We are delighted to announce our two Artist Commissions for the Avebury Papers.
Gayle Chong Kwan and Kialy Tihngang will be exploring the Avebury archive in the coming year, and we are excited to see what they make of the archive’s varied materials and stories.
Our artist commission began with an open call in September, and we were overwhelmed with the quantity and quality of proposals. Avebury clearly inspires creativity, and we look forward to seeing the new works, and ways of understanding Avebury, emerge through this commission.
Gayle Chong Kwan’s and Kialy Tihngang’s proposals caught our attention for their serious attention to the complexities of archives and archive practices. Their practices are varied, but what both artists have in common is an open and expansive approach to mixed materials.
Gayle Chong Kwan is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and academic, of Chinese /Mauritian and Scottish heritage, whose work is exhibited internationally in galleries and the public realm. Her large-scale photographic and video work, immersive installations, and sensory ritual events act within and against histories of oppression and positions the viewer as one element in a cosmology of the political, social and ecological. She has a PhD in Fine Art on ‘Imaginal Travel’ from the Royal College of Art, UK (2023) and has been Artist Fellow at Compton Verney (2024), the British Museum (2023), V&A Museum (2021), Ca’ Foscari University Venice (2020).
Kialy Tihngang is a multidisciplinary Glasgow-based visual artist, working in sculpture, video, textiles, animation and photomontage, often in collaboration with performers and musicians, involving elaborate handmade sets, costumes and props. As a first-generation British-Cameroonian, she is particularly interested in the constructed (and therefore inherently deconstructable) nature of British national identity.