical issue, I was advised by professionals to recognise the reduced capacity of the UK-based professionals for international networking (due to post-Brexit withdrawal from EU networks, lack of incentives for non-UK people to visit the UK, and the general cost of living crisis) and to continue to prioritise travel/networking beyond the UK in order to inform my work and secure opportunities.
This small pot of funding was immensely useful, but it was only enough to scratch the surface of beginning dialogues/relationships with folk, so that’s what I’m focusing on now.’
Bobbi Cameron