Mount Stuart visual arts programme for 2019

Mount Stuart house and grounds, which will play host to a series of visual arts exhibitions this year.

Kicking things off on March 16 is Whitney McVeigh, whose ‘What is Worthwhile Doing in this World’ exhibition will run until April 21.

Bringing the Bute archive into the public domain, McVeigh focuses on intimate traces of Gwendolen Crichton Stuart (3rd Marchioness of Bute) and Augusta Crichton Stuart (4th Marchioness of Bute).

She presents curated assemblages of archive material and objects, together with her own open letter and texts addressed to the public reader and placed throughout the house. The title of the exhibition is taken from a lecture given by Lady Augusta to the North Bute Literary Society in 1934, and forms the basis of a sound installation recorded in collaboration with actor Maureen Beattie. Whitney McVeigh is represented by Eykyn Maclean in New York and Mimmo Scognamiglio in Milan.

From May 25 until November 3, Martin Boyce will have his work on display at Mount Stuart. Boyce presents a major commission in the landscaped grounds of Mount Stuart. Inspired by the memory of a tennis court long since dismantled, his ongoing interest in abandoned and disused landscape is awakened. The court is close to fiction, undocumented, a relic from the 1970’s. Boyce reconsiders and recomposes the structure.

Connecting with previous works such as the iconic 2002 Tramway installation Our Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours, Boyce continues his exploration of spaces in between use and misuse, intention and subsequent being. His intention for Mount Stuart is to involve fragments of these landscapes, an abstracted sense of place rather than a literal description: “one place shipwrecked within another”. Martin Boyce is represented by The Modern Institute, Glasgow.

From November until January 2020, there will be an Emerging Artist Residency at Mount Stuart. This new residency, inaugurated in 2018, creates an opportunity for emerging artists whose practice is rooted in social engagement, providing support at an early stage in their career. The residency focuses on benefiting the island’s communities, while giving time and space for the artist to explore their practice in response to a particular location and group of their choice.

The selection process is managed by a panel following an open call in June 2019.

Mount Stuart has had a visual arts programmes since 2001, to promote and facilitate interest in the contemporary visual arts and bring exhibitions of international standard to Bute and Argyll.

Complementing each exhibition is a programme of events, publications and educational activities.