MLitt Curatorial Practice School of Fine Art
Elouise Blackburn
Elouise Blackburn is a Newcastle-born, Glasgow-based arts practitioner. Utilising a variety of mediums and roles, from curator to writer to participatory artist, her practice revolves around community and communal ways of working. Celebrating alternative and non-institutional creativity, Elouise posits that how we create and the act of making itself is as important as the final product.
Graduating from the University of Glasgow in 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts in History of Art, she will receive her Master of Letters degree in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary At) from the Glasgow School in September 2024. Her projects include: the co-curation of performance event ‘Hotel Sublime’; the creation of experimental online archive ‘Just Between Us’ looking at how we frame histories as being as impactful as how we record them; and the delivery of ‘Weeding Out Wisdoms’, a gardening project and zine focusing on community work through the growing of weeds, made in conjunction with Rumpus Room and Kew Gardens’ Grow Wild programme.
As a writer, Elouise has authored:‘Just Between Us: Archiving as a Communal Story’, an essay exploring in detail the research and experiences behind the archive; and ‘Weeding Out Wisdoms’, a zine that acts as both a beginner’s guide to gardening and community, and a challenge to the classification of weeds as useless. Both are available online, and at Glasgow Zine Library and Rumpus Room. She also has works featured in Issue 5 of Bog Bodies Press’ zine ‘Mnemotope’ and Ella Williamson’s publication ‘Boy Art’, and upcoming work on the Grow Wild blog.
Works
Just Between Us
The curatorial approach of Elouise Blackburn (she/her) centres on community and its alternative ways of working. Coming at her projects from the perspective of those historically excluded from the institutional art world, she seeks to challenge the representation of these groups as only focusing on how they are oppressed, and not on the lives and careers that exist in spite of this. By shining the light on the connection and creative output of these communities over the ways in which they suffer, Elouise reflects on how oppression does not stop us from living.
Her recent project focuses in on the way we tell history as being as important as how we record it. Archives, as the home of the past, tell us our histories in the present. The objects chosen to be archived, and the narratives used to frame them, are decided by those who run the space. But what of those objects and narratives unknown to them? What of the lives lived within the story of these forgotten objects and narratives? Out of these questions comes ‘Just Between Us’, an experimental online archive. Resting in the community of those working outside the institution, this project explores the personal archives of those of us who don’t often see ourselves accurately reflected in the walls of the institution. Using a network of her friends and fellow artists, Shawn Nayar (@shawnnayar), Ellie Home (@pois0n_pustule), Adele Clifford (@selvaticacrochet), Alex Ellerton (a.wwwwwwwwee) and Tamara Okudu, Elouise challenges the notion that to tell your story you must follow the traditions of those who have been telling it for you. Focusing on lived experience, nostalgic sentimentality, and community, ‘Just Between Us’ seeks to show us that the way we tell history is as important as how we record it.