The Margaret Tait Award, established in 2010, is a LUX Scotland commission delivered in partnership with Glasgow Film, and supported by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland. Inspired by the pioneering Orcadian filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait (1918–99), the award recognises experimental and innovative artists working with the moving image.
This year, LUX Scotland is pleased to announce that the 2021 recipient of the award, Andrew Black, will have his new commission ‘On Clogger Lane’, that will be accompanied by captions and audio description premiere at Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) on Tuesday 21 February 2023. To coincide, an exhibition of Andrew Black’s work, including this film, will be screened at The Tetley, Leeds, from 20th January – 14th May 2023.
‘On Clogger Lane’explores how the infrastructures of capital have transformed the topography and social relations of a rural valley in the North of England, across generations. The film meanders through a landscape dominated by a monstrous satellite surveillance station, submerged beneath reservoirs, gouged by mines and quarries, and haunted by the traces of past inhabitants. On Clogger Laneincorporates conversations with a wide range of people alongside archival material and an improvisational score, to explore the meeting points of interest public and private.
Andrew Black said “Working on this commission has allowed me to revisit my relationship with a place I have known since childhood. After working in the Highlands for a couple of years, returning to my former home turf during the ongoing Tory apocalypse has been a complex experience — but it has allowed me to collaborate with family and friends, and to establish new connections with custodians of local heritage, activists, dissenters, protestors and people connected in various ways to their complicated patch of rural England. The conversations that have gone into this project have affirmed my enthusiasm for finding out local knowledge, built from deep interconnections between people and place, which can often suggest possible other, more convivial senses of belonging and forms of connectedness to each other.”
Nominations for the Margaret Tait Award are assessed by a panel of artists and professionals from across the fields of the visual arts and cinema. The 2021 Margaret Tait Award selection panel included Alberta Whittle (2018 Margaret Tait Award recipient); Kim McAleese (Director, Edinburgh Art Festival, previously Programme Director, Grand Union, Birmingham); Tina Fiske (Director, CAMPLE LINE, Dumfriesshire); Thomas Abercromby (artist and curator); Sean Greenhorn (Screen Scotland); and Kitty Anderson (Director, LUX Scotland, panel chair).
Previous Margaret Tait Award recipients include Sulaïman Majali; Emilia Beatriz; Jamie Crewe; Alberta Whittle; Sarah Forrest; Duncan Marquiss; Charlotte Prodger; Rachel Maclean; Stephen Sutcliffe; Anne-Marie Copestake; and Torsten Lauschmann.
Sulaïman Majali’s 2022 Margaret Tait Award commission will premiere at Glasgow Film Festival in March 2023, before touring to venues across the UK and being presented at LUX’s exhibition space in London.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 