01 Sep 2016

CCA Glasgow announces new Palestine residency with artist Jacob Kerray

Scottish artist Jacob Kerray is to spend the month of September teaching and researching in Palestine for CCA's pilot residency in the region.

Focussing on Scottish-based artists, the residency is specifically tailored to stimulate teaching and learning between Scotland and Palestine. The residency will facilitate exchanges of artistic viewpoints and contribute to the establishment of durable ties between Palestinian and Scottish artists.

A Fine Art, Painting and Printmaking graduate of Glasgow School of Art, Kerray has previously exhibited in Glasgow, London, Naples, Dundee and Edinburgh. The Old World, his most recent exhibition with George Ziffo, was at The Mitchell Library during Glasgow International 2016. The exhibition explored a shared interest in the genre of portraiture as a means to engage with art history and issues of culture, power and taste. Kerray's research period during the Palestine residency will involve travel to Bethlehem and Jerusalem to investigate sites of mythological, religious and artistic significance.

Kerray has previously taught at the College of Art in Cyprus whilst artist-in-residence in 2014, and whilst in Palestine will teach on the social function of painting, social realism and art as propaganda throughout history.

Kerray will be based at the International Art Academy Palestine (IAAP) in Ramallah and prepare a two week teaching period for the current students. The IAAP is a unique community of artists, individuals and institutional partnerships, established in 2006, committed to the development of visual art in higher education in Palestine through offering a BA programme in Contemporary Visual Art in the heart of the city of Ramallah.

The IAAP is particularly concerned with how to teach contemporary art in a manner that addresses the historical, theoretical and practical breadth of the field, and that engages with local knowledge, geopolitical contexts and lived realities of Palestine. The IAAP is the main project of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA), which was established in 2004 by a group of pioneering Palestinian artists including Suleiman Mansour, Nabil Anani, Khalid Hourani and Tayseer Barakat.

This residency is kindly supported by Glasgow Life Twinning Funds.