Pester and Rossi
From 2020-2021, Pester & Rossi worked with Edinburgh Art Festival in partnership with Whale Arts, on a project based at the Union Canal at Wester Hailes called ‘Finding Buoyancy’; exploring ways we can connect to the environment to help us stay buoyant in uncertain times. The project included a guided audio journey made by Pester & Rossi, featuring voices from Fallope & the Tubes, produced by Charlie Knox (Trudat Sound), inviting WHALE Arts groups to listen, look closely and make creative responses whilst spending time at the canal in Wester Hailes. Their responses have been used to make Finding Buoyancy.
The audio guide can be used at the Wester Hailes section of the Union Canal by using a smart phone to listen to it on SoundCloud. We suggest starting at our friends Bridge8 Hub and Paddle Cafe at Calder Crescent, Edinburgh, EH11 4NE.
To complement ‘Finding Buoyancy – Sound Meditations’, Nadia Rossi (one half of the artist duo) has created ‘Feeling Lost, Feeling Found – A Companion Compilation’, for our DIY Art – Home Creativity Kit series. The ‘Companion Compilation’ highlights how Pester and Rossi’s artistic approach can help us to use creativity to welcome feeling lost; to embrace it’s arrival as a useful interruption; as feeling lost can often lead us to alter our course to new, unexpected and exciting places.
Download here.
Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi are based in Glasgow and work collaboratively under the artist name Pester and Rossi. Their practice derives from visual art, and leads to creating live art, sculpture, installation and public interventions, in response to people and places. Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi work together on a range of projects including as part of the Glasgow based DIY performance band Fallopé and the Tubes. Pester & Rossi embrace a collective working approach, hosting public events and workshops, often working with young people to inform their practice.
Between 2019-2022, WHALE Arts and Edinburgh Art Festival are working collaboratively to support community engagement in contemporary visual art in Wester Hailes, working towards a 2022 commission by Jeanne van Heeswijk, an artist recognised for her long-scale community-embedded projects across the world. Smaller-scale projects such as Pester and Rossi’s help us to make connections with local people.