Ciorstaidh Rhiannon is a visual artist from the Highlands of Scotland currently based in Glasgow. Primarily working within disciplines of analogue photography, printmaking and film, her recent work has built upon the latter; while incorporating elements of performance, sound, and writing.

‘That Which Holds You’ (2023), weaves together ideas of the uncanny and the eerie to encompass sensations of anxiety, disassociation, confinement, and bodily awareness. Reflecting on her own feelings of disconnect from her body, Ciorstaidh utilises the range of the medium of film, from an investigatory tool to its ability to fabricate narratives, piecing together scenes from both memory and constructed realities. While fluctuating between familiar imagery, obscure textures, and shifting sounds, she explores the interrelation between the corporal and the psyche. Together with the concept of bodies as vessels, which hold memory while being surfaces through which sensations can pass. Within this elusive space, the work meditates on the place between comfort and unease, by shifting between being held at arm’s length to suffocatingly close. Moving from stillness to delirious repetition.

The exhibition’s title causes one to envision the act and sense of being held – whether it’s in a body, a place, a point in time, or an embrace.