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Yvette Bathgate and Jake Shepherd
Artist Duo based between Scotland and Estonia

say hello: yvette.b.jake.s@gmail.com

We began working together in 2016 within the collective, Tendency Towards, responding to an economic shift and the subsequent period of transitions within the city, which resulted in a lack of creative spaces within Aberdeen, Scotland. We explored themes of labour structures and collaborative modes of working, focusing on the increasing necessity of artists communities to operate in this way. This research took form in both our curatorial programming and in the exhibitions and performances made together as a collective, whilst operating nomadically across the city and running a programme in a space of our own.

In 2021, we co-founded another collective, Tactics for Togetherness, alongside Phoebe Banks, Kirsty Russell and Jess Wilson-Leigh. Together we have produced exhibitions of our own collaborative work and programmed/commissioned the work of others. The collective now runs a community library of books and tools titled, Communal Powers. The library is continually activated through a programme of events where creative practitioners are invited to respond to the library in the form of workshops, events, reading groups, exhibitions, etc.

We have both worked within settings of education and care using creativity as a vehicle for (small but significant) social change; schools, hospitals, a children's centre, a co-living care community and alternative educational spaces have been the settings where we’ve learned about our values as artists and therefor shaped how we position our creative practice. These settings are often, too, where this work takes form - we believe that community work is best done in the community, so often the outcomes take place outwith arts spaces. We approach this work with slowness, centering connection and relationship building, over and above any form of production, to ensure the work is meaningful.

Together, our practice is rooted in collaboration, as a duo and in our extended collaborative approaches; co-creation, agency, and tenderness are the integral threads that bind our creative practices. The material outcomes are a result of the explorations, reflections, and questioning of the context of this work, including the methods and structures that are interwoven throughout it. We understand that this work is political and that politics of care cannot be untangled from wider social underpinnings.