Deirdre Macleod (BA (Hons) Cantab, BA (Hons) Edin, MSc (Soc Sci) Edin)
Lecturer Arts, COL Director of Students
Contact details
- Email: deirdre.macleod@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Centre for Open Learning
Paterson's Land
Holyrood Road - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 8AQ
Availability
Monday - Wednesday 9.30 am - 5.30 pm
Thursday 9.30 am - 1 pm
Background
I have a longstanding interest in how those who live in cities experience them. She pursues a spatial artistic practice which combines expanded forms of drawing and movement. My current research explores how gesture-based performance can generate new forms of knowledge about cities. I start from the premise that movement-based research methods, including walking, drawing and running, are forms of enquiry which can help make sense of lived experience.
My artistic practice draws on my original academic training in human geography. As well as a First Class Degree in Painting from the University of Edinburgh, I hold an honours degree in Geography from the University of Cambridge and a Masters degree in European and International Politics. I am currently a PhD candidate in Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. My thesis examines how artistic practices, such as drawing and movement-based strategies, might contribute to the ways in which we can better understand undervalued spaces and places within the peripheries of cities.
I have exhibited and performed her work within the UK, Europe and US, including a series of participatory walking and performance-based works at: Art in Odd Places, New York City, (2023), Terminalia, Leeds, UK (2024), The Urban Emptiness Festival, Nicosia, Cyprus (2016); The First Night of Experimental Boredom, Dordrecht, Netherlands (2017); Walking as a Question, Prespa, Greece (2021 and 2023) and Artwalk Porty, Edinburgh (2020 and 2021).
Remote, collaborative, performative strategies have become an important aspect of her artistic practice. I work regularly with New York-based artist Christopher Kaczmarek to create remote, film-based performative works, including TRACE, which was shortlisted for the Marsarto Global Walking Awards.