Jupiter Artland Foundation announces its 2021 artistic programme, including new commissions by leading British artists Tracey Emin CBE, RA, and Rachel Maclean, alongside the return of its unique music and performance festival Jupiter Rising.
Scottish artist Rachel Maclean is set to unveil upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop, the 2021 permanent commission for Jupiter Artland and her most ambitious artwork to date. Known for her satirical characters and meticulously crafted fantasy worlds, Rachel Maclean has rapidly established herself as one of the most distinctive creative voices in the UK. This will be the artist’s first permanent outdoor installation, and will see Maclean debut her newest persona Mimi, a cartoon princess who isn’t all that she first appears. In response to the invitation from Jupiter to create a new artwork for the landscape, Maclean turned her attention to the woodland, and the role forests play within fairy tales, being at once places of magic, of danger, of transformation and where the normal rules of daily life no longer apply. Situated at the end of a woodland path, Maclean has created a candy coloured toy shop, seemingly abandoned and derelict on the outside, yet upon entering, reveals itself to be flipped upside down. This is the world of Mimi, Maclean’s first fully animated heroine made with motion capture, a darkly arch character for our generation, who invites us into the topsyturvy world of end-game capitalism. Combining animation and architecture, upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop will be unveiled at Jupiter on 8 May 2021.
Traey Emin’s first Scottish show since 2008, I Lay Here For You, opening on the 28 May, will offer an intimate encounter with love, loss, grief and longing set against the domestic architecture and informal woodland of Jupiter Artland. Viewed within the context of a home, the work is imbued with connotations of both warmth and vulnerability, resonating with Tracey Emin’s belief of the ‘personal as political’. Postponed from the 2020 programme due to the coronavirus pandemic, Tracey Emin’s participation in Jupiter Artland’s 2021 season begins with the unveiling of a large bronze sculpture I Lay Here for you, a nude female figure scaled up from a hand-sized clay figurine, pressed and shaped in the artist’s hand. Lying in repose within the woodland at Jupiter Artland, the figure rests in the landscape on its own terms, creating a dialogue with Tracey Emin’s new paintings, drawings and neon works presented in Jupiter’s galleries.
Jupiter Rising, Jupiter Artland’s two-day performance, art and music festival, returns in August 2021. Alongisde the weekend of events the Rising Residency
Programme, a creative residency for Scotland-based artists co-curated with OH141’s Sarra Wild, will be open for applications in the Spring. Works from the inaugral Rising Residency will be available to view online via Jupiter Artland’s website and Glasgow-based platform OH141 from 28 November 2020. Three Scottish artists Farah Hussain, TAAHLIAH and HUSS took part in the first residency earlier this year, undertaking a series of virtual tutorials with mentors facilitated by Jupiter and OH141’s Sarra Wild. The resulting moving image artworks speak to an emergent club scene in Scotland that has gone to ground, but not disappeared, as a result of the pandemic. Glasgow-based artists TAAHLIAH and HUSS premiere I’ve Stopped Understanding Myself, a audiovisual tapestry combining TAAHLIAH’s pulsating soundtrack with HUSS’ emotionally charged video self-portrait. Drawing on HUSS’ awareness of the violence experienced by LGBTQ+ communities in his native Egypt, and TAAHLIAH’s experiences as a black trans artist working in music in Scotland, the duo’s three minute video explores the need for anonymity for identities at risk of criminalisation. Dundee-based artist Farah Hussain’s work Safe Space examines the physical conditions that enable personal identity to be expressed, without fear. Farah’s fantastical and immersive environment, created within her own bedroom studio is an expression of joy, combining club and queer aesthetics, alongside domestic imagery and photographs of her mother.
In 2021, Jupiter Artland will continue its mission to engage every child in Scotland with art through its learning and outreach programme. Through this year’s lockdown over 50 school groups visited the park for a unique learning experience, accessing world-class artworks in a safe environment, where they are invited to learn, create and explore. For the forthcoming year, teachers can apply for a free learning visit online.