There is never a shortage of people and organisations to whom repeated and embarrassingly effusive ‘thanks’ are owed for their support and encouragement in the making of each issue. This is only more true in a time of worldwide upheaval as we struggle through the COVID-19 outbreak and reckon with our various and ongoing legacies of racism. Yet there is never space enough to thank everyone we should – we hope, though, that those we cannot mention by name know who you are.
That said, special mention must be paid to the visual artists, whose extraordinary work gives this issue its particular and arresting watermark:
Ann-Kathrin Müller is an image-maker focusing in naturalistic painting and conceptual drawing. She is currently based in Edinburgh where she graduated from art school in 2018. This fall, she will embark on her practice-based PhD on the co-genesis of drawing and writing with supervision from the Bauhaus in Weimar (Germany) and from the Glasgow School of Art.
A note on Müller’s works in this issue: A fascinating aspect of code is its mediatedness: it is not directly accessible or intuitively understandable but has to be learned and needs a machine to run the programme. This mediatedness is reflected in some ways in how a drawing works: for example, the image surface is like an in-between, a mediation, between the artist or viewer and the image content. I make this aspect visible by creating a layer in my images that draws attention to the image surface, like the evenly distributed crosses in the shown drawings. ‘Behind’ this ‘flat’ layer there is another situation happening in the ‘depth’ of the image space. This constellation may create a feeling of ‘looking through’ in the viewer, looking at something that lies ‘behind’ the layer of the image surface. In reality, of course, this perceived depth is just as flat as the rest of the drawing.”
Becky Brewis (instagram: @becky_brewis) re-handles autobiographical and historical images to explore how the past permeates and puts pressure on the present, psychologically and materially. In 2018-19 she was artist in residence at the Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art at King’s College London. She was selected by Tina Keane for Visions in the Nunnery 2018, a biennial showcase of moving image, and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017. She has been awarded residencies in Ireland, Finland and the Netherlands as well as at Dumfries House, Scotland and Hackney’s Space Studios, London. She was awarded a place on the Royal Drawing School’s funded postgraduate programme The Drawing Year (2015-16) and is currently an MFA student at Edinburgh College of Art. She lives in Dundee. See her website for past exhibitions.
In addition, special thanks are owed to the staff and advisors in the School of English at the University of St Andrews for their support and guidance; thank you to The Poetry Society, The Scottish Poetry Library, and StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, for helping to promote the magazine.
© Copyright / Rights
Rights to the work contained in this issue belong to the individual author, translator, or visual artist.
Views of contributors are not necessarily those of the Editors.
ISSN 2398-9300