Gaf presents Professor Elaine Shemilt

Professor ELAINE SHEMILT BA, MA (Royal College of Art), FRSA, FRGS

Elaine Shemilt is an academic, researcher and artist. She holds the Chair of Fine Art Printmaking at DJCAD, University of Dundee and is Artistic Director of the Centre for Remote Environments – a research and consultancy unit of the College of Arts Science & Engineering.

Artistic practice involves sculpture, installation, printmaking video and digital media. Professor Elaine Shemilt was a pioneer of early feminist video and multi-media installation work. Doppelgänger (1979/1981) and Women Soldiers (1984), were recovered and migrated to digital by the AHRC funded research project REWIND in 2011.

She has always experimented with a combination of materials and media and has an international reputation for innovation in the use of printmaking across art forms and her collaborative work with scientists. In her early career her work was exhibited at The Hayward Annual, The Bradford International Print Biennale and the Video Show in the Serpentine Gallery, London. More recently her work has been shown at the Imperial War Museum, London and in Warsaw, Berlin, Rome, Singapore, Melbourne and Shanghai.

Shemilt is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Geographical Society, and she is a Shackleton Scholar. She is a Professional member of Society of Scottish Artists and was its President from March 2007-2010.

Shemilt is also the Artistic Director of the Centre for Remote Environments and she is the Vice Chair of the South Georgia Heritage Trust. She was a founder member of both organisations which are principally involved in environmental management and protection.

Recent Research concerns the environmental sustainability of the island of South Georgia for the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. “The Demarco Archives: accessing a 40-Year Dialogue between Richard Demarco and the European Avant-Garde” Blueprint for Bacterial Life- a research project with Scientists from SCRI (The Scottish Crop Research Institute) and The Scales of Life which embodies science and the visualization process. She collaborated with the Regius Professor Michael Ferguson and the architect Jo White. On three facades of the Wellcome Discovery building in Dundee, Scotland, She is the Principal Investigator on the AHRC funded research projects ‘EWVA European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s’ and Richard Demarco. The Italian connection, both based at the University of Dundee.