Beings was a 2019 exhibition of artwork by young people from across Scotland, which explored the many ways in which creativity can help us to understand and express our emotions. In order to create their exhibition, thirteen groups, from youth clubs, schools, kinship care groups and employability projects, ran free with works from the National Galleries of Scotland collection, using them as springboards to create their own work.
Beings is now closed.
Shadow projections
Students from Waid Academy in Anstruther were inspired by the work of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) to create a series of beautiful shadow projections, presented at the exhibition in a mysterious fairground booth.
'I thought drawing with a nail was weird, but it let me get my anger out.'
This quote is from a participant of the Beings project exploring her own emotional world.
She was responding to an etching of a drawing by the Surrealist artist Alberto Giacometti, from the national art collection.
He’s drawn a sketch of an imaginary space, with an upright triangle and a suspended sphere. It’s eerie and bare, and there’s a sort of straggly sun in the top left corner.
There are no figures, just a set of lines generating tension in an architectural environment.
So we asked the participants to look at this image and then take the ‘straightest’ (least personal) thing in the classroom – i.e. a ‘ruler’ – and use it, and a nail, and a sheet of perspex, to explore their own feelings.
It shouldn’t have worked, but when we closed the blinds and projected a strong light through their scratched Perspex drawings onto the wall … the magic happened. It was like they could see the drawings on the inside of their mind … weird landscapes, palaces and perspectives, grids and geometries. It was like playing about with a torch under the bedcovers, when you were a kid.
Maybe a simple little line drawing had unlocked something and let it out. It was reassuring that the teenagers taking part in this workshop on the Beings project felt that these were precious moments because they had happened in a group …. and in school … of all places.
Clay heads
Elsewhere in the Beings exhibition is a section of clay heads, which were created by participants from Inverkeithing High School and Spartans Alternative School.
The young artists were asked to take a ball of clay and change it into something else. They were asked if it was possible to get inside a person's mind by getting hands-on with a lump of clay.
In this video, participants are shown working with clay.
Beings is proud to be supported by Players of People’s Postcode Lottery
