About

The Project

This project is a creative investigation of the Fair Isle designs’ reputed origins, Andalusia, and migration to the Outer Hebrides. The project challenges the assumptions underwriting our cultural identity. It will explore if there are similarities of thought and creative processes linking Islamic/Spanish Andalusia and Scandinavian/Scottish Fair Isle. Supported by Creative Scotland, and in partnership with Shetland Museum and Archives and The House for an Art Lover in Glasgow, the project will run from August 2016 to October 2017.

“My intention over the next 15 months is to amplify the value and necessity of cultural exchange and diversity at a time when the demarcations between ‘us and them’ seem to be hardening.”

The Artist

Simone Landwehr-Traxler was born in Munich, Germany, training initially as a traditional woodcarver in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. then studying  Fine Art in Dresden before completing her studies with a Masters in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art in 2001.

Having lived in Scotland for 17 years and supported myself,through commissions, grant funding, teaching, and other art projects. I have been a  professional artist for over 14 years, making sculptural and video work.

Stand out moments include winning the Dark Lights commission in 2001 and a solo show in Tramway, representing Tramway at the Glasgow Art Fair and the Melbourne Biennial.

Landwehr-Traxler’s practice and research is anchored in an evolving critical investigation of the role of “…forgotten memories and the absences these lost moments create. As such, my work draws heavily on the experiences of others and is stimulated through contact with other disciplines and paradigms.”

Exploring this thesis across several projects and contexts including ‘Cartographic Homunculus’  (2012) a public engagement project run out of the CCA which remapped and redefined Glasgow through the eyes, history and priorities of its citizens questioning collective memory and identity. Berlin DNA of a City (2012) which looked at the history and priorities of the city through juxtaposing the competing civic, political, and ideological priorities.

As lead artist in an ambitious and well-resourced Art and Science project Fabric of the Land, (2013) a partnership project with Aberdeen University, Dana Petroleum, and the City of Aberdeen she explored the retention and transmission of information in the solid world of Geology juxtaposed with the fragility and transience of human memory and experience.

Off the Grid’ (2014) an Art and Science residency in partnership with Edinburgh University Anthropology Department I visually and creatively explored how human experience and movement ethnograms might potentially be captured and extrapolated.

Vein of Thought 2015/16 collaboration with Edinburgh University looking at the impact of small vessel disease.

 

 

© 2017 Simone Landwehr-Traxler, All rights reserved.