Artist Talk: Margaret Mitchell

We are delighted to welcome Margaret to the Pathfoot Building to talk about her latest exhibition, Margaret Mitchell: Six Works on display in the Pathfoot Building. In collaboration with the Stirling Photography Festival, Margaret will lead a talk exploring her practice and approach as well as offering us a first look at her work in the university collection.

Artist Talk

Margaret Mitchell will discuss long-term storytelling in her work, looking at projects where she has undertaken this approach, and the methods used. She will discuss the six works on exhibition at the University of Stirling, giving the background to the images and the wider questions raised. Alongside this, she will touch on other long-term projects, including topics of responsibility and ethics in representing the lives of others.

“I want the viewer to ask themselves a question about how society operates, how choice is related to opportunity and environment. To see that sometimes people choose what they do because really, not much has been offered in the first place.”

Margaret Mitchell: Six Works will be on display in Pathfoot Gallery Two from 26 September 2024 to 8 August 2025, with participants getting the chance to have a first look at the exhibition with Margaret.

Margaret Mitchell documented the lives of her sister Andrea’s children from childhood to adulthood across three bodies of work. This series of six works, acquired by the University’s Art Collection in 2023, focus on Mitchell's nephew Steven, offering an insight into his life’s trajectory. These images follow Steven from a childhood in the Raploch (Family, 1994) to his adult life in St Ninians (In This Place 2015-2017), to an image of him back in his childhood locale (Into Absence, 2017-2020.

Across the three bodies of work, Mitchell reflects on both personal and political questions, asking the viewer to consider the nature of disadvantage and privilege in a history covering class, opportunity and inequality. For Mitchell, the personal narrative of Steven’s path in life reflects a universal issue; whilst this is a personal journey of one boy into man, versions of this story and situation are repeated across countless individuals and societies.

Margaret Mitchell is a documentary photographer based in Glasgow. Her work ranges from exploring communities and children’s worlds to projects on the individual and society. Bridging psychological landscapes and social concerns, her imagery explores the intricacies and complexities of people’s lives with a particular emphasis on place and belonging.

Her work has received a number of accolades and has been acquired for the permanent collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, the Martin Parr Foundation and the University of Stirling. She has exhibited widely including at the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. A book of her work, Passage, was published in 2021 and her work has been featured in the Guardian, De Correspondent, and the New Statesman amongst others.

Born in Stirling, Margaret grew up in Plean and Dunblane and studied at Edinburgh Napier University and Edinburgh College of Art.