Friday 21st February
7 – 9pm
Free and unticketed.

Shona Macnaughton
Sam Hasler
John Ryaner

Pre-ramble is the second in a series of three events programmed by Jude Browning and David Dale Gallery which will take place between January-March 2020. * The event explores “the rehearsal as form” to support artists whose practice engages with writing, performance and modes of live delivery.

Poster by Marta Perovic
Pre-ramble is supported by Creative Scotland.

* A preliminary Pre-ramble event took place at David Dale Gallery in January 2019 with performances by Jessica Higgins, Lucy Duncombe and Jude Browning.

Click here to buy At Practise: Issue 1 which features writing by Jade Montserrat, Susannah Stark, Roy Claire Potter, Shona Macnaughton, Sam Hasler, John Ryaner, Carl Gent, Nicola Singh and Ashanti Harris.

Shona Macnaughton (b. 1983) is an artist based in Glasgow, making performance, writing and film concerned with labour, subjectivity and the social effects of design. Shona’s practice explores the political conditions around specific architectures and institutional frameworks, she responds by staging scripts and actions in which she performs different personas. Selected previous projects include: Mandatory Reconsideration, Parse Journal, Valand Academy, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2019; We Nurture, Collective, Edinburgh, 2018-19; Progressive, Market Gallery, Glasgow, 2017; Arms Length Government Body, Céline, Glasgow, 2016; The Universal School Girl, Dovecot Studios, Jerwood Space, London, 2016. Her work is currently on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh as part of NOW: Katie Paterson, Darren Almond, Shona Macnaughton and Lucy Raven.

‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ is a performance developed from the artist’s experience of participating in a Pecha Kucha. Part artist talk, part pecha kucha, part Ted Talk X, part phone call to the HMRC to dispute a state benefit decision, ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ considers art’s relationship to different types of work, through re positioning the artist figure as over-identifying with their neoliberal nemesis The Creative Entrepreneur.

Sam Hasler lives and works in Cardiff. His work has developed over time into a writing based practice. In the last few years Sam has developed and presented works with Museum Press, Landfill Editions, Peak Cymru, Arcade Campfa, and The British School at Rome.

‘I am a contemporary visual artist who writes. My artworks are often books and short readings but can include images, video, radio broadcasts, walks, events, and performances. I often refer to low budget and low brow culture, particularly when it becomes strange and experimental in form. There is also a thread of perverse self-mythologisng and awkward humour that runs through the work. I am a natural night owl. I like to make my work at night and I like the influence of this on me.’

John Ryaner (Dublin, 1987) lives and works in Berlin. He received a BA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, and studied on the MFA programme at The Glasgow School of Art and attended The Städelschule, leaving Frankfurt with a Meisterschule in 2018. He was the 2012 recipient of The Gilchrist Fisher Award in London, selected by Matthew Collings and Elizabeth Magill; he was awarded The Staedelschule Film Prize in 2016 for his video ‘Rope Cursive’, which was later included in Laure Provoust’s ‘Love Among The Artists’ showreel in The Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Exhibitions include ‘Tail and Heads’ at The Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius; ‘The Silent Treatment and Other Effective Procedures’, A.M. Gallery, London; ‘After Rubens’, The Staedel Museum, Frankfurt; ‘Morality Plays’, Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia; ‘Portikus XXX’ (with Pure Fiction), Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; ‘Der Tempest’, Kunsthalle Darmstadt; and ‘Underground’, Basic Space, Dublin.