Assembly is a solo exhibition of new work by acclaimed artist-filmmaker Margaret Salmon. Resulting from and reflecting upon a process of community outreach, story counselling and cinematic experimentation, the exhibition encompasses a film, photographs, and sculptures in an installation that will expand over time, inviting local audiences to return to The Hunterian’s galleries as materials shift and evolve.
An intimate enquiry made by a socially-committed, locally-engaged artist, Assembly highlights the voices of a diverse range of residents within the areas of Kelvinside and Maryhill, Glasgow. The exhibition, grounded in everyday Glasgow and its residents, asks: how have years of austerity and a global pandemic affected individuals and community in Glasgow? How has a mass collective loss affected that community’s understanding of death, healing and the future? Central to the exhibition is a long-form narrative film. The artist describes To a God Unknown as 'a feminist existential melodrama and ghost story', to be researched and filmed on 35mm during the exhibition throughout summer and autumn 2025.
Key collaborators on To a God Unknown include: G20 Works; Jo Sunshine; AMMA Birth Collective
For this solo exhibition at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, I made a multi-stage installation, Assembly (2025). Resulting from a process of community outreach, story counselling, cinematic experimentation and stakeholder dialog the exhibition encompassed film, photographs, sculptures and a publication (forthcoming).
Reusing display structures from the institution’s previous exhibitions, I presented a multiplicity of sculptural objects that reflect daily life in Scotland as well as the materials and histories that inform my artistic practice.
These objects revalue what is often ‘left behind’, like my sonʼs outgrown football boots or flowers that have died, and materials no longer fit for their original purpose, such as punctured balloons, shrunken jumpers and empty bullet shells. Visceral and pensive, these small-scale sculptures contain news clippings, words, colours and surfaces both universal and unique to my experience and memories. I calls them ʻthought objectsʼ and they process visual information, social experiences and critical perspectives.
Elsewhere a range of items and photographic images printed onto diverse papers and fabrics create a ‘mural’ around the gallery’s walls. Hand-printed in the darkroom, some photographs are from previous exhibitions and illustrate a continuous body of research and enquiry, including my work on To A God Unknown, a film that was generated through and during the exhibition. Test strips, solarizations, newspaper and handwritten notes combine to display a network of personal, political and cultural realities and sights.
Assembly hosted the work of Maryhill artist Jo Sunshine, who’s ink and pastel drawing of a heron along the Kelvin River was positioned on the gallery wall adjacent to the title. The wall text itself has been made by Glaswegian graffiti artist Ronan. In the hallway leading to the cinema space I shared my written and text based research circling the conception of To a God Unknown. Eclectic and poetic these papers highlight moments of vision and enquiry, research and reflection made within a small scale creative process.
