Demelza Kingston is a Glasgow-based artist working in photography and moving image with processes that span the analogue, digital and cameraless. Her work considers how humans of the ancient past, the present and the future are dis/connected with the more-than-human. Informed by research, from archive to fieldwork, her work can be seen as a kind of speculative archaeology. Much of Demelza’s work relates to land and the plant life within- their lore, their commodification and control- and she sees the allotment she tends, where herbs for use in photographic developers grow, as part of her studio.

Demelza was awarded the Alice Duncan Prize and commended in The Glasgow School of Art Prize for Sustainability for her degree show work, a selection of which was also exhibited in Futureproof 2024, at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow. Other recent group exhibitions include Leeway, New Glasgow Society (2024), Art Making for Earthly Survival, Reid Gallery, Glasgow (2022) and Art of The Possible, Glasgow Art Club (2021). Her commissioned work has included a photographic project for The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in collaboration with Comann Eachdraidh Lios Mor (Lismore Historical Society).

The Shore Photography Residency is a new opportunity made possible with generous support from one of Cove Park’s Argyll Patrons.

‘I focussed on researching rhododendron, exploring the area around Cove Park including nearby plantation forest, Peaton Glen woods and the shore, learning about the histories and ecology of the area. I met kind and interesting people, made a lot of photographs and filmed some test footage. I collected rhododendron and plantation pine from the woods and from Cove Park and tested out making developer from the material which worked really well.’