Moira Salt

multimedia artist, using film and sound, performance, found objects, printmaking, and installations.
practice looks at B/black diasporas, particularly women, and their connection to memory, myth, and land.
uses geology, fiction and technology to imagine possible futures and their necessary histories, which cast a critical eye on capitalism and environmental consumption.
tries to imagine what may have been forgotten and where we (as a global community) might be going.

wisdoms of ash (studies)
David Dale Gallery (Open Studios), 2023

Developmental work, exploring themes like hydro-feminism, entanglement, and the environmental impacts of extraction economies; creating an imaginative space where geological entities and human narratives intertwine.

flowing through volcanic transformation (or the water that held all)
EVOLVE, RIG Arts, 2023
Culture Collective

Created with community participants in Seedhill, Paisely, as part of On-Belonging, a series of workshops for B/black and brown women and mothers on identity, migration, and expression.

The film follows four women’s stories as they interact with the filmmaker’s collected objects, and film eachother’s journey to the White Cart river waterfall (or the Hamills) where they perform a small personal ritual.

Exploring research around the specific geological conditions of the river that enabled its use as a power source for Paisley’s industry.

the dirt eaters
16 Nicholson Street, 2022

The Dirt Eaters title refers to those who used to consume specific types of earth and clay for vitamins.

In the film two women are immersed in an intimate conversation. One of them recalls living on a toxic land, while on screen a disembodied figure is looking for her bearings in an unreal landscape.

Created for the exhibition Needs and Freedoms, at 16 Nicholson Street Gallery, Glasgow, 2022, with support from Creative Scotland.

Needs and Freedoms
16 Nicholson Street Gallery, 2022

Curated by Aga Paulina Młyńczak, this exhibition originated from our shared core interest in a tweak of human nature which created and still perpetuates structural racism, and which will also survive it. Through different artistic approaches, McGurk and Salt take a look at the present and cast themselves into the future. Salt uses personal voices and imagination as means for recovery, while McGurk uses archives and studies bureaucratic frameworks as a way of getting closer to the universal human flaws at the root of the problem.

The works were developed in tandem with ‘Reparative Trespassing’ – a publication edited and introduced by Isabella Shields. Therein we collected elements of urban planning, community stories, personal narratives, poetic geology, hidden ciphers and data visualisations in order to build fragments of future archives and host past spectres.

Link to their website
Link to publication

sustain: a posture
16 Nicholson Street Gallery, 2022

featuring Joanna Bémont and Phoenix Archer

The artwork explores the systemic inequities and biases faced by Black women in the United States, delving into issues of care, opportunity, and survival.

Through a blend of movement and narration, it examines the intersection of identity, race, and gender, challenging viewers to reflect on the structural disparities and lived experiences of women of color.

Created for the exhibition Needs and Freedoms, at 16 Nicholson Street Gallery, Glasgow, 2022, with support from Creative Scotland.

where the restless ocean pounds
Bowling Harbour, 2021
Commissioned by Sustrans

with support from Transport Scotland

Performances:
dreams of salt (and other ghosts) (I, II, and III)

A sculptural installation and set of performances on diasporic experience, hauntings of Slavery, and the Black female body. The series of polyphonic spoken word performances used ritual in order to retrieve and re-embody memory; giving space for the ghosts (past, present and future) to speak.

The sculpture processes Atlantic drift wood with metaphors for the treatment for the African slaves being sold, and preparation of ships of the same period. Soot, oil, and rope.

The performances draw inspiration from Matana Roberts’ jazz album Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis, with contributing voices from Black Feminist writers and poets.