Artist in Residence Exhibition Preview

Thursday 13 March 2025

5-8PM

IOU Creation Centre, Dean Clough

Join us for a preview of Artist in Residence esK (Stewart Knights) exhibition, reflecting on his experience living at the IOU Hostel Hebden Bridge and time in Calderdale

esK: ‘Cuiridh mi clach air do chárn -I’ll put a stone on your cairn’

Exhibition Preview

Thursday 13 March 2025

5pm-8pm

IOU Creation Centre, Dean Clough,

Halifax, HX3 5AG

Over his time in South Pennines, Stewart has developed a love for the cairns (purposefully stacked stones) of the hills and moors.  

“Memorials and compasses pointing towards the mishmash of ideas and histories that I have come to know and love whilst here in Calderdale."

This has led him to choose, for his final project as Artist in Residence, to create interactive cairn-like structures out of found and gifted objects.  The exhibition explores how cairns could form in urban contexts using everyday materials.  The original use of cairns and standing stones for rituals, navigation and memorial purposes are preserved in these interactive sculptures while also encouraging storytelling and play.

esK “I hope people will take this opportunity to see cairns as the new roadside archive, the meeting point of the town-square campfire, the way marker offering you a way out of the endless labyrinth of ginnels."

Please RSVP by emailing hello@ioutheatre.org