Beautiful Materials Design Studio

Portable Retrospective book is a tactile object containing two sections: a physical documentation of the 54 Paintings virtual gallery, and a retrospective of Nicola Atkinson’s artistic career featuring 125 projects. It is an art exhibition in your hands and continues the theme of reimagining spaces for art.

It is a culmination of an approach, of a dedication to public art and engagement. These interventions have been both large and intimate in scale and have changed community identities and formed active relationships with the built environment. Never fixed to one place or one institution and within it lies the blueprint for new ideas in art-making.

Nicola Atkinson’s globally successful career has taken her from the underground art scene of Hollywood, the Museum of Modern Art New York art collection, the cutting edge of the Havana art scene, to the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia & Herzegovina, establishing a new art practice in Lidköping, Sweden and to the streets of Dunfermline. All the while showing work with David Hockney and Bill Viola, sharing the stage with Henry Rollins, curating with artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard and David Shrigley, performing and making music with Stevie Jackson from Belle & Sebastian, collaborating with Hanna Hanna Tuulikki and Harry Shearer and exhibiting with fellow designers, architects, and artists representing Scotland in the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, at the V&A Dundee.

https://beautifulmaterials.bigcartel.com/product/portable-retrospective

Publisher: Beautiful Materials Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-80049-763-4 

Price: £20 retail price 

Dimensions: 210mm x 210mm 

Pages 206

Design: Fourtwentyseven
Editor: Ben Fletcher & Nicola Atkinson
Essay: Staying Home by Iain Irving.

Nicola Atkinson lives and works in Glasgow. She is the founder of the participatory art and design studios NADFLY (2003 - 2020) and Beautiful Materials Design Studio (2018 - ongoing)

Her practice is organic and generative, specialising in place making, social cohesion and community engagement, with a commitment to the delivery of well-conceived and durable artworks that inspire and prompt actions, interactions and reactions.

These interventions have been both large and intimate in scale and have influenced behaviour, changed community identities and formed active relationships with the built environment.

Clients have included museums, hospitals, architects, third sector and local authorities from across Scotland and internationally. She has had numerous exhibitions in international venues including Long Beach Museum of Art, CA, USA, Tramway and The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Scotland, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK.

In 2020, she was one of the 25 designers, architects and artists representing Scotland in the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, which will now be shown at the V&A Dundee 2021.