Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.
Aesthetica Magazine is a publication focusing on art and culture. Established in 2002, the magazine provides bi-monthly coverage of contemporary art across various disciplines, including visual arts, photography, architecture, fashion, and design. It has a readership of over 550,000 globally.
Sandra Alland is a Glasgow-based Scottish-Canadian writer, interdisciplinary artist, small press publisher, performer, filmmaker, and curator. Alland's work focuses on social justice, language, humour, and experimental forms.
Rose Frain is a visual artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, exhibiting nationally and internationally, whose works range from painting and sculpture to installation.
Olivia Louvel is a French-born British composer and artist whose work is presented in the form of sound recordings, sound art installations, video art and live performances. She won an Ivor Novello Award in Sound Art at The Ivors Classical Awards 2023 for LOL, a sonic intervention delivered through the public address system of Middlesbrough's CCTV surveillance network, reflecting the state of political affairs in Britain.
Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist protest and performance art group based in Moscow that became popular for its provocative punk rock music which later turned into a more accessible style. Founded in the fall of 2011 by the then 22-year-old Nadya Tolokonnikova, it has had a membership of approximately 11 women. The group staged unauthorized, provocative guerrilla gigs in public places. These performances were filmed as music videos and posted on the internet. The group's lyrical themes included feminism, LGBT rights, opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his policies, and Putin's links to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Haleh Jamali is an Iranian artist currently living and working in Scotland. She works with a wide range of media and techniques that include painting, photography, installation, video, and performance. She completed her Bachelors of Arts in Painting at the College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, in 2005. In 2007, she received her MA in Art and Media Practice from the University of Westminster, London. Her works focus on the hidden layers beneath the visible by using the media of painting and installation.
Nadezhda Andreyevna "Nadya" Tolokonnikova is a Russian musician, conceptual artist, and political activist. She is a founding member of the feminist group Pussy Riot, and has a history of political activism with the street art group Voina.
Catriona Millar is one of Scotland's foremost figurative painters. Born in Milngavie, Glasgow, she studied at Harrogate School of Art and Grays School of Art, Aberdeen, where her tutors included Joyce Cairns RSA and Keith Grant. Since the success of her sell-out 2005 degree show she has achieved an international reputation and exhibited across the UK and Europe including the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. Her works are in both private and public collections. In October 2006 she came to the attention of Charles Saatchi with her first solo exhibition at the Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh. In April 2007 The Herald ranked her in the top five most collectable artists in Scotland. In 2012 Catriona Millar was listed in 'Who's Who in Scotland'. Her paintings can be seen on book jackets and CD covers while many schools and colleges around the world study her work. Catriona Millar works with several charities including, Art on a Postcard, St Columba's Hospice Care, Edinburgh and Mental Health Aberdeen,
Pyotr Yurievich Verzilov is a Russian-Canadian artist and activist who came to prominence as the unofficial spokesperson of the band Pussy Riot when he was arrested and jailed by the Russian state in 2012. Verzilov was married to Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
Whitney Osborn McVeigh is an American multimedia artist living and working in London. Born in New York City, she grew up in London from the age of seven.
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is a 2013 documentary film by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin. The film follows the court cases on the Russian feminist/anti-Putinist punk-rock protest group Pussy Riot. Directed by Lerner and Pozdorovkin, the film featured publicly available footage of the court proceedings and interviews with the families of the band members, but no interviews with the band members themselves.
The Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) is an international film festival which takes place annually in York, England, at the beginning of November. Founded in 2011, it is a celebration of independent film from around the world, and an outlet for supporting and championing filmmaking.
Alexandra Munroe is an American curator, Asia scholar, and author focusing on art, culture, and institutional global strategy. She has produced over 40 exhibitions and published pioneering scholarship on modern and contemporary Asian art. She organized the first major North American retrospectives of artists Yayoi Kusama (1989), Daido Moriyama (1999), Yoko Ono (2000), Mu Xin (2001), Cai Guo-Qiang (2008), and Lee Ufan (2011), among others, and has brought such historic avant-garde movements as Gutai, Mono-ha, and Chinese conceptual art, as well as Japanese otaku culture, to international attention. Her project Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994) is recognized for initiating the field of postwar Japanese art history in North America. Recently, Munroe was lead curator of the Guggenheim’s exhibition, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, which the New York Times named as one of 2017’s top ten exhibitions and ARTnews named as one of the decade’s top 25 most influential shows. Credited for the far-reaching impact of her exhibitions and scholarship bolstering knowledge of postwar Japanese art history in America and Japan, she received the 2017 Japan Foundation Award and the 2018 Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award, both bestowed by the government of Japan.
Caroline McNairn was a Scottish figurative painter.
Rachel Maclean is a Scottish visual artist and filmmaker. She lives and works in Glasgow. Her films have shown widely in galleries, museums, film festivals, and on television. She has screened work at numerous festivals in the UK and internationally, such as Rotterdam International, Fantasia and BFI London Film Festival. She has received significant acclaim with solo shows at Tate Britain and The National Gallery, London, and she represented Scotland at the 2017 Venice Biennale with her film Spite Your Face. Her work A Whole New World (2014) won the prestigious Margaret Tate Award in 2013. She has twice been shortlisted for the Jarman Award, and achieved widespread critical praise for Feed Me at the British Art Show in 2016.
Summerhall is an arts complex and events venue in Edinburgh, Scotland. Formerly home to the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies of the University of Edinburgh, it is now a major Edinburgh Festival Fringe visual and performing arts venue. It also hosts events for the Edinburgh Science Festival and Edinburgh International Magic Festival and provides a home for arts practitioners year round; its many rooms are used for art exhibitions, drama and music performances, libraries, small museums, educational & research programmes, artist studios, arts organisation offices, and workshops.
Sekai Machache is a visual artist and curator who lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and works internationally. She works primarily in photography and seeks to interrogate the notion of self.
Daria Andreyevna Serenko is a Russian feminist activist, poet, curator and public artist.
