Tony Humbleyard
Poetic statements & Sculptural forms
My work engages with site and collaboration. exploring social, psychological and physical space. Unearthing the 'UseHistories' of place and how they inform the urgencies of now and our responses..
Exploring what it means to live an embedded relationship to place.I have lived and worked on Unst since 2005 engaged in a process of Deep Listening and a sustainable Social Art practice. I work within walking, cycling distance of the Shorestation, inviting others into this ecology to collaborate through ongoing projects and residencies.
i use random journeys, direct experience and the gathering of found objects. Constructing sculptures, interventions and poetic statements. Seeking out the patterns and continuities, the connections between our internal and external geographies. Exploring the perceptual landscapes that frame our actions in the world. As experience becomes increasingly commodified, my work is a reclamation of being present in any given place. Using space itself as an element that conjures form and narrative.
‘Rock, fences, cloud and houses/ marks in a landscape/ looking for the continuities/ an alchemical gathering of found objects and direct experience/the space between thoughts/ liminal places/ dissident voices carried in the wind/ new ecologies ebb and flow/ a quiet wisdom carried in the cadence of a stream…’
Abandoning guidebooks/maps/signs in favour of wandering/direct experiences.Exploring the visceral territory of our lived experience.The ‘found object’ offers an aesthetic of things imperfect and impermanent, a simplicity of form. Marked by time, eroded by the elements, artefacts of our past and present. In engaging with the past I don’t seek to romanticize it, but to see it as waymarker to possible futures. Often my final sculptures arise from the relationship between different objects/materials, an intuitive process unfolding over many months and many journeys.
Living and working in a geographically remote community (Unst Shetland Islands) I am interested in the possibilities of collaboration as a working process. For me it enables a deeper exploration of the work itself and the possibilities that arise when other, hands, eyes, perceptions and skills are involved.
'At the edge we are caught in liminal space, the tension between what has gone before and what is to be..'
Elisabeth McCormack
Tony Humbleyard CVExhibitions etc.
2024 - ‘Usehistories’ Mareel Exhibition
2023 – Opening – Published by Dark Mountain Project.
2023 Scottish Landscape Awards - Exhibition
2022 Social Crofting Research VACMA Bursary
2021 Invisible Dances Performance/sculpture Shetland
2021 Not the time to be Silent Spoken word/ video installation performance Limerick Ireland
2020 VACMA award for 'Usehistories' Project.
2019- Social@rthub Residency with Curator Rachel Grant https://www.fertileground.info
2019 - Social@rthub promoting Elisabeth Schillings 'Felt' https://www.facebook.com/1707893462629197/videos/361360041244217/
2018 - Fierce Urgency of Now - with National Theatre of Scotland Aberdeen
2018 - 'Walking the spaces' - Sumburghead Residency
2017 'Walking the Spaces' collaboration with dancer Kathryn Spence
2017 Openspace Residency with Elisabeth Schilling Sixfold
2016 Bone & Shadow with dancer/choreographer Jack Webb Bonhoga Shetland
2015 Drift installation with Vision Mechanics - Shetland
2014 Experience Bronze - Milton Gallery Banchory
2013 Bare Exhibition - Staircase Gallery Lomond
2013 All Talk - NEA Gallery Edinburgh
2013 Pathways of Desire - Coast Festival Banff
2013 Natural Selection - Moray Arts Centre
2010 Sculpture exhibition - Pittenween Festival
2009 SSW Residency - Lumsden
Awards 2017
Openspace Residencies - funded by Creative Scotland
Visual Arts Development Award - Shetland Arts
Sculptor/Installation artist/socialarthub facilitator
2019 Establishment of Social@rtHub Project
2017 Openspace residency programme at the Shorestation.
2014 Stone Carving course,Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
2007/9 Fine Art BA(hons)- Moray (UHI)
2005 Fine Art (HND) - Calderdale College
2004 Art Therapy training - Leeds Met
2003 Art & Conflict Training - Marian Liebmen
2002 Certificate in Education - Leeds
2000 NCBI Prejudice Reduction Trainers Course.