My practice sits at the intersection of collective care, sculptural experimentation, and speculative imagination. For many years, I focused on facilitation – creating spaces where others could make, reflect, and resist through art. That work remains central to who I am as an artist: I believe in art as a tool for connection, transformation, and solidarity. Increasingly, however, I have turned toward my own making, with a deepening focus on ceramics, sculpture, sound, and installation.
My ceramic work is grounded in the slow, meditative act of throwing – a process that allows time to stretch and settle, where touch and repetition shape form. Clay teaches me patience, failure, and the quiet joy of being in relation with material. My sculptural and installation work extends these ideas, often using salvaged or cast-aside materials to create large-scale, inhabitable forms that speak to shelter, care, and the natural world. I am particularly interested in how queerness might shape our understanding of space – not only physical space, but cosmic, emotional, and speculative space.
This interest is at the heart of the Space Celebration Organisation – an ongoing project I lead that counters extractive, hypermasculine space narratives (like those of SpaceX) with gestures of joy, collectivity, and reverence for the Earth. The project invites publics to send messages into space, to gather at historically radical sites, and to imagine other futures – queer, tender, and non-extractive.
Across all my work – whether facilitating, sculpting, or listening – I’m committed to process over product, to slowness over speed, and to making that is rooted in justice, imagination, and play.
SPACE CELEBRATION ORGANISATION
SPACE CELEBRATION ORGANISATION
The Space Celebration Organisation began on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, where a small group gathered to send messages into space—not to conquer it, but to converse with it. (You can listen to the conversations we had here - the messages we sent, however, are to be discovered either in the cosmos, or in installations). These transmissions were poetic, speculative, and joyful: a quiet resistance against the dominant, extractive narratives that frame space as a site for conquest, colonisation, or corporate control.
From these beginnings, the Organisation has grown into a collaborative movement rooted in art, community, and cosmic care. Zines emerged first—handmade, collectively-written documents imagining queer futures among the stars. Soon followed gatherings, installations, and the creation of a shimmering altar: the Shrine to the Starborn.
The Shrine honours a 35-million-year-old meteorite—not as an object to be mined or owned, but as a queer icon of transformation. This ancient tektite, formed through fire and impact, is celebrated for its refusal to remain fixed: solid but fluid, jagged yet luminous, a reminder that beauty and survival often emerge from rupture.
The Organisation is explicitly non-extractive. All work is made collaboratively through practices of mutual respect, dialogue, and co-creation. Projects span sound, sculpture, light, installation, and interactive works that invite audiences to engage with the cosmos in tender, playful, and speculative ways.
In defiance of the hypermasculine, tech-driven race to dominate space, the Space Celebration Organisation reimagines cosmic connection as feminine, queer, slow, and reverent. It invites us not to escape Earth, but to root deeper into it, knowing we are already starborn.
Book of the Starborn
The Book of the Starborn is a speculative, devotional text created as part of Rosie Aspinall Priest’s final project at Leith School of Art, for which they were awarded the 2025 Contemporary Art Practice Prize. Written in the voice of the Space Celebration Organisation - a fictional institution devoted to joy, care, and anti-extractive space dreaming - the book weaves myth, queerness, and cosmic awe into a series of poetic chapters. It honours the journey of a 35-million-year-old meteorite (tektite) and reflects on transformation, gravity, and connection. Selected chapters are available here as audio recordings. Best listened to with the stars in view.
Exhibitions & Experiences
-
Circus Arts, Awkward Objects (2025)
Exhibited large, and awkward, experimental ceramics.
Embassy Gallery, Members Exhibition (2025)
Shared experimental sculptural work.
Open Studios, WASPS, Albion Road (2024)
Shared and sold work, showcasing personal artistic output.‘FLAWD FOLKS’ Exhibition, Sett Studios (2024)
Exhibited sculptural works.University of Edinburgh Peace Garden Commission (2024)
Collaborative clay sculptures as tactile symbols of peace and community.Conversations in Clay, BUZZCUT (2023)
Collaborative making a site-specific response to the festival space with clay.
Human Nest, Hawick (2021)
Site-specific work exploring the concept of ‘home’ using recycled materials.
-
Visual Arts and Craft Scotland (2025)
Funding to develop ceramic sculptures that can grow plants on their surfaces.
Tortus Studio Residency, Copenhagen (2024)
Experimental collaborative practice focusing on throwing large vessels.British Ceramics Biennial Mentee (2024)
Sculptural practice development through mentorship.Time Space Existence (2023)
Provided sculptural support to Malmo University submission for the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Youth Arts Residency (2021)
North Edinburgh Arts, working with young women from Muirhouse and SHE Scotland.Youth Arts Residency (2021)
Catstrand, working with young people from across Dumfries and Galloway.
Momentum Micro-Grant Recipient (2020)
Exploring community engagement with historically ignored populations through film. -
Freelance Artist, Various (2014–Present)
Deliver participatory visual art and craft projects rooted in co-creation, accessibility, and care. My practice centres on collaboration, often working with young people, community groups, and those underrepresented in the arts. I’ve developed and facilitated projects with organisations including Strathclyde University, WHALE Arts, Glass Performance, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh Art Festival, and North Edinburgh Arts.Senior Researcher, There is an Alternative (2022–Present)
Supporting arts organisations with creative evaluation methods and impact reports.Creative Practitioner, City of Edinburgh Council (2021-2022)
Delivered creative workshops for local communities, contributing to learning strategy development.Creative Learning Director, Stellar Quines (2019–2021)
Developed engagement programs and managed projects with organizations such as Glasgow Women’s Library, SHE Scotland, and more. Raised over £150k in funding for creative learning activities.
Human Nest
I collaborated with my sister to create a human-sized nest in Hawick over a three-day period. The nest was an exploration of our complex relationship with the idea of ‘home’, having grown up in a chaotic and unsettled environment.
BANAN
BANAN (1min 46sec) is a surreal, absurdist artist film that traces the speculative journey of a banana through a grotesque cycle of freedom, captivity, consumption, and disposal. From its playful beginnings to its eventual descent into a supermarket shelf, a human stomach, and finally a skip, the banana is both protagonist and prop - a humble fruit onto which viewers may project attachment, discomfort, or humour. The film revels in the pleasure of the repulsive, inviting audiences to linger in the sticky space between comedy and horror, affection and revulsion. Through a mix of live action and symbolic gesture, BANAN asks what it means to care for something so easily discarded. Carefully layered sound - recorded and overlaid to heighten the sensory experience - amplifies the banana’s uncanny, fleshy presence, giving it a strange agency as it topples and begins again. A speculative loop that celebrates the absurd, the overlooked, and the edible.
Ceramics
I work with ceramics in lots of different ways, recently being awarded the British Ceramics Biennale menteeship. My work celebrates strange imagined creatures, hideous thrown forms, and intricate vessels and pots.
Youth Arts Residency
In the autumn of 2021 I was as Artist in residence with North Edinburgh Arts as part of their youth arts residencies. I worked with two local groups, Muirhouse Youth Development Group and SHE Scotland, to support young women to connect with one another in their community, to celebrate Muirhouse and its surrounding areas, to explore new perspectives and unearth hidden spaces potentially unknown by adults.
The project asked young people to share their favourite spaces and places in Muirhouse and to create a map of the area. It asked young people what these spaces mean to them, how they think other young people and children could enjoy them and what makes those spaces special.
Below are some images from the project.
Young Mother’s Radio
I worked with the incredible Stepping Stones, who support young families and pregnant people in North Edinburgh, and talked to a group of of young mothers they support about the music which influences their lives. You can listen to the show here.
Radical Slowness
Slowing down the expectations of co-creation. Presented at the ‘Engage’ Conference 2022
Asbestos
In 2019 as part of my work at Stellar Quines Theatre Company, I partnered with The Citizen’s Theatre in Glasgow to develop a series of workshops exploring the theme of asbestos with the people who live, and lived, in and around the shipyard sites of Glasgow. During the 2 months of weekly workshops we experimented with “Asbestos: The Musical!”, putting asbestos on trial and reimagining Glasgow without the history of the shipyards.
The Citizen’s Theatre community collective are an incredible group made up of people from all walk’s of life in around the Citizen’s Theatre itself. Around 15-20 people regularly attend their weekly sessions which have been running for over 15 years. The project allowed the local community to learn more about their local history as well as creatively explore new ways of looking at that history.
Young Mothers’ Stories
In 2019 I developed a partnership with Stepping Stones whilst working at Stellar Quines: an organisation based in North Edinburgh which supports young parents. Our first project together aimed to support a group of 6 young mothers to create and share stories over 3 months.
The project resulted in a number of short films being made and the young women having the opportunity to have their voices heard and celebrated. One of which can be seen here. The organisations still regularly work together.
Young Carers
I created and delivered a variety of art workshops for a group of 12 children (10-15yrs) from Edinburgh Young Carers exploring themes surrounding care work in partnership with Stills Gallery, whilst supporting multiple artists to deliver their own creative sessions with the group also.
The project was in collaboration with Edinburgh Art Festival, who I have freelanced for several times. The group explored lots of different ways of making, from textiles, photography, print making and poetry. The resulting works were exhibited by Stills Gallery and celebrated the themes of care and care giving, as well as the incredible young people doing this amazing work.
“It let’s you think differently… it let’s you think about yourself differently”
Young carer on creating photographic portraits of themselves.
WHALE Arts
I freelanced at WHALE Arts for a few years and took on lots of different roles as a guest artist. From running the after school art clubs, to being out and about in Wester Hailes delivering activities on the streets for young people and children, my time there was incredible.
Below are some images from a variety of workshops and sessions I ran there.
The Dazzle Ship
In 2017 I started to freelance with the Edinburgh Art Festival on their creative exploration of ‘The Dazzle Ship’, a stunning piece of work created by artist Ciara Philips. The exploration involved the creation of a creative hub, with several outreach activities in community centres
and schools in Edinburgh. Throughout the festival I ran daily activities within the ‘Dazzle Hub’, a unique space set up in Leith to house the creative learning around the project, and afterwards, several outreach sessions to celebrate and be inspired by, this amazing art work.
SHE Scotland
I’ve worked with SHE Scotland on several projects over the past two or three years. They’re an amazing organisation based in North Edinburgh who aim to support women and girls in a variety of ways.
I’ve developed loads of projects with them, including supporting their staff to develop storytelling skills, creating short plays and pieces of theatre and most recently supporting a small group of young women to develop a relationship with their community through visual art activities.
Polmont Women Talk
In early 2021 I was approached by the brilliant Glass Performance to support the development of a radio show for the young women in Polmont Prison. Unfortunately due to the pandemic we were unable to go in to the prison, but over several weeks of emailing we managed to pull something together.
The project was a big test of my ability to work digitally and to work collaboratively without ever being in the same room as these women.
The project is continuing, and will be moving into the prison in autumn 2021 so that the women can start to run everything independently.
Momentum micro-grant
In 2020 I was awarded a Momentum micro-grant from Festivals Edinburgh to explore how we can legitimise working with communities historically ignored in the arts, whilst benefitting from the systems of power which have so often silenced them.
It resulted in a work in process informed by conversations and interviews with organisations, artists and those historically ignored by the arts.
Letters to…
I had a short film made by Stellar Quines Theatre Company, which explored surviving domestic abuse and violence. The film is set in the form of a letter, to my mother.