Overview
During the 8th week of course study and exploration, I began to consider the exhibition venue. Taking into account the geographical relationship, spatial usage, thematic relevance, and budget feasibility, I finally chose Edinburgh Palette (St Margaret’s House) as the venue for my exhibition. In the collective activity this week, we started to collectively complete our own collages and discussed how to relate them to our respective themes.
Venue Selection
Edinburgh Palette (St Margaret’s House)
151 London Road, Edinburgh EH7 6AE
Choosing Edinburgh Palette was no accident. It was transformed from a school into an art center, and its architectural life was ‘translated’ from an educational venue to an art space. This itself is a cultural transformation of the physical space. As a community led by artists, it brings together diverse creative practices and continuously engages with the surrounding immigrant communities. This decentralized, resource-sharing operational concept is highly consistent with the decentralized, shared resource spirit of the ‘documenta 15”lumbung” exhibition and the core viewpoint of the project, which is ‘dispersed as a collective process’.
Image by: Tianshun Zhao
Source: https://www.scot-art.co.uk/places/st-margarets-house/facilities/exhibitions-events-communityspace/guide-to-galleries/
Select “Gallery 2”
- Suitable Price
- Suitable Space
- Suitable Equipment Support (Workshop Space)
Spatial flexibility and mixed uses: It was transformed from an old building and features various-sized exhibition halls, studios, and public activity spaces. This aligns with my format of “small-scale white cube exhibition + public projects”. I can seamlessly connect the exhibition display (artworks) and the activity space (workshop) at the same location, allowing the output of the workshops to naturally become a part of the exhibition content.
Budget-friendly and resource-sharing: As a non-profit charity organization, its space rental fees are usually more flexible than those of commercial galleries or large institutions, being very budget-friendly for a budget of £10,000. At the same time, the artist community here means potential creative support, volunteer resources, and the possibility of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Collective Working
Image by: Hengyi Chen
- In the second collective activity, each of us completed individual collage paintings using the materials we brought and incorporated the elements of “No Heroes”, which is also the name of our group. For my personal curatorial project, it inspired me to view the memory archive section of the exhibition as a similar collage-like space, allowing different narratives to be juxtaposed and superimposed to form new meanings. In terms of teamwork, I understood that a collective is a way to make differences a resource for dialogue.
(Venue Selection and Collective Work © 2026 by Tianshun Zhao is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
(Venue Selection and Collective Work © 2026 by Tianshun Zhao is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
(Edinburgh Palette copyright © Scot-ART 2026 )
(Gallery Infro copyright © Scot-ART 2026)
(St-Margarets-2018-Galleries-layout copyright © Scot-ART 2026)
(Working © 2026 by Hengyi Chen is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
(Working2 © 2026 by Hengyi Chen is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
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