About

Wendy Kirkup is an artist filmmaker based in Glasgow, Scotland, working primarily with 16mm film. Many of her works are portraits of sorts, concerned with multi-sensory perception in and through the subject, the viewers’ body, the body of the film, as well as her own, together considered as an expression of ‘touching’. Her practice explores how this may be expressed through material aspects of film and image making, asking questions of what a work is as much as what it might say, or rather, how it might say what it does by virtue of what it is. 

“In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.”
Nathaniel Dorsky

Kirkup’s work has been exhibited in exhibitions and film festivals both nationally and internationally including Tate Britian, UK, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Spain amongst others. Recent exhibitions and screenings include 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2023, USA, Edinburgh International Film Festival, 2023, Alchemy Film Festival, 2023, Braziers International Film Festival, 2023, Visions in the Nunnery, London, 2022, The Horror Show, Somerset House, London, 2022/3, Miraculous Noise, Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark, 2021, There then and never again (LUX Touring) to Inverness Film Festival, Pier Art Center, Orkney, CCA, Glasgow, 2019/20.

Projects and exhibitions have been supported by grants and awards including Art Council England (North), Arts Council England (South West), Creative Scotland, Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award (VACMA), Glasgow.

Contact: wendykirkup1@gmail.com

Education:

M.A. Film an Television Production, Bristol University
M.A. Fine Art, Northumbria University
B.A. Fine Art, Brighton Polytechnic


Teaching:

Associate Lecturer University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI)
Senior Lecturer Northumbria University
Associate Lecturer University College Salford
Visiting lecturer at many Universities in England and Scotland including, De Montford University, Sunderland University, Glasgow School of Art, Newcastle & North Tyneside College, Glasgow Clyde College.