Samantha Dick

Feb – March 2020

DO OR DIE was an amazing experience for the founding committee.  Over the course of three months it gave us an understanding of the tasks, commitment levels and collaborative effort required to exhibit work to a high standard.  Samantha was a pleasure to work with, as committee and artist supported each other through the planning, installation and exhibition of both HUBCAP and the artist’s first solo show. 

The public exhibition ran from 17th Feb to 4th March 2020.

Samantha Dick is a multi-disciplined artist based between Glasgow and Edinburgh.  The basis of Dick’s practice is their rejection of social expectation.  How can one best dismantle the social and psychological constraints placed upon the body by an oppressive society?  Through the use of theatrical play the artist encourages the viewer to disrupt their own impressions of normality; challenging gender norms, addressing power relations and conformity, whilst disrupting the rooted idealisms of civilisation.  Dick constantly draws us back to their interest in the Other and its conflicting relationship with societal normality.  How can the Other gain dominance and subsequently, how might we dismantle the dominant?

DO OR DIE is the first solo show of our artist in residence Samantha Dick.  The exhibition acts as a reaction to our current socio-political climate.  Through a variety of repetitive acts, ’games of endurance’ and ‘wet dreams’ Dick explores ideas of banality and absurdity to ultimately question the structures of our complex contemporary world.  Through the use of characterisation Dick chooses to live within a stereotype in order to subvert its social rule.