Samara Scott: Belt and Road

For her most ambitious exhibition to date, artist Samara Scott has created a large site specific installation in response to Tramway’s main gallery.

Scott’s work is improvised in situ, using fluid and supple materials - cosmetics, mustard, toilet paper, milk, soil and cleaning products are just some of the substances that have made up her alchemic collages. Often working on the horizontal plane, Scott submerges these objects creating sculptural friezes in which audiences are confronted with the ‘glitching grit’ of contemporary culture.

At Tramway Scott literally suspends these miscellaneous accumulations to create a translucent, putrid, and seductive expanse which hovers ominously above the viewer. A vast, transparent membrane has been smeared and impregnated with various materials sourced from around Glasgow, creating a patina that will cure, decay, shift and evolve over time.

The materials Scott uses offer a portrait of the accumulation and decumulation of the city. Discarded, industrial items pillaged from building sites and motorway passes fuse with organic and found matter from across Glasgow; weeds foraged from pavement crevices, catering waste and items from Chinese supermarkets, hair dressing wholesalers and office supply stores.

The installation references the gallery’s likeness to open air structures such as markets, thoroughfares, arcades - spaces of trade, movement, consumption and abandonment which allude to the visible and invisible patterns of the city. The polluted coatings she applies to this surface imply a landscape that seems to constantly shatter and coalesce above us as we move beneath.