Andrew Black has been awarded the 2021 Margaret Tait Award. Black is the 12th recipient of the prestigious £15,000 award for moving image artists. His work The Besom, newly proposed for this commission, will draw on local-history research practices and experimental processes to explore all that is strange and uncanny in a depopulated upland landscape. The title takes its name from a 19th-century inn, once a site of social gathering but now a ruined structure. Through this Black will navigate a chaotic mixing of the past and the future to explore traces of different social and industrial times. 

 

Of the project the artist said, "I tried to propose a project that can work imaginatively with the limitations of our present situation and create the circumstances for exchange and improvisation. It's a project I've wanted to make for a long time, and it seemed to offer an opportunity to explore some of the anxieties and complexities of the current moment, so I'm excited to see where it will lead once we get started."

 

 

Black, born in Leeds, has lived in Glasgow for over a decade, becoming greatly involved in the Scottish artistic scene, whether as committee member of Transmission Gallery, taking part in the Experimental Film & Moving Image Residency at Cove Park or joining Hospitalfield's Autumn Residency. He is currently working with Atlas Arts on the Plural Futures Community Film commission on the Isle of Skye and will exhibit with Aman Sandhu at Glasgow International in June 2021.

 

Inspired by the pioneering Orcadian filmmaker and poet, the Margaret Tait Award is a LUX Scotland commission delivered in partnership with Glasgow Film, with support from Screen Scotland, recognising innovative artists working with moving image. As part of the award, Black will be given a solo show at LUX in London along with a touring show in Scotland. More details on this will be announced at a later date.