Six Works with Margaret Mitchell

In partnership with the Department of Culture, Media and Communications and the Art Collection at the University of Stirling, we are delighted to welcome Margaret to the Stirling Photography Festival again this year.  Margaret will lead a talk exploring her practice and approach as well as offering us a first look at her work in the university collection.

Margaret will discuss the six works on exhibition at the University of Stirling, giving the background to the images and the wider questions raised. Alongside this she will touch on other long-term projects, including topics of responsibility and ethics in representing the lives of others.

Margaret Mitchell was born in Stirling and grew up in Plean and Dunblane within a large working-class family. Her sister Andrea’s children grew up in the Raploch in Stirling and Mitchell documented their lives across three bodies of work from childhood to adulthood. The University of Stirling Art Collection acquired a series of six works in 2023, these focus on Margaret's nephew Steven, offering an insight into his life’s trajectory. These images follow Steven from a childhood in the Raploch (Family 1994) to his adult life in St Ninians (In This Place 2015-2017), to an image of him back in his childhood locale (Into Absence 2017-2020), visiting a sister who was staying in temporary accommodation on the same street the children had grown up on.

Across the three bodies of work, Mitchell reflects on both personal and political questions, asking the viewer to consider the nature of disadvantage and privilege in a history covering class, opportunity and inequality. For Mitchell, the personal narrative of Steven’s path in life reflects a universal issue; whilst this is a personal journey of one boy into man, versions of this story and situation are repeated across countless individuals and societies.

These works will be exhibited as part of the Art Collection's Human Experience annual exhibition. Examining topics such as displacement, climate change, social deprivation and covid-19, and highlighting the resilience of the human spirit and our ability to continue to create art through and about troubling times,  Human Experience will be open from 26th September 2024 - 8th August 2025.

This talk is Free , please book through Eventbrite

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/margaret-mitchell-six-works-tickets-1000013295687?aff=oddtdtcreator