Yvette Bathgate ^{Emerging artist}

Artist's country of origin: Estonia

Yvette Bathgate (she/her) makes and thinks primarily through collective models, fostering collaboration in her practice. She has worked within the collectives Tendency Towards (2016-2021), and Tactics for Togetherness (2021 – current), among others. The intersection of ecology and care, and the traces and relics of these systems, root her research. Various projects have taken the form of a library, learning programmes, workshops, reading groups, performances, dinners, events programmes and a community greenhouse, and often take on curatorial and socially engaged approaches. All of which are making practices that inform the material-based processes where sculptural works take form. Repurposed theatre sets, weaving, foraged clay, textiles, plant-dyes, stone carving, archive building and woodwork (amongst others) are used to dig into or reflect the collaborative, slow, intuitive, joyful and complicated labour of these practices. These materials are support structures; gathering, repurposing, cultivating, harvesting, processing, forming, assembling are methods in which to think through and with.

Yvette has worked as an artist in various community settings; hospitals, schools, community gardens, alternative educational spaces, and activist groups. These have been the settings where she’s learned about her values as an artist that shaped how her creative practice is positioned. In drawing light on our interdependence we work toward a fairer, more equitable world through building relationships and community. This work is both a part of her practice as well as directly informing and contextually underpinning the material explorations outwith these immediate environments.