77°F is a limited edition print by the Glasgow-based visual and sound artist, photographer and DJ Matthew Arthur Williams, commissioned by Cove Park to mark its 25th anniversary.

Writing on this edition, and the connection between Williams and Cove Park, artist and collaborator Emmie McLuskey notes that ‘77°F… is testament to a shared belief in remaining close and committed to a process-led practice that is analogue, takes its time, and is in direct opposition to the political landscape it finds itself in. The print was made in the summer of 2025 in collaboration with DCA Print Studio. It depicts a landscape which has been formative in the development of Matthew’s work, and employs in combination, for the first time by the artist, photographic, hand dyeing, and screen-printing processes.’

The screen-printed image originates from 2022 when Williams was in Northumberland, England, to photograph the artist and photographer Ingrid Pollard for a feature in The Observer. The meeting took place at Highgreen Manor, a Scottish baronial-style house which is currently home to the organisation Visual Arts in Rural Communities and is set within a 6,000-acre estate of moorland, farmland, and woodland.  Williams’ visit to Highgreen coincided with the aftermath of a severe winter storm which had brought down high numbers of trees in the estate’s older woodland and in areas of recent plantation. Reflecting on the importance to him of this experience, Williams writes, ‘I was drawing parallels with the fallen trees and the ones that remained standing with archival information: how some material is preserved, and some becomes fractured or severed; thinking in the same way about the strength of intergenerational kinship, friendships, and exchanges being an anchoring force that can become disrupted, sometimes strategically, sometimes not.’

The image – the original fibre-based darkroom print – was included in Williams’ two-person exhibition We All Love The Same Boy, with McCluskey at Govan Project Space, Glasgow, in 2024. This exhibition foregrounded the importance of collaboration to both artists and, as McLuskey notes in her text accompanying the release of 77°F, highlights William’s interest in the complexity of relationships, community, and landscape.

Immediately after meeting Pollard, Williams returned to his home region in the West Midlands to begin the production of his film Soon Come (2022). In this key work, Williams depicts aspects of his maternal family’s migration from Jamaica to the UK. The sensory experience of a journey from the Caribbean to England, and the multiple and overlapping contrasts of light, heat, sound, and colour, resonate through the edition’s title, 77°F, and its process of production. The paper is hand dyed with hibiscus tea, giving each edition a unique colour and finish, and referring to the warming drink served traditionally as a welcome in Caribbean homes. This edition is a deeply evocative, layered, and thoughtful work by an artist who foregrounds, like Cove Park, the importance of research processes, collaboration, and relationships between individuals and their communities.

Buy 77°F or contact Alexia Holt for more information.

Artist Biography:

Matthew Arthur Williams (he/him) is an artist, photographer, lecturer, and DJ who lives and works in Glasgow. He completed his BA Photography at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2012. He frequently works with installations centring the photographic medium alongside moving image and sound.

He was awarded the Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship in February 2024 and the Cove Park Emerging Artist Residency supported by the Bridge Awards, in 2023. His upcoming solo exhibition In Consideration of our Times at Stills: Centre of Photography, Edinburgh runs 12 September – 18 October 2025. Recent exhibitions including Small Mercies, Primary, Nottingham (2025), Lives Less Ordinary, Two Temple Place, London (2025); Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature at the Hunterian Art Gallery, We All Love The Same Boy, a two-person show with artist Emmie McLuskey; Pictures of Us at Gathering (London), and Five by Five at Incubator (London), all in 2024. His solo exhibition Soon Come, which consisted of photographic works, film and a sound installation, was presented at DCA, Dundee in 2023. He has developed exhibition projects and commissions with the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2022), Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark (2021), Jupiter Artland and Johnson Terrace Gardens as part of a commission for Edinburgh Art Festival (2021), Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow (2019) and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2017). Williams’ research has recently been supported through programmes at Cove Park, Primary, CCA Glasgow, The Bothy Project, Hospitalfield, and LUX Scotland. As of March 2023, he sits on the board of trustees for The Bothy Project, and in 2023, he has taken up the post as a Lecturer in Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art.