Fallow Land

Henna Asikainen, Rudy Kanhye & Lauren La Rose, Hanna Paniutsich, James Wyness

2024-2025 Agriculture Coastal futures

This new autumn/winter residency programme centres around subjects of farming land, agricultural waste, land ownership and migration linking historical agricultural land around Portobello & Craigentinny, to current farmlands around Jedburgh, Scottish Borders, alongside questions of marine health, ecological change, safe haven and displacement.

We are really thrilled to be able to announce a new autumn/winter residency programme that continues our UnderCurrent programme.

Fallow Land features four new artist residencies each developing new work across a six-month period to April 2025. It comes after a year having to pause our regular artist residency programme. We especially value the support Creative Scotland are now able to provide, to enable this long planned programme to now go ahead.

The project centres around subjects of farming land, agricultural waste, land ownership and migration linking historical agricultural and arable land around Portobello & Craigentinny, to current farmlands around Jedburgh, Scottish Borders, alongside questions of marine health, ecological change, safe haven and displacement.

Fallow land is defined as arable land that is set to rest for a period of time prior to cultivation, or meadows or pastures no longer being used for its usual crop growing for a period of at least one year.

We are working with artists/collaborators – Henna Asikainen, Rudy Kanhye & Lauren La Rose, Hanna Paniutsich and James Wyness.

The four residencies will result in a series of public events & exhibitions in the Spring 2025 which introduce our 10th year anniversary celebrations.

A series of field research participatory art events will also take place at a number of the sites across the six-month period working with associated artists and researchers.

Our aim is for these projects to collectively generate a means for change around the climate emergency in relation to the food system, enabling an increased sense of belonging and voice for participants and communities that improves well being, the health of place and learning through artistic practice. We will show the importance of social practice art to create room for dialogue between artists, residents and audiences.

The project is curated by Rosy Naylor, with scientific support for our ‘Residue’ residency (artist Hanna Paniutsich), from Professor Larissa Naylor, geomorphologist from University of Glasgow who has a specific knowledge experience relating to Seafield and the legacy of waste for the coastal zone.

About the artists:

Henna Asikainen is a multidisciplinary, socially engaged artist, whose work questions human relationships with nature, and the complex social and ecological issues that emerge. Many of Asikainen’s recent projects have been built around communal experiences within different landscapes and have examined issues including migration, climate justice and unequal access to nature. Her work consistently advocates for a philosophy of friendship and radical hospitality.

Within her residency over the next few months Henna will be drawing together parallels of the rested land; land that has been left to regenerate, to pause, with that of the safe haven, of finding a sense of home, through the way we relate to and engage with land and living landscape. Notions of welcome and belonging are key aspects guiding Henna’s work, that will inform her residency. During this period she will work with subjects of migration, displacement and ornithology, to explore nesting sites, whilst using storytelling as a means for exploring rest, dwelling and belonging.

Rudy Kanhye and Lauren La Rose have been collaborating for the past five years, shaping their artist duo identity focusing on labour, migration, disability and the environment. Rudy Kanhye, a disabled curator, artist, and researcher from the Global majority, has a unique personal background that deeply influences his work. Born in Dijon, France, to a Portuguese mother and a Mauritian father, Rudy’s childhood dual culture, mixed-race heritage and working class background inspire his practice.

Their residency will explore the ‘Sea of Bluebells’ – the oyster leaf plant, Mertensia Maritima, drawing together colonial histories and farming, with coastal ecologies and culinary performance. 

Taking inspiration from the fisherwomen of coastal Maharashtra (Western India), who farm oysters from bamboo structures behind their creek, together with the current reintroduction of oyster beds into the Forth (once the largest oyster farming site across Europe), Rudy and Lauren are looking to develop a new coastal planting project alongside performance and installation as part of their Fallow Land residency.

Hanna Paniutsich is a multimedia artist and researcher based in Glasgow (b. Minsk, Belarus) whose practice is heavily informed by scientific research within the fields of ecology, chemistry, biology and emergent technologies. She navigates different bio materials, satellite imagery, data and coding languages to form a range of multimedia installations, moving image and written works. Recent projects have focussed on subjects of radioactivity, in particular the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, exploring radiation, pollution and contaminated ground.

Hanna joins us, recently selected through an open call process, as the Residue Research Residency artist as part of this programme. We are looking forward to the way Hanna works to develop a project coming through research into agricultural and farming waste, to consider the idea of the exclusion zone and legacies of waste in relation to the former site of Craigentinny Meadows.

James Wyness is a multi-media artist based in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. He works primarily with sound and lens-based media, producing a range of work from documentary, archival and socially engaged processes to more experimental investigations. His current research converges on a long-term examination of social and environmental aspects of Jedburgh, the river and its basin. Past work has included the sonification of climate change data and the sonic documentation of Seville’s Holy Week Processions.

For his residency, James Wyness is working across subjects of farming, land ownership, and regenerative agriculture. Working directly with farmers around the hinterland of Jedburgh he will explore current farming methods for both arable and livestock farming, together with questions of land ownership, and concepts of fallow (arable land that is set to rest for a period of time prior to cultivation). Central to the residency is the developing of a local community that can build interest in place-centred collaborative ways of working together relating to healthy soils, food growing and farming, whilst also drawing connection with historical farming lands of Portobello. A series of events will emerge through his period of research over the coming months, with regular updates online and via social media.