Jacqueline Donachie

Jacqueline Donachie
Beautiful Sunday

Commissioned for Creative Folkestone Triennial 2021

Beautiful Sunday is a sculptural installation that celebrates ‘all the dance floors of Folkestone’ by marking out their size one-to-one on a huge stage set in the middle of the derelict gasworks site. Visitors are invited to stand on the stage and remember (if they are local residents) the dance floors - many of which are no longer active. The stage is energised by a huge screen showing a newly made film that documents a line dance indigenous to Glasgow: The Slosh.

After researching the Ship Street gasworks site, the artist was inspired by the thought of the communal energy and life of the social club that remained active for local residents on the derelict site long after the works ceased production. She also realised that a significant affinity between dancing in Glasgow and in Folkestone was present in the residential package holidays offered by The Grand Burstin hotel.

Jacqueline Donachie is an award-winning Scottish artist based in Glasgow. She is known for a socially-engaged art practice that is rooted in an exploration of individual, family and collective identity and the structures, platforms and spaces (both actual and conceptual) through which it is constructed and supported. Her work encompasses sculpture, installations, photographs, films, drawings and performance and is research-based, collaborative and participatory.

Her recent gallery 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. She has works in many significant national and international public collections, including Tate and the Arts Council Collection. In 2016 she completed a PhD with Northumbria University that examined the capacity for artworks to influence research and care in the field of genetics, continuing a long collaborative engagement with biomedical researchers in both Newcastle and Glasgow.

Find more of Jacqueline Donachie's work.