Amelia Bywater and Christian Newby's collaborative project integrated collage, photography, sculptural installation and publications. Informing their joint practice is a consideration to how objects and images can be re-appropriated and reinterpreted as a means of investigating the interference, translation and stability of the image and its relationship to history, nostalgia, narrative and resolution.

The first part of their New Work Scotland Programme presentation consisted of a large-scale screen-print, presented in Collective’s Guest Room. The work rests on the precarious relationship individuals have with objects, historical narrative and their representation.

The second part of their presentation, shown later in 2012 consisted of a film titled Historic Plays Dissolving Songbook and a publication titled REBECCA. The film took the form of a series of silent plays, with the publication acting as a script. There was no narrative flow in the publication other than the mention of several peoples’ names to indicate different plays. A contextual collage was created by abstracting the elements of the work, disarranging time and space.

Read the New Writing Scotland text by Laura Edbrook here

Read the New Writing Scotland text by Jasmin Bray Triance here

Read the New Work Scotland 2011/12 publication here

New Work Scotland Programme was an initiative launched by Collective in 2000. Through an open call, New Work Scotland Programme identified and supported some of the most promising new artists working in Scotland - providing them with the opportunity to create new work and bring it to the attention of a wider public. The 2011/12 participants were Gordon Schmidt,
Rhianna Turnbull, Amelia Bywater & Christian Newby, Florrie James, Oliver Braid, Joey Villemont, Ash Reid and Jack McConville

New Writing Scotland grew out of New Work Scotland Programme and was initiated in 2004 in collaboration with Edinburgh College of Art's Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies, to promote creative writing about the visual arts coupled with targeted support to the exhibiting artists - providing them with them with their first artists text.