This Land is Your Land

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Scotland Office, Dover House, Whitehall

This Land is Your Land by Sam Ainsley is one of 21 prints commissioned in 2012 by the Glasgow Women’s Library to mark the library’s 21st anniversary. Printed in black and white, it presents a double reversed image of the outline of Scotland, along which the artist  has written words and names that are positive expressions of women in Scotland. As she explains:

My original idea was to use the names of all the women’s memorials in Scotland since the Red Clyde and the Women’s Rent Strike; but I also wanted the text to hug the coastline of mainland Scotland (I couldn’t fit text into the islands!) as all old maps show. Many of the memorials were inland so I decided to start with the Red Clyde and the Women’s Rent Strike (in Glasgow) and by a process of word association celebrate the qualities of all the women of Scotland; I didn’t want to name names as so many would have to be left out…

Sam Ainsley is an artist and teacher. From 1985-1991 she taught on the Glasgow School of Art’s Environmental Art programme before co-founding and leading the Master of Fine Art Programme. A leading visual arts practitioner and advocate, Ainsley has exhibited in and curated independent exhibitions and undertaken residencies in numerous institutions and arts organisations across the USA, Australasia, Europe and the UK. She remains an external advisor to several MFA courses including at Liverpool John Moores University, Newcastle University, and a Visitor to the Royal Academy Schools. Her work is represented in public collections including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh; and the Hunterian Museum and Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), print (as object name), pigment print, digital print

Artist

Sam Ainsley (1950 - )

Title

This Land is Your Land

Edition

Number 7 in an edition of 7

Date

2012

Medium

digital pigment fine art print on paper

Dimensions

height: 49.5 cm; width: 49.6 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Glasgow Women's Library, with funds raised from print sales from the Robson Orr TenTen Award, a GAC/Outset Annual Commission, March 2020

Inscription

recto: '7/7 This land is your land', bottom left / 'Sam Ainsley 2012' bottom right

Provenance

Glasgow Women's Library, Glasgow, UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection

GAC number

18880