Like many collectives Rhubaba, established in 2009, started off with mostly temporary events and locations. In 2010 they moved to their current, more permanent residence and despite some recent weather damage seem to have established a strong affinity with the current location.
In their project Built Overnight (2010) the collective took over a small abandoned betting shop on North Forth Street to great reactions of support from the surrounding businesses and community. This support has not waned in recent years, with Rhubaba making an impressive impact on the Edinburgh art scene in their short period of operation.
Last summer they were selected as one of the venues for the 2011 Art Festival and have continued to occupy a prominent position in grassroots collectives across Edinburgh. Over recent years Rhubaba artists Rachel Adams, Ash Ried and Catherine Payton have all been selected for the New Work Scotland Programme at the Collective Gallery. Another, Craig Coultard, is representing Scotland for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad which supports projects inspired by the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This esteemed run of shows and events that have placed Rhubaba on Scotland's contemporary arts map.
Rhubaba's studios are tucked away behind a housing estate in the middle of an industrial complex in Pilrig. While it isn't much to look at, it can be seen from cities such as Berlin that the modern bohemian thrives in low-cost and ex-industrialised areas. Stepping through the corrugated steel shutters, this presumption would not be faulted. The interior looks a lot more exciting than you would expect on first impressions. Within the building is a gallery space as well as artist's studios, with the gallery space on the ground floor and the studios on the mezzanine above.
Rhubaba regularly hold shows, curating them from the pool of members who happen to be occupying the studios at the time. The last show was Claire Davies and Sacha Imrie in a collaborative exhibition entitled Within the space of.....
Like the exterior of the building, Claire and Sacha's title didn't give much away. The binding factor in their collaborative exhibition was the book Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Their press release included an excerpt from the book, and the titles of their works were all phrases from the text, hence the open ended exhibition title. Despite their collaboration the two artists could not be more polarised in what inspires them and how they work.
Claire makes it apparent that she takes influence from carefully researched literary texts and authors such as Italo Calvino as well as stories of morality such as The Tower of Babel. These narratives become abstracted within her rigid forms and wonderfully detailed pencil drawings.
Sacha, on the other hand, takes a more scatter gun approach to her sources. Her work seems minimalistic, much like Claire's, yet draws on her own ideas and reactions to philosophical debates such as the nature of time and space. In the context of this exhibition her works were inspired by the concept of mirrors becoming portals into other dimensions, an inter-textual reference to the Vonnegut publication. Sacha's work, varied and ad hoc, seems to serve as a way to guide her mind through spells of creative hyperactivity, to capture her thoughts in a concise and considered way.
Despite Davies' and Imrie's varying working processes their styles have become merged with the help of Vonnegut's intermediary text. The concepts and discourse of Breakfast of Champions have fascinated them both and served as a good platform for these two very different artists to create work that does not conflict with each other within the space.
Imrie and Davies answered a lot of questions in relation to the post-art college world . There is no doubt that it is a difficult life to lead as an artist. In an Arts Management talk last week at the University of Edinburgh one member of Creative Scotland stated that '...dedicating your life to arts, it’s dedicating your life to poverty.' Questions of exploitation of interns within the creative industries, the decreasing wages and ever-inflating prices of the art world are all factors that have been debated rigorously throughout recent months. Claire and Sacha's advice for surviving in this difficult sector is you just have to 'stick with it', balancing your time between your artwork and a paid job seems to be the current format that these artists live by.
Rhubaba's Artist's Studios are a fine example of how the close-knit community and rapport between artists can play a vital role in the longevity of contemporary artistic creation. With reference to the opening paragraph and in light of their previous show, history has shown that these are a group of exciting and talented emerging artists. Each and every one of their careers should be watched with great interest in the not too distant future.
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