Black Waters: Inference to The Veil marks the culmination of the inaugural Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship at The Glasgow School of Art 2025 and features works from Jerwood Collection and Glasgow School of Art Archives & Collections. The first recipient of the Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship at The Glasgow School of Art is ‘Black Waters’, a collaborative, curatorial research project led by Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie and Żżo Charlery.
Inference to The Veil announces Black Waters’ debut exhibition. Drawing on Black feminist methodologies and Black scholarship, the exhibition convenes archival and collection works with invited independent artists in a shared curatorial field. This gesture situates Glasgow-based practices within a broader UK and African diasporic constellation.
The exhibition seeks to frame selected works from Jerwood Collection and GSA Archives & Collections into view with Black spatial practices, citational performance and material thinking. Works from both collections are shown alongside invited artists based in Glasgow and London. Jerwood Collection works feature Barbara Walker RA, MBE, Lubaina Himid CBE, RA, Michael Armitage and Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA, with GSA Archive & Collections works featuring Kialy Tihngang, Emmanuel Addo-Osafo, Hock Aun Teh and Anna Tewungwa. Black Waters have also invited Glasgow-based artists Grace Browne, Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie, Camara Taylor and Adebusola King Ramsay, alongside London-based artist Rebecca Bellantoni, to present work in the exhibition.
The exhibition stages Glasgow as the centre from which to perceive the scale and afterlives of the global colonial project, and the precise, opaque, continuously emergent ways Black life subsists and composes. The exhibition has been developed, particularly in relation to questions of perspective, visual authority, and the historical and contemporary processes through which Black life is obscured. These concerns directly informed the exhibition title, ‘Inference to The Veil’, which reflects the project’s focus on abstraction, opacity, and concealment as both tools of oppressive social design and as counter-strategies for resistance and refusal. For Black curatorial practice, inference becomes a means of recollection and assemblage; studying alongside fragments, distortions and omissions as a methodology for pronouncing Black life and testimony.
A companion text will engage the selected artworks through art-historical critique, while reflecting on the process of curating from Jerwood Collection and the GSA archive, including a critical acknowledgment of the limited number of group and survey exhibitions featuring Black artists in Glasgow.
The Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship seeks to foster diverse voices by offering emerging curators in Scotland their first supported exhibition in an institutional setting. The Fellowship offers a period of research and access to Jerwood Collection and a production budget to develop and stage a public exhibition with an event at The Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art.
Lara Wardle Executive Director and Trustee Jerwood Foundation said:
“The Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship at Glasgow School of Art and public exhibition of works underlines Jerwood’s commitment to supporting emerging talent and making art available for public benefit in the UK.”
Jenny Brownrigg, GSA Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art said:
“This exhibition, the culmination of the inaugural Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship, marks a significant opportunity for emerging curators in Scotland to work with two significant collections. Black Waters have created a multi-layered exhibition, tracing Black and diasporic life through both. Furthermore, Black Waters’ highlights the relevance of these selected works by placing them in conversation with the works of invited contemporary artists.”
This exhibition and Curatorial Fellowship are supported by Jerwood Foundation with loans from Jerwood Collection. The Jerwood Collection of modern art gives public access to a privately-owned collection to enhance the understanding and enjoyment of 20th and 21st century art. For further information visit www.jerwood.org/.
The exhibition runs from the 14 March till 25 April. There will be an exhibition preview event on Friday 13 March, from 5pm till 7pm. Admission to the preview is free, but tickets should be booked in advance through Eventbrite.
Please contact press@gsa.ac.uk for any further information.
NOTES FOR EDITORS
About Jerwood Foundation
Established in 1977 for John Jerwood MC (1918-1991) by Alan Grieve CBE (1928-2025), Jerwood Foundation is a UK charity committed to supporting excellence and emerging talent in the arts in the UK. Alan Grieve served as Chairman for over 30 years and was appointed Chairman Emeritus in 2023, when Rupert Tyler was appointed Chairman. The organisation is led by Lara Wardle, Executive Director and Trustee and to date Jerwood Foundation has committed over £113 million to support the arts in the UK.
Jerwood Foundation owns the Jerwood Collection of modern and contemporary art, and an important part of Jerwood’s philanthropic mission is delivered by the Collection through its loaning programme and promotion of a broader understanding, interpretation and enjoyment of art. Also included in the Jerwood group of organisations is Jerwood Space, which was Jerwood’s first major capital project when established by Jerwood Foundation in Southwark in 1998. Jerwood Space is a dedicated rehearsal space providing theatre, musical theatre, opera and dance companies with an outstanding environment within which to create their work.
About GSA Archives and Collections
The Archives and Collections at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) illustrate the history of the institution and the development of its teaching practices since it was established in 1845. As one of the oldest art and design institutions in the UK, GSA holds a museum collection of over 5,000 items, including furniture, works on paper, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and metalwork, alongside a small amount of born-digital material. Many items were originally acquired as teaching tools, while others have been, and continue to be, collected as examples of work by staff and students.
The collections also include 280 works by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which form a Museums Galleries Scotland “Recognised Collection” of national significance.
Alongside the museum collection, GSA holds a comprehensive institutional archive. This includes correspondence, photographs, ephemera, student records, minute books, and reports, as well as over 100 deposited archives from individuals and businesses associated with the School. Together, these materials provide a rich insight into GSA’s people, buildings, and activities.
About Black Waters
Black Waters is a collaborative, curatorial research incubator and invocation of assembly, assemblage and the ensemble of material, led by Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie and Żżo / Zoë Charlery. This project explores the capacious fields of Black Geography, Black Geology, Meta-Physics, Hauntology and Phenomenology through the a(live) study and practice of Black Performance. Black Waters’ work has been supported by David Dale Gallery’s Studio Residency in 2023, and the upcoming exhibition, ‘aweys gaun’, as part of Glasgow International 2026.
About The Glasgow School of Art (GSA)
The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) is internationally recognised as one of Europe’s leading independent university-level institutions for education and research in the visual creative disciplines. Our studio-based, specialist, practice-led teaching, learning and research draw talented individuals with a shared passion for visual culture and creative production from all over the world.
Originally founded in 1845 as one of the first Government Schools of Design, the School’s history can be traced back to 1753 and the establishment of the Foulis Academy delivering a European-style art education. Today, the GSA is an international community of over 3500 students and staff across architecture, design, fine art, innovation and technology in our campuses in Glasgow and Altyre (in the Scottish Highlands) and a thriving Open Studio programme delivering non-degree provision to over 1500 students annually.
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