Dr Ruth Maclennan

Institute Associate

Artist and researcher. For ten years Ruth Maclennan has been making films on climate heating and geopolitics: exploring how the climate emergency has affected and altered experiences of place and landscape, with a focus on the Arctic.

Biography

Career

• Ruth Maclennan's films are exhibited widely internationally in exhibitions and film festivals.

Qualifications

• PhD in Fine Art, Royal College of Art, U.K.
• MA Fine Art, with Distinction, Goldsmiths' College, University of London
• BA (Hons), First Class, Sculpture and Drawing, Edinburgh College of Art
• MA (Hons), Modern Languages (Russian and French), Trinity College, University of Cambridge

Awards

• Artica, Svalbard, artist-in-residence (September-October 2023)
• Artist-in-residence, Maretta Jaukkuri Art Foundation, Lofoten, Norway (2021)
• Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded PhD, Royal College of Art, From the White to the North Sea: Journeys in Film, Writing and Ecological Thought
• Artist-in-residence, Lighthouse Foundation, Chupa, Northern Karelia, Russian Federation
• Cape Farewell, Creative Scotland: participant in the Sea Change expedition to Northern Isles, and commission.
• Joanna Drew Travel Award, Crimea and Odessa, Ukraine
• Cochemé Fellowship, Byam Shaw School of Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design
• Delfina Trust Studio Award
• Artist-in-Residence, Wellcome Trust, BIOS Centre, London School of Economics
• Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence, Archives of the London School of Economics

Research

Artist and researcher. Maclennan's films explore how the climate emergency has irrevocably transformed ways of seeing and understanding landscape and places – both for their inhabitants, and as representation.

Maclennan's research is cross-disciplinary in scope and inspiration. For the past ten years she has been engaged with an in-depth study of experiences of ecologies climate heating, ecology, and geopolitics, with a focus on the Russian Arctic and the north of Scotland. This research began with her PhD in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. Her collaborators include scientists, anthropologists, historians and geographers, and other artists and writers. She practises a form of open-ended artistic research, filming and recording sound and conversations and writing scripts, to listen to, trace and interpret experiences of global warming and geo-politics. Maclennan often shoots and edits her own footage, but also directs crews, and actors. She recently spent five weeks on the Artica artist's residency, in Svalbard, Norway, researching a new film.

Alongside her films, Ruth Maclennan makes multi-channel moving image installations, photographs, public performances, and interdisciplinary curatorial projects and writes articles for books and journals.

Maclennan exhibits in exhibitions and film festivals in Europe, USA, Australia and Central and East Asia. Her films have been shown at Tate, the ICA, the Royal Academy, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Loop Barcelona, Alchemy Moving Image, New York Underground Film Festival. LUX Artists' Moving Image distributes her films. www.ruthmaclennan.com.

Since April 2020 Maclennan has contributed to The Crown Letter, an international collective of women artists, started by Natacha Nisic. The Crown Letter exhibited at the Bienal Sur in Argentina and Uruguay, in Photo Days and at the Fondation Fiminco, Paris, and the Institut Français Kyoto, in K+ (April 2022), and Institut Français Prague (September 2023).

Publications

A full list of publications is available on Ruth's website.

Art commissions

• 2021-22 A Forest Tale, with Film and Video Umbrella (FVU) and the Arctic Art Institute, funded by a British Council Creative Commission for Climate
• Treeline – film commission for Forestry England and FVU, in association with Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow, and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.
• 2020: Fell, Animate Assembly Glossary – Essay, and a film with Emma Woffenden and Robbie Synge
• 2019 Icebreaker Dreaming – solo exhibition, Pushkin House, supported by Paulsen, FVU, Metro.
• 2015 Zigni – film commission for Essex Road II, Tintype Gallery (ACE funded)
• 2010-11 Anarcadia – Film Production award FVU/John Hansard Gallery, supported by Arts Council England [ACE], Henry Moore Foundation, British Council Kazakhstan.
• 2007-9 Archway Polytechnic – ACE grant for collaborative, event-based artwork devised and curated in association with AIR at Central Saint Martins: 8 artists, 13 artworks, 2 publications
• 2009 Arts Catalyst, Interspecies commissions: Three Short Films on Hawks and Men and Harry
• 2006-7 Central Asian Project, artist-in-residence in Almaty and Astana, curated by Cornerhouse, Manchester, SPACE London, Asia Art+ Kazakhstan, supported by British Council Kazakhstan.

Articles

Chapters (peer-reviewed); articles; features; essays (selected):

• Ruth Maclennan, 'An artist unpacks the archive', in Archives: Power, Truth and Fiction, ed. A. Wiggins, A Prescott, Oxford University Press (October 2023)
• 'Drift, capture, break, and vanish: sea ice in the Soviet Museum of the Arctic' Julia Lajus and Ruth Maclennan, in Ice Humanities: Living, thinking and working with a melting world, Ed. Klaus Dodds and Sverker Sorlin, Manchester University Press, 2022
• Ruth Maclennan, 'Routes and Paths in Arctic Russia' in Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practice for Art and Art-based Research, Edited by Bridget Crone, Sam Nightingale and Polly Stanton, Onamatapee, 2022 pp337-366
• Ruth Maclennan, Review of Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos, Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, eds. (2019), in Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ) vol. 9, Sep 2020
• 'The Crown Letter roundtable discussion', MIRAJ vol. 9, Cover and pp 264-269
• Ruth Maclennan and Uriel Orlow in All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist, eds. Judy Vaknin, Karyn Stuckey and Victoria Lane, Libri and Arlis, 2013
• Ruth Maclennan in conversation with Richard Wentworth, in Magic Moments, ed. Anna Harding, Black Dog, 2006
• 'We saw it — Like a Flash', Ruth Maclennan feature for Mute magazine, # 27, winter 2004

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions:

• 2023: A Forest Tale, screening in Open City Documentary Festival (07/09/23) https://opencitylondon.com/events/to-remain-in-the-no-longer-a-forest-tale/ ; A Forest Tale, solo exhibition at Pushkin House, London; Artists' Film International, Treeline at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; international tour https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/artists-film-international/ (2022-3); Will we still want to dance tomorrow: Tales for a Future, The Crown Letter at Institut Français Prague, (September 2023)
• 2022: Horizons, solo exhibition for By Art Matters, series 'Arbitrary Doors', Hangzhou, China; Treeline, exhibited at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Border… No Border, exhibition, Prosjekt 67 and Arctic Art Institute, Bodø Biennale, Norway; Cloudberries in touring programme, curated by Konstmuseet i Norr, Kiruna, Sweden; The Crown Letter at K+, Kyotographie, l'Institut Français, Kyoto, Japan
• 2021: The Crown Letter at the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo de America del Sur (Bienal Sur) at Centro Cultural Cordoba, Argentina; and Museum of Indigenous and Pre-Columbian Art, (MAPIO) Montevideo, Uruguay; In the Forest Something Stirred FVU and Forestry England, online exhibition of Treeline; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; PhotoDays presents the Crown Letter, outdoor exhibition, rue Rivoli, and at Foundation Fiminco, curated by Photodays, Paris, France
• 2019-20: Icebreaker Dreaming, solo exhibition, Pushkin House; Cloudberries, World Premiere, 63^rd London Film Festival, shorts programme 'What Remains'; From Time to Time at Sea, Shetland Arts, films by Margaret Tait and Ruth Maclennan
• 2018: Isis and Hesperus, Film commission, in Difficult, Marcia Farquhar, CGP/Dilston Grove, UK; Fell with Emma Woffenden and Robbie Synge, National Centre for Contemporary Design, UK
• 2016-17: Somewhere Becoming Sea, Humber Street gallery, UK City of Culture, FVU; fragmented fragment fragments, Pi Artworks Istanbul, showing Capital; The Faces They Have Vanished, solo exhibition, publication James Hockey Gallery, Farnham; Hero City, World Premiere, 60^th BFI London Film Festival; 'Nostalgia for a Future Territory' Belfast Film Festival, screening Call of North
• 2014-15:Essex Road II, Tintype Gallery film projections, Zigni; Reading Aloud City Wise and the Nose; Strand, new short film for Deptford X Festival, curated by Janette Parris; Terrapolis, French School at Athens, curated by Whitechapel and Neon Gallery, Athens; On Crimea, Screening and conversation with Neal Ascherson and Margarita Gluzberg, Institute of Contemporary Art; Call of North, premiere at 58^th BFI London Film Festival; selected for Experimenta Pitch; Selective Memory: Artists and the Archive, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland; Bad Copy, curated by Janette Parris, Museums at Night, Cardiff Story Museum;
• /seconds exhibition, Sharjah Art Foundation (publication); Theodosia at Alchemy Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland; II. International Conference Art and Nature, Sao Paolo University
• 2009-2014: Case Study, Taipei Contemporary Art Centre; Collective Diary, Hal Project, Seoul, South Korea; Burning Ice # 6 – When Animals Look Back, Kaaitheater festival, Brussels ; The Faces They Have Vanished, solo exhibition, new commissions Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts (ICIA), University of Bath; Anarcadia, FVU/JHG, screening and book launch, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Time is a Place: Uriel Orlow, collaborative film, Satellite Contact, CentrePasquArt, Biel; Anarcadia, solo exhibition at Ffotogallery Cardiff, Stills, Edinburgh, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; We need to talk about the future, solo exhibition, ICIA, University of Bath; Capital, solo programme of single screen works, Ritzy Cinema, Picturehouse London

Teaching

Current teaching:

• Cambridge University Department of Geography: Part II paper: Geographies of the Cryosphere
• Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design: Associate lecturer, MRes in Artists' Moving Image
• Open College of the Arts, Open University: Course author in Photography, Moving Image, and Creative Arts

External activities

For up to date activities see www.ruthmaclennan.com.