backwash

Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2022



















backwash can refer to the cleaning of filters, the receding of waves, backward currents or the reverberations of an event. It is also a name for the saliva-infused liquid at the bottom of drinking vessels. These overlapping meanings serve as anchor and guide for an installation that emerges from silt, sediment and the life and collapse of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies.

Works in backwash have been developed through ongoing collaboration with Sharif Elsabagh, Andrew Black and sound and spatial designer Joseph June Bond, who has produced a new sound work for the exhibition drawing from a shared library of bodies, and bodies of water,.

Listen to the sound work here.

Read Seán Elder’s commissioned response here.

Supported by Creative Scotland and The Elephant Trust

Photos by Tom Nolan