College of Arts & Humanities

Ruth Ewan: A JUKEBOX of People Trying to Change the World

Thinking Culture | The Dear Green Bothy | School of Culture & Creative Arts | College of Arts and Humanities
Date: Monday 28 August 2023 - Wednesday 10 January 2024
Venue: Queen Margaret Union
Category: Concerts and music, Exhibitions

A JUKEBOX of People Trying to Change the World is a CD jukebox, sitting between digital and analogue technologies which contains a growing collection of songs addressing a spectrum of social issues, some directly political in motive, some vaguely utopian and some chronicling specific historic events. The songs could all be described as progressive in subject matter. The archive currently contains over 2,000 tracks, with no more than two by the same artist, which are ordered into over seventy categories such as feminism, land ownership, poverty, civil rights and ecology.

Ruth’s Jukebox is on loan for six months, installed in the Queen Margaret Union’s upstairs bar. The exhibition is supported by Thinking Culture and The Dear Green Bothy.

A free launch event, She Works Hard for the Money Listening Party with Ruth Ewan and Debbie Armour, will take place on Friday September 29.

The exhibition of Ewan’s work is supported by The Dear Green Bothy and Thinking Culture programmes in the College of Arts and Humanities, University of Glasgow.

Ruth Ewan is an artist based in Glasgow. Her work addresses ideas of power and questions representations of time, rebellion and repression. Her work grows from context-specific research resulting in a wide variety of forms including events, public works, performance, writing, large scale installations and print.

Often working collaboratively she has created music projects, walks, radio programmes, design projects, workshops and books. She has shown extensively within galleries and museums including; The Laing Gallery (2022); Collective (2022 & 2014); The Cooper Gallery (2021); Edinburgh Art Festival (2018 & 2020); Pitzhanger Gallery (2020); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2019); CAPC, Bordeux (2019); Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris (2019); Victoria and Albert Museum (2018); 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016); Camden Arts Centre, London (2015); Tate Britain (2009 & 2014); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Glasgow International (2012); Dundee Contemporary Arts and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla (2011); The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2010); the New Museum, New York (2009). She has realised projects for The High Line, New York (2019); Glasgow Women’s Library (2018); Create, London (2012); Folkestone Triennial (2011); Art on the Underground (2011); Frieze Projects (2009) and Artangel (2007 & 2013). In 2016 she was awarded the Arts Foundation Yoma Sasburg Award for Art in Urban Space.

She has taught at numerous art schools and universities and created workshops with museums and galleries, primary and secondary schools, women’s groups, community organisations, hospitals and prisons.

Her work is in the collection of Tate London, McManus Galleries Dundee, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, FRAC Champagne Ardenne, The Scottish Parliament and CAAC Seville.

She is represented by Rob Tufnell, Cologne / Venice.

Image Credit:

A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World, Ruth Ewan, installed at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 2011

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