About
My work investigates the contemporary relevance of ‘found’ artefacts, their archives and specific sites through collaboration with people who have significant connections to a latent history. I am interested in how such artefacts, archives and sites carry both social and personal histories. This leads to two key questions: what is our relationship to the past, and what is the value we ascribe to it? I have explored these through photography, bookworks, sound, and other forms of digital and material media. Dialogues with archivists, archaeologists, local community members, local history groups, and museum volunteers are instrumental in my practice. This means the collaborative art process, archive, and physical site come together to shape the final artworks.
Photographs are often the starting point for a project, and their relationship to a present-day landscape. Living memory – and its relationship to history – is an important link to all my projects, so the recent past is of special interest. Over the last twenty years, archival, archaeological and oral reminiscence methods have become embedded in my practice. While the final outcomes of my projects may take different forms, what they have in common are the themes of land and heritage, working with individuals and communities who have witnessed significant change. This means stories and memories of place, work and family life include an aspect of the ‘unmaking’ of place, whether through economic decline and/or regeneration.
Examples of recent projects include: Before and After Coal, National Galleries of Scotland, 2024-2025, that incorporated Mineworkings, 2023-24; Going through the Mill, Signal Film and Media, 2021-2022; and The Decorators, Art Walk Projects, 2019-2020.
Examples of recent published writings include: Visual Culture in Britain, Volume 22, Issue 1-3 (Routledge, 2024); Aerial Landscapes edited by Nicky Bird, Katherine Jackson, Onya McCausland and Joy Sleeman (Flat Time House, 2023); Collection Thinking: Within and Without Libraries, Archives and Museums edited by Jason Camlot, Martha Langford, Linda M. Morra (Routledge, 2022); and Proximity and Distance in Northern Landscape Photography edited by Chris Goldie and Darcy White (Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2020).
From 2017-2022, I was a Reader in Contemporary Photographic Practice at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). I was a co-coordinator of two research groups: Reading Landscape (GSA, 2014-2022); and The Family Ties Network (2012-2024), which explored memory, space, place and the family in photography and the moving image.
Photo: Nicky Bird in her studio, 2026
Her work is in the collections of: Belfast Exposed Photography, Northern Ireland; Craigmillar Now, Edinburgh; Dundee Art Galleries and Museums, Dundee; East Lothian Council Museums Service, Haddington; Renfrewshire Museums Collection, Paisley; Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow; Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; National Mining Museum Scotland, Newtongrange; National Museums, Liverpool; Renfrewshire Museums Collection, Paisley; The Highland Council Archives, Isle of Skye; and The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College / University of Cambridge.