Awards for Artists
Awards for Artists supports individuals at a timely moment in their careers, giving them the freedom to develop their creative ideas and contributing to their personal and professional growth.
“I felt I had just disappeared, my last two sons were born two years apart and I wasn’t going to any openings; it really did my confidence a lot of good to know that I was recognised by a community, quite a big community.”
Jacqueline Donachie was a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists recipient in 2005 and despite the 19 years on the clock since, can chart it all: “Because I had just had a baby, our third! So I had three children under five at that point, and my youngest was just over one when I received the Award.
I was so late applying because of our household, and I thought I couldn’t possibly get it because my partner already had one (Roderick Buchanan, 2004). But they were so patient and kept extending the deadline and being incredibly understanding of my circumstances.” Caring for the artists is a hallmark of the Awards for Donachie, and one of the reasons its profound impact has stayed with her so long.
She is crystal clear on where the money went to:
“I remember really clearly, I floored my loft. I had been working out of an alcove in the front room which I got stuck in when I was pregnant. Roddy had continually had a studio in the East End, and I had to make a decision to either get a studio or do some adaptation at home. So with the Award I decided to floor the attic and to establish that as a studio which I used for many years until we moved to get a bigger garden for the boys.”
The Award also reinforced her confidence. “I felt I had just disappeared, my last two sons were born two years apart and I wasn’t going to any openings; it really did my confidence a lot of good to know that I was recognised by a community, quite a big community.”
She emphasises that she worked consistently throughout the boys’ youngest years. “I did this long wall drawing for my retrospective (at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 2018); I do these streetlight drawings and used one as a timeline – everything above the line was ‘normal life’ and below the line was my art work and practice.” It highlighted the delayed impact of having children, of not being visibly present in the art world. “It’s the year after you have the child that’s hardest.” So she converted the attic and was able to work in the evening when the boys were in bed. “We were quite good at that; we lost so many battles, but we were very good at bedtime. They were terrible swearers by the age of eight though!” she laughs.
Interestingly, she remembers sending Jane (Hamlyn, Chair of Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Visual Arts judging panel), a picture of the new bedroom for the boys in the freed up alcove, rather than a picture of her new studio. It was incredibly generative: “I could go up and didn’t have to see any dirty laundry, and once I went up the stairs I could focus – it was a very important space for me.”
She laughs again, explaining:
“It was all very unglamorous. The other two years enabled me to be and stay a full time artist, to get to openings, see exhibitions and to psychologically stay in that headspace that says ‘I’m an artist’.”
She had been nominated ‘six or seven times’ when she received it, so the affirmation was critical. Without it, she reckons she would have taken a teaching job. As it is, she’s only recently taken on an academic role, as Research Fellow at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee. “And I love it. I feel very conscious of my energy, in comparison to how exhausted many friends are who have been teaching for years.”
In those crucial five years after she received the Award, she made so much work. “When I made the monograph for the Fruitmarket show recently, I realised I had done so much.” With both of them freelance, Donachie and her partner took turns to work really long hours for periods of time, and somehow made it work. “Particularly for me as the mum it was really important to remain freelance during that time, and not take on another job.”
She loves being part of the wider community of the Awards: “You feel like you’re joining a really nice club. I’ve been asked to nominate too, and the Awards often recognise artists in Scotland. Seeing people receive it when you know the impact it’s going to have is amazing.” She is also a strong advocate for the inclusion of artists at all stages of their career. “I interviewed Phyllida Barlow (2007) for my Fruitmarket show, and she said she just needed to retire. It’s not a young artist’s prize, which is good.”
We talk more widely about the nature of funding for visual arts, and she’s clear she would not have a career without them. “I’ve had several awards, and I wouldn’t have been able to make any of my work without them. Because my practice is not particularly commercial. I don’t know whether I’m not commercial because I don’t live in London or because of the work I make, and I’m now too long in the tooth to want to try and do anything different.” She laughs again.
Donachie’s practice has two sides to it – on the one hand, she has worked extensively in socially engaged ways with various groups of people (including Beautiful Sunday made with dancers, for Folkestone Triennial 2021), and on the other side, her practice is connected to the biomedical history of her family, exploring genetics, research and ideas of communication, most recently in Deep in The Heart of Your Brain at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow (2016), an exhibition that drew wide praise for the manner in which it addressed disability, inheritance and ageing.
But it’s clear it is still quite different to be based in Scotland and decide to stay in Scotland. Donachie lived in New York on a Fulbright Scholarship for two years, and she increasingly saw how hard it was to pursue a practice while holding down multiple jobs and all without healthcare. It’s why they decided to come back to Glasgow to start a family. “Sometimes I do wonder if I had gone to London instead, would it have been different. It wasn’t the best commercial art career decision, but then I was never looking for a commercial art career…”
“I often say we went to art school to change the world, and that means you have to be prepared to make the work and put it out there and not know what might come back.”
Along with the difference in opportunities outside London, she notes it’s still harder for female artists. She doesn’t have any work in the Scottish National Galleries Collection, for example. “I was the first Freelands Award (in 2017) winner” – an award specifically set up to support the work of an under-recognised, mid-career female artist – “but they’ve changed it now so that institutions in London can also apply with an artist. I’ve been a selector and was very aware that every single one of the shortlisted artists that year lived in London. Female visual artists are now getting a lot more attention but if you look at collections, there’s still a long way to go. And so the numbers haven’t gone up in the same way as exhibitions and shows.”
Key to long-term change is consistent focus on who is getting the top curatorial jobs, women taking on leadership roles and joining boards: “And that has been changing so it will start to make an impact.” Fine Art students now are overwhelmingly female, but she knows it’s the 5–10 years after graduating where women drop out. “It’s the sustainability of a career and a practice that are critical, and not getting burned out. It’s really important to have these discussions.”
It brings us back to the freedom the Award gave her and how rare this now is: “We all signed on in our critical first years, running Transmission Gallery and organising exhibitions. So I do recognise how much harder it is now, if you don’t have independent wealth to fall back on. In Glasgow, there are now more artists than the city can sustain, and there’s not a commercial scene big enough in Scotland to support them. Everyone wants to live here, but you still need to be able to generate enough money to make a living. The whole space of working class artists is really challenged now. It’s now so much more difficult if you’re from a working class background with no safety net.”
Jacqueline Donachie is known for a socially engaged, interdisciplinary art practice that is research-based, collaborative and participatory, and she has run a studio in Glasgow for over 20 years.
Recent exhibitions include Right Here Among Them (2017), a mid-career survey show at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh that was the recipient of the inaugural Freelands Award, and Folkestone Triennial 2021. She has works in many significant national and international public collections, including Tate and the Arts Council Collection, and is currently a Baxter Research Fellow at University of Dundee.
Awards for Artists supports individuals at a timely moment in their careers, giving them the freedom to develop their creative ideas and contributing to their personal and professional growth.
Awards for Artists supports individuals at a timely moment in their careers, giving them the freedom to develop their creative ideas and contributing to their personal and professional growth.