Exhibition dates: 21st November – 21st December 2024
We’re inviting artists, makers, and creatives of all kinds from Dumfries & Galloway to showcase your talent in our cosy Stove Café this festive season. Whether you’re a painter, printmaker, jeweller, or craftsperson—this is your chance to share (and sell!) your work as part of our Midwinter Exhibition.
From unique artworks and handcrafted items to festive cards, decorations, and creative twists on holiday traditions—we welcome it all. This is an opportunity to brighten the season with your creations while supporting local artists in the lead-up to the holidays.
Our Midwinter Exhibition will run from Thursday, 21st November to Saturday, 21st December, with pieces available for purchase during our regular cafe hours (Monday–Saturday, 9am–3pm).
How To Submit Artwork:
Artists may submit up to a maximum of two artworks per person.
2D artworks should not exceed 60cm in any direction, and 3D artworks should not exceed 30cm in any direction.
Artworks must be dropped off during one of our scheduled drop off dates (see below), or by appointment only
Artists must complete a contacts form before leaving any artworks. These will be available during our scheduled drop off dates or by emailing [email protected].
Any unsold artworks must be collected on Monday 6th January 2025.
Artwork Drop Off Dates: Artworks can be dropped off on the 18th and 19th November, between 11am-5pm.
*Conversing Building is an ongoing project at The Stove, that looks to activate spaces around The Stove through a variety of visual and public art projects and displays. For more info on the project visit our project page here.
We got stuck straight into our first Creative Spaces project at the start of August, and I think I speak for all of us when I say we had a ball with it. We wanted our installation to examine the ideas of imposter syndrome in creativity and dissect what it is that makes a person creative. And so, the Inspiration Donation was born. It went through a couple of iterations before reaching its final form, but we were all dead chuffed with the final installation. We started off by going on a wee adventure to the local garden centres to check out clear containers (we did get briefly distracted by the fish on display at Heathhall Garden Centre) and had a roam about the Range to get the rest of our supplies together.
We worked together on four panels of collage to demonstrate how we hoped the final product would look – we experimented with creating stencils for these too, along with the ‘feed me’ stencils that went up on the walls. It was great to start working together on some artwork, it was a fun way of bonding and building each other up as a team. The installation went up with the help of Stovie & artist Katie Anderson, who offered her expertise and guided us through the process. We had some brilliant donations from the Stove team after we had added our own inspirational pieces in (some Blu Tack, a feather and a funky rock), such as a vintage toy car, a post-it note that read ‘Sparkle Baby’, and a map of the town.
Our Conversing Building project was a super fun introduction to our roles at Creative Spaces. It was my first opportunity to work collaboratively on a creative project with other young creatives, something that felt quite daunting at first is now something I’m looking forward to doing more of in the future.
James
The Conversing Building project pushed us straight out the gate to create something that represented us, and in turn our community in Dumfries. It helped us work as a team and realise where some of our strengths lie”
Sonah
Conversing Building was a really interesting jumping off point for our time with Creative Spaces. Working on this project taught us how we fit together as a team, and got the ball rolling with our style and approach.
Anna
Creative Spaces is a Dumfries-based collective of young creatives, working with and advocating for our region’s young artists.
Situated in the heart of Dumfries, Creative Spaces collaborates with young creatives from across the region, providing young people with opportunities to engage in the arts. Whether it’s through events, workshops, mentorships, or our annual Associates Programme, we aim to enhance Dumfries and Galloway’s creative scene by offering free access to opportunities and paid commissions.
Keep up to date with the Creative Spaces team on Instagram: @creative.spaces_
Artist Martin Hamblen shares an insight about his current exhibition at The Stove Cafe – wakeupand (2024). This guest exhibition was commissioned by the Stove and is part of our Conversing Building Project.
By Martin Hamblen
When is an exhibition, not an exhibition?
Google ‘exhibition’ and the definition that drops down states “a public display of works of art or items of interest, held in an art gallery or museum or at a trade fair.” Conversing Building is not that.[1]
I was feeling sceptical about the project until I read about this year’s Artes Mundi prize winner, Taloi Havini. “An artist from a small Pacific Island who has found unexpected resonances with her work in the mountains […] of Wales […] Hyena (day and night) […] dominates the wall of the bustling cafe at Chapter Arts Centre.”[2]
Usually, an artist writes a statement to accompany an exhibition. But this, unusual business, demands questions: buildings? conversing? Obviously, bricks and mortar can’t talk so what does The Stove mean?
Late last century, curator Nicolas Bourriaud published a book called Relational Aesthetics. He defined the term as “artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”[3]
So, the chairs are talking to the tables, the tables to the walls, the walls to the windows, the windows to the street. Sometimes, the process of thinking about asking a question, and anticipating answers, stops the question.
Scientists hypothesise. To misquote Yoko Ono and John Lennon, they imagine. At The Stove’s AGM the guest speaker, Dr. Duckie, introduced the concept of “Homemade Mutant Hope Machines”.[4] The key concept being, believing that better worlds are possible.
The words on the windows, talking to the street, read ‘Colonial Cartography’. Sign written in a font akin to Coca-Cola (a famous fizzy drink that may be made of cabbage and caffeine). Fizzy sounds nice and innocent. But the process of carbonation means adding carbon dioxide. Sound familiar?
The ‘art world’ appropriates languages from other fields. Biologically speaking, plants pioneer places. The first plant colonises. Then, there is a process of succession and an ecosystem evolves.
According to the Tate “intervention applies to art designed specifically to interact with an existing structure or situation, be it another artwork, the audience, an institution or in the public domain.”[5]
This aesthetic intervention aimed to consider Cafe Culture, in the context of conversing buildings. I asked: Can we imagine a future (2074) when warmer temperatures enable landowners to grow coffee in The Highlands? Also, can we imagine a world without carbonated cabbage juice? Is it possible? Poetically, of course.
We’ve spent more time at home than we ever thought we would. What sorts of things did you get up to during the past 14 months? Maybe you started painting again, or learned how to knit, or made collages to send to your friends or started taking photographs on your phone. We’d love to celebrate the little acts of creativity we have all made at home, and share them in our café.
The Stove Café and the Conversing Building project would like you to submit or loan your artworks to us for a Community Café Exhibition in June 2021. Works can be 2D or 3D, measuring no more than 60cm in any direction please. All artworks will be displayed in our public café so please make sure that the work you submit is suitable for all ages.
How to Submit
Artworks can be dropped off to The Stove Café during regular opening hours Wed-Sat, 10-3pm, but please make sure you have included your contact details so that we can return your work to you. If we receive a large number of submissions we may not be able to display all works. Please do not submit more than two artworks per person.
If you have any queries about whether your creative work will be suitable, please drop us an email to [email protected], or pop into the Stove café and ask one of our team.
All artworks must be submitted by Monday 31st May 2021.
The exhibition will run from the 2nd to the 30th June 2021.
‘For me, the question of democracy also opens up the question of what does it mean to be truly human. And it seems to me that we need to recognize that to develop the best humanity, the best spirit, the best community, there needs to be discipline, practices of exploring. How do you do that? How do we work together? How do we talk together in ways that will open up our best capacities and our best gifts?’
Vincent Harding
Looking back, looking forward
Our first foot into the New Year might seem like little has changed. With a new spike rolling in with the first snowfall of January, a third lockdown begins. And as we huddle further into our little worlds the news cycle spins and bounces off the walls with the discovery of a vaccine. And for now, we carry on.
2021 marks ten years of the Stove’s work. And we’re immensely proud of what’s been achieved in that time; from festivals and events to community buy-outs and river races. Together with our community, we’ve shaped a new vision not only for the arts but also for the vital role that communities and creativity play in the shaping of our town.
This year, we’re focused on sharing and learning together again so that we can build and support new and ambitious ideas from the voices hitherto unheard across the region.
As of December, the Stove has been focused on building a programme of new projects that will allow us to delve deeper into connecting communities, ideas and creativity together. We want to build new connections, routes and opportunities for learning across our membership and wider region.
This year we want to discover new voices, train and support new ideas as well as deepen our relationship to the places beyond the town center.
We will do this by:
Creating new spaces for people to learn, share and take part in conversations to map the future of our region.
Continuing to explore and promote bold and innovative projects that connect people in a time of social isolation.
Finding the new stories and storytellers to help us navigate a world spinning further out of reach.
Focusing on localism and power by providing the tools necessary for communities to realise and shape their identities and futures.
Our programme will stretch across sharing skills in digital communication to help communities and artists reach further and more meaningfully to people, regional projects to support bold ideas concerned with community ownership and place-making and a responsive series of events and conversations open to all.
We are committed to exploring, developing and sharing how we work with other places and people and to continue the conversation online through our new podcast channel and other outlets.
Throughout January the Stove will be planning and organizing for the year ahead, so we encourage you to keep an eye on our website and social media for announcements, job opportunities and activity.
We’d like to once again thank our membership and community who have helped to shape our ideas for the year ahead by taking part in our projects, events, consultations and conversations throughout 2020.
And to celebrate ten years of the Stove we’ll be sharing the stories of those who have come through our doors, sharing their favourite memories as well as finding out what lies next for us over the next 10 years.
Whilst the road ahead looks rough, we’re hopeful our work will cement a new vision of community and creativity that seeks to support a fairer society for all. We can’t wait to see what comes of it.
Thank you to everyone who took some time to visit Elsewhere last weekend, it filled us with hope to see the town again from fresh perspectives and in new lights.
The first of our images from the weekend are now available, thanks to photographer Kirstin McEwan.
If you weren’t able to attend in person, much of the wonderful work we included as part of Elsewhere is available to view online, see a selection of links below.
Elsewhere was supported by Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Regional Arts Fund.
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