what’s on at 6 william street
Wasted Faces // may 3 - 17
The identity of rubbish. The Wasted Faces project is a visual exploration of the personal rubbish created by daily practical usage and lifestyle choices which impact the environment. This is explored in the form of masks overlaying the underlying personality responsible for waste creation and reflecting our seemingly innocuous interactions with disposable products. The project is a group endeavour from the Cannibal Liberation Front, an anarchistic kollectiv using art to create uncomfortable narratives around the effects of consumerism, identity, psychology, sexuality and personal/societal insanity.
Image credit: Ian Allaway
displace / disperse may 24 - june 14
a sustainable darkroom exhibition
Photography is a system of many moving parts, and the production of its materials affect people and places in disproportionate ways. Silver is blasted from the ground to make photographic emulsions; chemicals soak in solvents to make film bases - slick and slippery and fine. Photographic industries build on ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples; polluting rivers, skies, and bedrocks. The resources used by these industries are colossal, unbelievable even.
And the waste, the waste, the waste.
This exhibition takes one element of photography’s tangled story, to imagine ecological futures for photography. Reworking ‘waste’, the exhibition reconstitutes the value of materials typically discarded in photographic practice. Left-over darkroom chemistries reform as pigments on paper. Discarded items become light-sensitive, bursting from grey to cyan blue. The expiry dates of photographic paper are reversed, revealing photographs developed in plant-based chemistries.
This approach is born out of rethinking photography as a collision of many worlds. It is geology, microbe, metal, labour, waste, violence, life; displaced and dispersed. It is its own ecosystem, an intricate network, an ecology of photography.
Image credit: Hannah Fletcher
previously at 6 william street
Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Sparta and Collaborations, Photographs by Robin Gillanders // april 6 - 26
In conjunction with the release of Studies in Photography’s newest book Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Sparta and Collaborations, Photographs by Robin Gillanders, there will also be a dedicated exhibition at 6 William Street.
The exhibition presents important photographs made at Little Sparta, the garden of artist/poet Ian Hamilton Finlay and collaborations with him, undertaken by Robin Gillanders between 1993 until Finlay’s death in 2006. Additional photographs made after 2006 relating to Finlay and Little Sparta are also included.
Join us on Saturday 6 April for an afternoon opening reception from 2-6PM.
Sága // a group show // march 15 - 30
Heather Anderson, Alix Petty, Amy Robson, Emma Stark, and Kajsa Wingerup.
This exhibition explores the nature of symbolism, and identifies common themes of family, folklore, women and self-portraiture. Through painterly images and powerful story-telling, each individual work evokes strong emotions from the viewer, whether that is through escapist self-portraits in nature (Heather Anderson - Morpheus), a multidisciplinary exploration of Northumbrian folklore (Alix Petty -Tales of Norþanhymbre), a documentary-style series examining OCD through surreal self-portraits and experimental scans (Amy Robson - The Observer), fictional photo story following two sisters that represent the earth elements (Emma Stark - Fire and Water), or a series of images representing the cyclical connection between women and nature, inspired by Celtic and Scandinavian folklore and fairytales (Kajsa Wingerup - The Divine Feminine).
Join us for a series of friendly artist talks with the exhibitors from 4-6PM on Friday 15 March, and then for the opening reception from 6-9PM.
now love, solen collet //
feb 23 - mar 8
“I started making self portraits as a way of exploring the roles expected of women, regardless of how they’ve been treated, after becoming a single mum in 2016. I made the first of the ‘red room’ series then, only picking it up again in 2019 as a way of discussing my experience of living with Poland Syndrome, which I’d recently been given a diagnosis of. Since then, self portraiture has become a language of processing past abuse and medical trauma but also a way to play and connect with others, to regain and explore my autonomy, grief, love, desire…”
“I have found creating different characters, using digital photography, along with 35mm, medium format, along with short form writing and poetry is a world I can get lost and found in.”
Join us for the opening reception on Friday 23 Feb from 6-9PM.
Solen Collet is also a commercial photographer, working mainly in events and portraiture by day.
dreaming difference, david williams // feb 3 - feb 17
The first Studies in Photography curated exhibition at 6WS will be a retrospective of the work of acclaimed photographer David Williams, following the release of the second in the Scottish Photographic Artists series, DREAMING DIFFERENCE, published last year. The exhibition, like the book, will be a selection of works taken from throughout his career and will be a celebration of the contribution David has made to photography in Scotland and beyond.
The Sound and Vision of Dreaming Difference - Fri 9 February, 6:30PM - 8:30PM
David Williams studied English and Sociology before becoming a professional musician and songwriter. He took up photography in 1980 and his work has been widely exhibited and published internationally. Williams is the recipient of a range of major awards and prizes including the BBC Television 150 Years of Photography Award. In 2018 he was nominated for the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. Williams became Head of Photography at Edinburgh College of Art in 1990 and was appointed Reader in 2003. He retired from ECA in 2017.
His practice is wide-ranging, but in recent years has been increasingly informed by the notion of nonduality. This is particularly evident in a range of projects undertaken in Japan.
low-sodium, night frequencies
julie laing // dec 1 - jan 26
Since 2015 I've been documenting low pressure sodium (LPS) streetlights and their impact on our nightscapes. Their distinctive yellow-orange glow produces a monochrome effect which often goes unnoticed, and is experienced by some as depressing, even nauseating. low-sodium, night frequencies brings together images made over eight years and offers an alternative response that draws attention to the surprising beauty of this form of illumination.
To the eye, LPS light is experienced as intense yellow to soft, dark orange, depending on other natural and built environment variables, and it renders our ‘everynight’ streets uncanny. In this selection from the project it links diverse locations, from Lewis to Liverpool, and the 1930s (when they were first installed) with the present. As the discontinued lamps are gradually replaced by more sustainable white-blue alternatives, and shift from now to nostalgia, these images of a once commonplace phenomenon trigger embodied memory, and invite attention to this disappearing phenomenon.
I’d like to thank The Jill Todd Photo Award, Street Level Photoworks Round Table, my West College Scotland colleagues, past and present, and Agitate Gallery in enabling me to develop and share this project.
The opening reception will take place on Friday 1 December from 6 - 9PM.
Julie Laing is a Glasgow-based artist, writer and college lecturer. Photographs from her low-sodium project are currently on show at the Scottish Landscape Awards and have previously been exhibited in various venues including Street Level Photoworks, the Royal Glasgow Institute and Supernormal in Singapore. Her work has also been published in Studies in Photography, New Writing Scotland and Gutter magazine. She coordinates Round Table, a peer-led criticism group supported by Street Level Photoworks, and co-founded off-page, a series of visual poetry exhibitions, with CD Boyland. instagram – @j_a_laing
forty-one point five // oct 28 - nov 24
‘Forty-one point five’ is a celebratory exhibition of work showcasing contributors to both Studies in Photography’s 40 years and AGITATE’s first year and a half, in recognition of the launch of new photography venue 6 William Street.
This dynamic selection of works brings together two institutions and their communities, laying the groundwork for a venue that promises to become a melting pot for new and old perspectives. Photographic pioneers Hill and Adamson (who operated the first photographic studio in Scotland, and whose partnership began in 1843) will be displayed alongside leading contemporary artists such as Wendy McMurdo, Sekai Machache, Frances Scott, Izzy Leach, and Pradip Malde. Whilst a relatively new endeavour, AGITATE’s first 1.5 years saw 13 exhibitions and many exhibitors have contributed work to this exciting exhibition.
The full list of participating artists is as follows: Hill & Adamson, Tristan Aitchison, Alejandro Basterecchea, Izzi Brennen, Matteo Crawford, Susan Derges, Marianne Dissard, John Ferguson, Robin Gillanders, Kat Gollock, Alexander Hamilton, Sophia Hembeck, Mert Kece, Izzy Leach, You Liang, Patricia Macdonald in collaboration with Angus Macdonald, Sekai Machache, Louise Maher, Mari Mahr, Pradip Malde, Roddy McKenzie, Wendy McMurdo, Rebecca Milling, Jaime Molina, Miriam Morris, John Perivolaris, Laura Prieto, Frances Scott, Joe Seal, Erin Semple, Matt Sillars, Gavin Smith, Christina Webber, Sam Wood, Kallai Zhang.
previously at haymarket terrace (2022-23)
mannequin, miriam morris //
Sep 23 - 30
A series of black and white analogue photographs from Edinburgh based artist and photographer, Miriam Morris.
For the surrealists, the mannequin embodied the dialectics of modern life. Objects that were both animated and inanimate, human and material, sex and sexless, earthly yet dreamlike. They were often metaphors for life and death, dream states, disembodiment and the concept of the body as a vessel. This series of new work carries these leitmotifs across to contemporary settings and urban spaces with a homage to past surrealist imagery.
The closing reception will take place on Saturday 30 Sep from 7 - 10PM.
Miriam Morris is a photographer, artist and writer based in Scotland. She works predominantly in analogue and with mixed media. Instagram: @_.Miriam.Morris._ Image on left: Bridal Mannequin with Red Light
CLOSE CALLS: COASTAL KENT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY, marianne dissard //
Sep 6 - 20
In October 2020, singer Marianne Dissard found herself in Kent with her touring cancelled and a long winter ahead. With a backdrop of the pandemic and until England 're-opened' with the start of the vaccination campaigns, the French-born chanteuse turned to a new practice, street photography, to make sense of her immediate world.
Over the course of the next six months, Dissard went on to assemble a clear-sighted snapshot of post-Brexit life in the corner of the UK's south-eastern coast she called home. Her street photographs include surreal coastal urban landscapes, decimated high streets, and striking portraits of residents made during winter and spring 2021 in, clockwise along the coast, Herne Bay, Margate, Ramsgate, Sandwich, Dover, Folkestone. These were made into two photobooks available at AGITATE.
The opening reception will take place on Friday 8 September from 6 - 9PM.
Marianne Dissard was born in the French Pyrénées, and lived in Tucson, Arizona, for three decades before moving to the UK in 2017. She relocated from Kent to Glasgow in early 2022 and to Coatbridge in 2023. The multi-talented artist is now set to present her first solo exhibition in Edinburgh, after On A Good Day You Can See France at The Glasgow Gallery of Photography in 2022 and, also in Glasgow, Second Looks at SaltSpace Gallery in 2023.
AND SO IT TURNS // august 4 - sep 3
Our August show this year aims to play with the concept of the art market and offers a new way of viewing/owning work. We're removing the artist name, we're not supplying any in-gallery interp, and we are encouraging solitary experiences just... looking at the work. No text, no faff, just a few minutes enjoying one framed image, accompanied by a sound piece by Bryant Bayhan which lasts 3 minutes. We encourage viewers to spend this time in the space - how often do we spend 3 minutes looking at one photograph, really?
To fund the show (and hopefully provide a cut for the image-maker), each person who attends will have the opportunity to purchase a ‘big art raffle ticket’ for £5, to be in with a chance to win the piece, framed and finished, at the end of the show.
Print mounting and finishing very generously sponsored by A&M Imaging
lockdown nights, alejandro basterrechea // august 10 // 7-10pm
Lockdown Nights is a digital photographic project. It started with the need of documenting the social consequences of the pandemic by photographing empty locations at night around the city of Edinburgh.
These images, where no person can be seen, evoke alienation, loneliness, and the need to stay inside and intent to communicate these feelings to the viewer. The social responsibility of staying inside during a pandemic is also questioned by my curiosity of what is happening inside these buildings and locations, presenting the dilemma to the spectator and helping to create a story and narrative in each of the images.
The project brings questions of existentialism, physical and psychological concerns that are crucial in our lives and need an open post-lockdown discussion. In addition, the project showcases the beauty in the ordinary of our daily life scenes, to realize how important is to value the place we live in and our connection to others.
love in contemporary // july 14 - 28
In the 21st century, the concept of love is continuously evolving and redefining itself. Previously, love was contained within the nuclear family structure. Marriage: a contractual agreement, a relationship form used to control and restrict women, enforced by fixed roles defined by gender and class.
However, as today’s generation becomes ever more aware of the flaws and biases inherent in this notion of love, we begin to question tradition and seek a more egalitarian understanding. Under capitalism, individuals are regarded as autonomous and independent economic entities, therefore relationships of love become transactional exchanges of interests and cooperation. As Erich Fromm pointed out, love between individuals follows the same principles as controlling the market of commodities and labour, emphasizing competition, exploitation, and inequality.
In this exhibition, seven young artists with their acute perspectives and the austere language of imagery, re-examine the definition of love and explore what lies beyond the framework of patriarchy and outdated heteronormativity. In the torrent of time, love resembles a colossal maze, harbouring undisclosed power structures. However, these power dynamics are gradually disintegrating under the onslaught of the genuine pursuit of love, in all its diversity and vulnerability.
Featuring:
Zhang Zaozao (she/her): Wind Under my Skin
Chenxi-Hilda Zhang (she/her): While the world is squeezing
Edward Cawood (he/they): The sky is trans
Jiali Mai (She/Her): Untitled, 2022
Kailai Zhang (she/her): The Twins, 2021
Izzi Brannen (they/them): When We Brush Our Teeth, 2022
You Liang (she/they): Love of Feng & Shui, 2023
caps aff // june 30 - july 7
In a wee nod to Scottish summers and the ‘Taps Aff’ mantra, we'll be taking the caps off our cameras and shooting a roll of film (come rain or shine) on the 21 June. The 21st is the Summer solstic, the longest day of the year, and in theory the perfect day to get out and chase the light. A selection of these images will be exhibited from participating artists, and shown in the space that the film started off… a circular orbit of analogue snaps, making the most of whatever sun we get.
Featuring:
Miriam Morris (exhibition organiser)
Mert Kece
Matteo Crawford
Louise Maher
Joe Seal
Christina Webber
Jaime Molina
city of wherever, john perivolaris // june 14 - 28
It is hard to place myself in the passage through cities too numerous to recognise or remember and whose names I do not care to recall. In their passage through the lens those cities have become the City. At the same time unique and interchangeable, their kaleidoscope rotation through the camera opens new paths following a torn map whose fragments I have collected as I cross shadowy porticoes and bridges in search of new vistas by seeing through walls; drifting across frontiers on trains and ships with a camera as my home.
The City, still as it is in these photographs, still escapes me. It always will, while I am still here, and when I am gone.
But we never run the risk of being truly lost in the City, merely biding our time as we wait, more often unknowingly, to be called forth to testify to its passing and ours. Always a race against the clock to frame before being framed, grazing off the skin of the City as our skin is grazed by its iron, steel, and stone. Invisibility unravels and is brought into light as a thread of images criss-crossing the City, tracing its streets, bridges, and subway lines. The indifference of passing trains to laughter or screams. The silence of photographs.
John Perivolaris works as a photographer, writer, and teacher of photography. Often collaborative, his projects use photography, text, and related media to reflect on diasporic states of being. Revealing how places are layered by time, his work is concerned with how meaning is formed through migration, travel and our attachment to specific locations. In 2006 he became the Board Chairman of the Look 07 International Photography Festival, Manchester. (2006 – 08). His last one-person exhibition, entitled City of Ghosts: A Dialogue with George Washington Wilson, was shown in the gallery of the Sir Duncan Rice Gallery, University of Aberdeen, between 15 October 2015 and 21 February 2016. He is the author of 11 self-published books and zines, several of which are available for purchase.
if you’ve seen it you haven’t seen it, ellen renton // may 17-31
An audio guide leads its listener through a series of images. A character in itself – the guide takes on the role of an unreliable narrator with a shifting tone: at times direct, at points abstractly poetic, and sometimes reflective. These inconsistencies and fluctuations in approach conjure up questions around the ways in which our eyes and our minds often sit at odds with each other – does the audio match up with what our own vision makes of the photographs? How many ways can an image be read? Is seeing really believing or is the old adage flawed?
This exhibition is the culmination of a research project undertaken with the support of an artist associateship from Disability Arts Online and the Edwin Morgan Trust.
The work uses as its starting point inspiration taken from Morgan’s instamatic style – the technique of writing poetry about images, both real and imagined – and combines this with ruminations on the art of photography from a visually impaired perspective, cultural understandings of sight, and the lived experience of the failings of unhelpful image description. Together, the images and text pose the question: what does ‘seeing’ really mean?
Ellen Renton is a poet, performer, and theatre maker from Edinburgh. While always keeping poetry at its core, her work varies in form and has included publications, journalism, installation, and multimedia collaborations. Her poetry theatre show Within Sight has toured the UK and in 2021 her debut pamphlet An Eye For An Eye For An Eye was released with Stewed Rhubarb Press. She undertook an Emerging Scottish Writer residency at Cove Park in 2021, and in 2022, she was awarded an Imaginate Jerwood Fellowship.
Things I Have Loved x Noticed, sophia hembeck // may 3 - 5
Glimpses of Sophia Hembeck’s words and visual art of the eponymous poetic memoir series she published in 2020 & 2023.
Walking through the two rooms, Hembeck’s images and words "unfold like a Parisian flaneur’s novel." The first one using the colour blue, with delicate cyanotype prints and scribbled notes from her book Things I Have Noticed; the second one presenting monochrome photography in the colour red and the sad musing of a broken heart from Things I Have Loved.
Together they invoke the mind of an artist trying to understand their own story, their own life really, and in doing so perhaps highlighting some unanswered questions of the viewer, too.
Some of the prints as well as the books Things I Have Noticed – Essays on leaving / searching / finding & Things I Have Loved – A collection (sort of) are available to purchase during the exhibition at the Agitate shop. All of the artwork was created between 2020-2023.
Sophia Hembeck is a writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh. She has published two books: Things I Have Noticed (2020) & Things I Have Loved (2023). She is currently working on the third part of the poetic memoir series. Her weekly online column The Muse Letter is published on substack.
above the line //
Image credit : Gavin Smith
This exhibition features new and recent work from five members of LVII: Independent Photographers Collective -Tristan Aitchison, Roddy McKenzie, Gavin Smith, John Ferguson and Matt Sillars. LVII refers to the 57th parallel north. This is a geographically defined Independent Photographers Collective (IPC) producing and promoting work in the tradition of Independent Photography in and from the north of Scotland.
Exhibited work:
Roddy McKenzie, Incantation
Gavin Smith, Keys to the doors
John Ferguson, Falaichte (Hidden)
Matt Sillars, Duntelchaig
Tristan Aitchison, Untitled
SAM OH SARAH, izzy leach and sam wood // dec 2 - 9
SAM OH SARAH is a collaborative exhibition by Scottish artists Izzy Leach and Sam Wood, exploring themes of craft, love and ritual. Scarecrows are objects that have historically tiptoed on the edge of consciousness, they are intangible as sentient beings and yet they also represent Everyman.
The SAM portion of the project follows the lustful beginnings of a courtship between person and love object. Leach's photographs feature the designer Wood, in their designed garments. The short film SARAH, starring Tamara MacArthur, portrays the breakdown of the relationship and the start of the healing process.
Throughout the project, the artists have used upcycled and found materials whenever possible. The decision to draw from what surrounds them feeds into the ethos of both their respective practices and cyclical themes within the work.
CROSSING BORDERS //
In spring of 2022, seven strangers stayed in a beautiful house in the heart of Tuscany. Journeying from their homes spread across Europe - in England, France, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland - they met with a shared passion for analogue photography. After two years of COVID restrictions, and feeling the urgency to create and touch without limitations, this exchange was like life-giving water for them. The exhibition demonstrates a transition from solitude to closeness. Through generous collaboration and unpressured support, the seven women produced this transfixing body of work.
The photographs on display were all taken using analogue cameras, both 35mm and medium format. The images seek the authenticity of the female gaze that is their own: a natural, sensitive and poetic vision, with a mysterious narrative at play. This body of work serves as a testimony to these strong individual identities, but also their synergy, blossoming into a contemporary female photography collective that spans borders. Together, they show women from completely different backgrounds, with varying shooting styles, have created a common creative space.
Featuring work from: Agnieszka Ostrowska, Angélica Cousiño, Caroline Marchante, Ira Iosub, Laura Prieto, Maria Dias, Sophia Lavater
fissure //
The cutting-edge of contemporary landscape photography, featuring work from: Frances Scott, Erin Semple, Mhairi Law & Virginie Chabrol.
Agitate’s first co-curated show brings together the work of four contemporary photographers to present a view of the Scottish landscape. At a point in the calendar where Edinburgh is awash with visitors - where a tartan highland coo or a cartoon nessie often prevail as signifiers of Scotland - this show is important.
FISSURE platforms work from women making careful and considered representations of Scotland whilst drawing in other ideas: from vistas on the Cape Wrath Trail, to hand-drawn maps and stacks of Orkney stone; soft silk selves, greyscale suburbia, island details and cyanotypes made at dawn.
Right: Flagstone, Burray, 2021 by Frances Scott
rent our walls
the space
Our gallery space is modular for maximum flexibility and creative expression, and we’ve kept the walls bare to celebrate the character of the space. By using modular wooden panels we’re allowing the artist to easily combine background colours and shapes, to make for a more interesting presentation of their work than the usual ‘white cube’ gallery setting.
Included in the hire price is the option to sell work through our shop, where we can stock your work. This also includes promotion on social media, and staff invigilation of the exhibition during opening hours, 6 days per week. Unlike other gallery hires, this means you don’t have to be there all the time.
We want to undercut commercial gallery rates and only take 25% commission.
PRICING
We are currently reviewing our gallery hire prices. For more information, please just get in touch.