Photo Credit – Zefeng Li
In March and April 2025, presented in collaboration with Gossip Collective, Stirling’s Tolbooth Gallery housed the work of seven artists confronting the idea of belonging, or its lack thereof. From urban photography to painted manifestations of longing, the work questions the extent to which collective consciousness is possible when such scarred divisions mark the Earth, and whether there’s hope for a new, more together, world.
Zefeng Li’s work speaks to the obscurification of global conflict by the mainstream media and its inherent links to capitalism. Through a tabloid curtain we see glimpses of destruction and trauma as viewers are forced to physically and intentionally move around the piece to bear witness to the horrors that it conceals. Guarding the structure is a pile of receipts and tickets – a manifestation of the material distractions many of us shield ourselves behind.
Edie Preece’s Google Maps prints could be Rothko’s colours from afar – but when we come closer we see the deterioration of a Glasgow football pitch, abandoned and degraded after years of disuse. Its life is charted in just three prints, scaling the passing of many years down to just mere moments, zooming out on what could have been a childhood, a passion, or a home.
The show as a whole is one that contemplates what it is to take up space in a country that doesn’t accept you, like a rejected organ in a botched surgery. Visualising this physical unease, artist Handy creates melted forms, holding onto existence or lamenting its hypocrisy. One figure scratches the outline of China into their back, a symbol of the itch to return home, or perhaps an indication of the physical markers that set some apart from others.
Similarly examining the space we take up in the world through his photography, Joe Tebb explores pivotal moments in recent modern history: the Black Lives Matter movement, the COVID pandemic, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. One picture shows a bus stop poster that reads Justice for Belly Mujinga, BLM, remembering the railway worker who died from COVID after being coughed and spat on at London Victoria in 2020. Her name takes up space usually reserved for metropolitan consumerism, thereby eradicating structures that exist to keep marginalised identities in place and placing BLM at the forefront of the public consciousness.
A sober contemplation of nationalism and identity, Find Direction Home asks us to examine the lines that divide us. It asks what it really takes to make one feel at home, and demonstrates what transpires when we don’t.
For more information on events at the Tolbooth, Stirling, visit stirlingevents.org
