Our work is often context specific and considers carefully what we understand as the ‘public’. It incorporates various modes of practice and a wide range of media.
Rock Roccia
Large scale collage (529 x 178 cm) made with eighteen printed images juxtaposed in a grid showing visual material relevant to Monte Pantano, the mountain situated behind Tracy’s grandfather’s house in Italy. This mountain was an important battleground during WWII that impacted greatly on the local communities, the traces of which are still visible in the surrounding landscape, language and architecture.
Dust Polvere
Large scale collage (529 x 178 cm) made with eighteen printed images juxtaposed in a grid, revealing the current state of Tracy’s grandfather’s house which was abandoned years ago as a result of emigration and depopulation.
Fat White Star
This printed collage, in an edition of five copies, celebrates Mario Lanza, the great American-Italian operatic tenor and actor whose family is from Collemacchia, the village in Italy where Tracy & Edwin curate The Museum of Loss and Renewal residency programmes.
Ash, Chalk and Charcoal
The short video Ash, Chalk and Charcoal explores how the materiality of mark-making, drawing, language, text and writing in situ, as part of an artistic practice, can reveal, contain and express violence.
Re-imagining Our World
Four ‘text blankets’, tactile artefacts that record a range of experiences, hopes, fears and aspirations, expressed by friends of The Museum of Loss and Renewal around the world during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Agents of Change: Refresh!
Commissioned by artconnexion, Lille (France) the artists engaged with the organisation as ‘Agents of Change’, contributing to its revitalisation. Tracy & Edwin were ‘in residence’ to kick-start the Refresh! programme.
Thirty seven minutes and the smell of turning earth
The video focuses on an annual religious procession in the village of Cerasuolo, combined with live hand-writing and drawing in a notebook. It conveys the declining public demonstration of belief against a landscape abandoned to re-wilding.
Ik Ben Montagna
A series of five collages about fire in the Parco dell’Olivo, a collection of olive groves on the slopes of the Mainarde mountains near Venafro in the Italian region of Molise.
Notes on a Changing Place
A series of posters offers an idiosyncratic view of the Scottish city of Dundee, and its continual reinvention. Referencing a wide range of historical and personal sources the artwork celebrates the city and its inhabitants by questioning preconceived ideas.
The Museum of Loss and Renewal on Monte Mare
A photo-collage situates an imaginary cardboard display case in Molise, Italy, where the artists curate The Museum of Loss and Renewal residency programmes. Part of Shelter Stone: The Artist and The Mountain, a newsprint publication and exhibitions that include contributions by various artists and writers.
Making Museums
A two day symposium co-curated and co-devised by Timespan and Tracy & Edwin, the curators of The Museum of Loss and Renewal addressing ‘how geography, people and politics can determine how we create the museums of today’.
Jo, Josephine, Giuseppina
and Tracy
A filmic exploration of Tracy’s relationship with her mother Giuseppina Salvatore, visual flashes revealing connections in a five-decade long relationship between mother and daughter.
P 34
A commissioned text work, made in association with the presentation of Micromegas, our ongoing publishing project at Project Space Plus, University of Lincoln.
Micromegas
An ongoing publishing project and mobile exhibition inspired by Voltaire’s novella Micromégas. Editions consisit of printed boxes containing posters by invited artists and designers, and accompanying essay publications.
Erasmus de/the Clown
Erasmus the Clown is inspired by Clown, a painting of a clown against the dark backdrop of the bombed city of Rotterdam by the Dutch artist Charley Toorop. The work presents Tracy & Edwin’s continuing interest in portraiture, the representation of conflict and the space between private and public
Walking towards myself
Camminando verso me stesso
A silent still-image slide work combining photographs and drawings explores the different uses to which walking are put and the different meanings derived, with particular focus on Scottish contexts.
No More Lying!
The installation No More Lying! functioned as a ‘conversation piece’ that invited reflection on the effect of alcohol dependence syndrome on children, while interdisciplinary public events enabled exchange about the impact of substance misuse.
Friendly Invasions 2034
Invited to mark artconnexion’s 20th anniversary in 2014, Tracy & Edwin worked in situ to create a space-filling three dimensional collage that would become the content for a new publication.
Vagabond Flux
A mobile, flat pack exhibition unit commissioned by the Nouveaux Commanditaires / New Commissioners programme of the Fondation de France in 2014. Uniquely, the commissioners were Masters students on Lille University’s MA programme Exhibition/Production of contemporary artworks.
The story of the girl and the apple tree
A girl’s footwear collection amassed since birth by the artists and her parents, presented in a giant replica cardboard shoe box, with a story and sound work that invite considerations on memory, ageing, creative freedom, female childhood and biological growth.
Seeing is Believing
Part of the WHO TOLD YOU SO?! ♯2, Truth vs Organisation project at Onomatopee, Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2012, the black & white double screen slide projection took as its starting point the photograph by Pete Souza of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton watching the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Perfect Timing
Responding to the invitation by the Performing Worlds project curated by D-AIR, in 2012 Tracy & Edwin publicly celebrated 15 years of collaborative art practice by unpacking their archive. The programme included presentations, sharing and educational events at the Hannah Maclure Centre, University of Abertay, Dundee, Scotland.
War as Ever!
This exhibition project took place at the Nederlands Fotomuseum and on Rotterdam’s city streets in 2012. A large-scale slide projection, photographs, posters, wall drawings, performative character, blog, conference and publication together explored conflict, looking and art.
Object becomes Subject
The second stage of the The Museum of Loss and Renewal project consisted of a public hybrid site for exhibition, production, education and research which facilitated reflections on issues of loss, death, recycling and appropriation.
No Neutral Representations
A still-image slide projection shows a series of notebook pages with associated postcards. Developed as a conversation piece between Tracy & Edwin to explore the central ideas in The Museum of Loss and Renewal project.
Loss becomes Object
The first manifestation of The Museum of Loss of Renewal project, artefacts collected in the Highland Hospice charity shops were juxtaposed with associative material, resulting in a series of still-life groupings that provoked reflections on loss, death, recycling and appropriation.
On Growth, & Forms of Meaning
2011 marked 150 years since the birth of biologist, mathematician and classicist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. The curated display was made up of artefacts selected from the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, and provided the framework for a publication made in situ amidst interdisciplinary gatherings.
Mapping the Future
Three international symposia looked at the future of public art in Scotland, framed within a programme of artist-led actions and interdisciplinary talks, and a published report.
A partnership between Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, and Public Art Scotland and Creative Scotland.
Life, Death and Beauty: You Make Me
The exhibition at Sleeper in Edinburgh presented twenty-four framed photographs, fragments of a larger pinboard collage. The digital prints revealed a visual exploration of aspects of human existence including desire, war, love, loss and beauty.
LIFE IS OVER if you want it!
With the familial experience of Edwin’s father’s death by assisted suicide as a guiding narrative, this exhibition project looked at issues of contemporary death; how artists have interpreted death, how objects and images impact on ideas about death and the role that art can play in mediating issues of life and death.
Life, Death and Beauty:
The Invisible Talk Back – Fear, No Fear
A double screen projection (210 x 280 cm each) showed a still life with moving images taken after Edwin’s parents’ successive deaths juxtaposed with a series of drawn and written texts produced during the exhibition project Life is Over! if you want it.
Life, Death and Beauty:
Where Darwin Meets Courbet
Forty-eight still images show a personal studio collection of art historical and contemporary reproductions such as postcards, drawings and objects on the theme of life, death and beauty. Part of the exhibition project LIFE IS OVER! if you want it.
Shotgun Wedding
A six channel video installation and publication focussing on the 1707 Union between Scotland and England and its ongoing socio-political implications. Visual material from a variety of museum collections and archives was filmed and combined in six video projections. Shown at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 2007.
Growth, Form and the Inevitability of herself
A two channel video projection showing the life cycle of a garden with the human ageing process. Eighteen images move hypnotically and independently of each other in a grid pattern across a large scale. Presented in the Centre d’Arts Plastiques et Visuels, Lille, France.
The Bremen Collection
A mobile collection of outfits commenting on Bremen’s trade history, multi-ethnic present, contemporary industry and the city’s future. Part of No Man is an Island, a series of city-based public art projects curated by Horst Griese and Eva Schmidt at the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst and locations in Bremen, Germany.
Truth, Error, Opinion
The still image projection was shown as part of a public event at Stills, Edinburgh during the presentation of the Martha Rosler Library that consists of over 7000 books from the personal collection of the artist, writer and political agitator.
Ed & Ellis in Ever Ever Land
This exhibition project focused on Scottish identity in 2001, timed with the opening of the Scottish Parliament. A text blanket was made in a public studio, and a new video work presented Italian assimilation into Scottish society. CCA, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland.
Differences Under the Skin
This is the first in a series of double screen video installations addressing a personal focus; the integration into Scotland of Tracy’s Italian family. Part of Ed and Ellis in Ever Ever Land; public studio, video installation and publications. CCA, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland, 2001.
Merchant’s House Garden
The garden opened for local users in 2007 as a rejuvenated green space and to platform cultural and social activities. Located on a secluded and formerly long-overgrown site in the centre of the town it is an important element of the Kirkcaldy Riggs Townscape Heritage Initiative.
Big City Small Talk
A text blanket reflecting visitors’ ideas and opinions was produced as part of as it is, a season of contemporary art situated inside Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and off-site, concerned with the nature of urban space – the ‘soft’ city and its infrastructures.
Stories
The group exhibition Go Away: Artists and Travel at the Royal College of Art in London presented work by over thirty artists from the sixties to the 1999 exhibition date. It reflected diverse possibilities, motivations and experiences to consider relationships between art and travel, which was the focus of Tracy & Edwin’s blanket project.
War is Over!
A public studio was activated during the group exhibition Peace at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst Zurich in Switzerland, an exhibition that explored the chances for ‘peace on earth’ on an artistic level, curated by Gianni Jetzer and Rein Wolfs.
I put my name on everything
A printed wool carpet arose out of conversations with Tron Theatre staff about the ideal work environment, professional relationships and the balance between private and working lives. Installed over two floors of the newly refurbished Tron Theatre offices in Glasgow, Scotland.
Ed and Ellis in Tokyo
This project involved a wide range of publics by inviting responses to questions about the state of Japanese society in 1998 and participants’ aspirations for the future. Ideas were shared in a public programme that included talks, an architect-led bus tour of the Tokyo Expressway, and a dance party.
Ed & Ellis in Schiedam
Tracy & Edwin’s first large-scale collaborative project, commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Netherlands. Their fake local political party List 0 and its representative and only member Koos van de Sluys enabled citizens to voice their opinions of a town struggling to shape its future in 1998.
Ed & Ellis in Turku
In 1997 Tracy & Edwin embarked on their first collaborative project using the names Ed & Ellis as their alter egos. A city-wide poster campaign took place during an international residential symposium in the Finnish town of Turku that focussed on ‘communication’ and posed questions about Finnish identity, nationality and belonging.