Selected Exhibitions, Events & Curatorial Projects

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David Cass
Joseph Calleja
Robert Callender

An Talla Solais, Ullapool, Scotland

Artists David Cass and Joseph Calleja started on a simple footing for this exhibition, picking the topic of coasts & coastlines principally because of the gallery’s location; but also – as artists drawn to water – they wanted to mark Scotland’s Year of Coasts & Waters.

The artists took the physical coastline as their starting point, beginning illustratively but gradually evolving. Thanks to Lateral Lab, they were permitted to include key artworks by the late coastally-concerned artist Robert Callender alongside their own. The works created for the show were just as much a response to Callender’s as they were the topic of the coast, not least in their use of found objects; a nod to the papier-mâché facsimiles that make Plastic Beach. If Callender’s works are reformed fragments of salvaged (man-made) sea debris, then Cass and Calleja’s are repurposed splinters from unknown homes – perhaps saved from decades more damp and discolouration – for they each source their materials from abandoned spaces, flea markets, salvage depots… acts which see the peripheral brought centre stage.

Throughout the creation process Cass and Calleja came together to cross reference ideas and explore forward avenues, yet ended up taking a completely different look at the coast. United in their materiality and examinations of edges, angles, borders, boundaries, they each created artworks discussing metaphorical coastlines; artworks which stand at the edge looking out, or indeed, looking in.

Banner image: Calleja | Trio above: Cass, Calleja, Cass + Calleja collaboration

Sixteen artists consider the theme of ways of thinking across five Japanese venues

Studio Kura
Paul Meikle, Yoshihito Kawabata, Yulia Kovanova, Kaori Matsumura

Art Spot Korin
Patrick M. Lydon & Suhee Kang, Niall Stevenson, Joseph Calleja & Clare Ghigo, Luis B. Guzmán

The Branch
Nishiko, Takaya Fuji

Chiodori Bunka
Melissa Lawson, Stephen Kavanagh

Kamoe Art Centre
Masahiro Kawanaka, Russell Beard

ways of thinking was Lateral Lab's two-part project to coincide with the UK in Japan 2019-20 programme. Part one was an exchange residency between Lateral Lab in Fife, Scotland, UK and Zerodate Art Centre in Odate, North East Japan; part two was a mapping exercise to capture, locate and document where and how the creative energy of the past years of Lateral Lab's residency programme made its presence felt in the places and through the relationships and networks that have developed, grown and connected with others to affect and sustain positive change. Both elements contribute to the international legacy of Tokyo's hosting of the Olympics by marking and continuing the process of artistic environmental endeavour in a Japanese and international context. 

The extensive but modest mapping and site-specific element of the project shared the work of Lateral Lab's artists and collaborators from Japan and Scotland with audiences in both countries, through new works and interventions for public sites across Japan including in Tokyo, Odate City, Nagoya, Yokohama, Shizuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Toshigi, Hiroshima, amongst others. 

ways of thinking plotted people, places and how we connect through experience, geography and environment, capturing the cross-currents that have, and can, create new understandings and practices. 

Cultural exchange is increasingly important in these challenging times and Lateral Lab continues to be fully committed to enabling and supporting the exchange process for individual artists and host organisations; promoting and strengthening the international networks that evolve from them.

Emily Atkins
Martin Crawford
Portend Collective
Kirsty Smith

Espacio Creativo Veta, Santiago, Chile

Correspondence pulled together works from Scottish and Japanese artists dealing with materiality, environment and connection. Works that sit at a point where their ideas draw close together with the philosophies of author Tim Ingold. Works that explore our often invisible yet instinctively undeniable connections to each other and our environments. Each artist chose their own path to explore these deeply rooted connections, but common elements of nature, storytelling and materiality were used as investigative tools: for as Ingold writes, “You would think that the best way to fathom the depths of human experience would be to attend to the world itself, and to learn directly from what it has to tell us.”

Banner image: Kirsty Smith