exhibitions & events 2022

Consuelo R. Servan

The Chain: Roots, Resilience, Connection, Migration

The Chain - Roots, Resilience, Connection, Migration is an exhibition by Glasgow based artist Consuelo R. Servan. It consists of a dropdown artist book and a series of ‘intervened screen prints’ exploring shifts and sonority in colour and shape of compound chain-like structures.

This work is an abstraction, inspired by the Opuntia cactuses of the ‘rhizome’ family, a type of cactus, originally from South America, that is very resilient and spreads easily around the area where she grew up, Extremadura. Plants like irises, bamboos, ferns or many cactuses are part of this family. Rhizomes are the roots that connect horizontally and spread, without need for seeds, facilitating colonisation. This growth pattern is a central reference point in her practice and is based on the rhizomatic system explored by philosopher Gilles Delueze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari. In ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, they used this system as an analogy for non-hierarchical knowledge structures that multiply, communicate and grow easily, describing new ways to relate, connect and ‘migrate’.

The exhibition includes a series of screenprints, developed at Glasgow Print Studio as sketches and tests for the artist book. However, during the first lockdown, these prints found their own identity through the addition of graphite, gouache and coloured film. They add an important layer to the book and are aligned to its central reference of rhizomatic growth.

Consuelo R. Servan is an artist born in Extremadura, Spain, in 1970. Glasgow based since 2013, Servan has honed her screen-printing practice for nine years. Originally trained in sculpture at the Complutense University in Madrid, she completed the MRes in Creative Practice at Glasgow School of Art in 2018. Inspired by non-hierarchical botanical patterns of growth, she created large fabric screen prints functioning as sculptures.  Her research project ‘Outsider Art environments: Collaboration as a tool towards Growth’, aimed to blend the roles of artist, researcher and tutor. Servan’s work has been exhibited in: Crawford Gallery, Cork; San Jorge Art Centre, Caceres; La Casa Encendida, Madrid and ATA Gallery, SF. In 2007, she was awarded the ‘Francisco de Zurbaran Fellowship in Artistic Creation’ by the Extremadura Government.

Her work distinctively references the natural world, paying attention to how change in the surrounding environment has the ability to expose and embody human emotions. Since moving to Scotland, she has grown a strong evocative component in connection with the identity and biodiversity heritage of her home country. 

She works as a Community Artist and Educator, focused on making non-hierarchical connections, enabling people with a range of abilities to gain confidence and develop their creative self.

Click here to see more works from the exhibition.

Image: Consuelo R. Servan, 'Lemon & Fluorescent Pink on Green Skin', 2021, screenprint, watercolour & graphite pencil, 30 x 47 cm, unique. Consuelo R. Servan at GPS (photography courtesy Fiona Watson). Consuelo R. Servan, 'Fluorescent Pink & Lemon on Grey Skin', 2021, screenprint & graphite pencil, 30 x 40 cm, unique.