Behind the Museum at Achtercairn, Gairloch there is a little hill called Torr na h-Ulaidh, or the hill of the treasure. Local folklore tells us that a treasure was once buried at the back of this hill by people fleeing from an enemy and that it remains hidden to this day. It is from this place name that we have taken the title for the exhibition, Ulaidhean/Treasures.
The selection committee at the Society of Scottish Artists, who organised this exhibition, selected Siregar’s digital photograph entitled Pandemic Isolation Escape, a family portrait from the day her husband came out of Covid Isolation after returning from his work in South Sudan in 2020. This piece previously featured in her solo show, ‘Fragility’, at Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, in February 2024.
The Big Art Show has successfully established itself as the landmark art event for Paisley and is a splendid example of artists, communities and businesses working together, in co-operation, boosting visitors to our local economy, and aiding the town’s cultural and physical regeneration. It is hoped that visitors to the show will appreciate the skill, tenacity, and oeuvre of our exhibiting artists who have been willing to bare their souls, tell a story, and express their ideas.
Four of Siregar’s pieces were chosen for this show: two digital photography works, a video piece and an installation.
AWAKE was an exhibition reflecting on the ancient past and the possibility of a greener future. From the Great Green Wall across West Africa to the rewilding of the Atlantic Rainforest up and down the West Coast of Scotland to conservation and rewilding of the Indonesian forests, our future must be one of respect and love for a resurgent nature. Meanwhile, the ancient oak forest which hosted the meeting of these three artist creators, holds so many echoes of an ancient past when similar forests stretched across much of Scotland and folk survived and flourished by working with and within them. These three contrasting practitioners, Andrea Dow through poetry, Anthea Spivey through photography and Grace Siregar, through mixed media, were all reflecting on the environments they have grown up in and their hopes and fears for the future.
Dow’s poetry takes us down under the forest to her imagined world where grief and hope exist alongside each other entwined amongst the forest roots. Spivey takes us to people she has grown up and lived amongst in Senegal and draws attention through her photography to the need for acceptance and understanding between people, in this case people with albinism. In Siregar’s work, she invites you to explore the interaction between nature and the world of modern materials and how we need to heal our relationship with the natural world.
Bringing their contrasting histories with them, Dow from Bute, Siregar from Indonesia via Senegal and Spivey from Australia and New Zealand via Senegal, the Balnakailly Woods brought them together in an intriguing trio of media and styles through their poetry, photography and installation art.’
These Days was a three person collaborative exhibition to celebrate the easing of Covid restrictions with an exhibition by artist Grace Siregar, poet Andrea Dow and film maker Scott O’Neill.
Their online collaboration entitled ‘These Days’ was also presented in physical form with an exhibition of poetry, painting and film.
Following on from her 2019 exhibition in the Bank of Ideas, Grace Siregar explored her experiences of the Covid-19 lockdown in our home, the Isle of Bute, since March 2020. She invited poet Andrea Dow and film-maker Scott O’Neill to join her in this collaborative piece. Siregar’s contribution is a 3m x 1.5m painting and a performance art piece at the exhibition opening. Andrea Dow has written ‘These Days’, a series of poems and Scott O’Neill has woven them all together in his film.
The exhibition was held at the Bank of Ideas gallery at 17 High Street, Rothesay by Rothesay Castle from Saturday 22nd May to Friday 4th June 2021.”
This one-woman exhibition includes painting, photography and video, focusing on her family’s experience of lockdown. Grace’s husband was working overseas therefore this period meant home isolation every time he returned from his work to spend his leave with family. This period also provided time for reflection, focusing on Grace’s family connections in Indonesia, particularly with her father who lives there and her mother who passed away some years ago. The paintings in particular evoke the sense of tiptoeing around our own mortality that many of us felt during and after lockdown. The exhibition is an expression of Grace’s personal experience but also an acknowledgement of all our journeys through the pandemic and our shared humanity facing adversity. On display 3 – 24 Feb 2024.
St John the Baptist Church, Hove, UK Brighton Festival 6 – 29 May 2011
Siregar’s second solo show in the UK explores the relationship between emotional turmoil and the tranquility that sanctuaries, or places of asylum, can offer — and also the human capability to experience the greatest confusion and the deepest calm within one being, sometimes simultaneously.
St John the Baptist Church, Hove, UK Brighton Festival 6 – 29 May 2011
Siregar’s second solo show in the UK explores the relationship between emotional turmoil and the tranquility that sanctuaries, or places of asylum, can offer — and also the human capability to experience the greatest confusion and the deepest calm within one being, sometimes simultaneously.
