Hattie Quigley, a final year BA (Hons) Painting student at ECA (Edinburgh College of Art), will open her first solo exhibition in Summerhall Art’s In Vitro gallery space this week. Her show, entitled Gorge!, will run from Wednesday 5 to Saturday 8 March 2025. 

In a collaboration between ECA and Summerhall Art, final year painting students were invited to submit proposals as part of their studies. Painting programme director Charlie Stiven said: “Students were asked to consider the particularities of the gallery space and how their work might be orchestrated within it. Their proposals were judged by Samantha Chapman, curator of Summerhall Arts. It was from this process that that Hattie was selected."

Hattie’s themes are complex and encompass femininity, food, female desire, and engage with weight loss jabs and right-wing politics. 

On winning the opportunity, Hattie comments “I feel very lucky and appreciative that the work I put in was acknowledged.” 

She says: “I specifically started exploring the relationship between women, eating and body image in third year, after being educated in various feminist theories. However, when I look back at a lot of my art growing up, I was always trying to say the same thing. Born out of my own (and many, many friends) troubled relationship with food, I feel passionate about exploring women’s troubled eating in the context of a political vocabulary that looks at patriarchy, the family, gender, and the role of corporations.”  

Below left: Hattie's painting and installation in a studio in the ECA Main Building.

Below right: Hattie pictured in front of one of her paintings.

The exhibition is a mix of paintings and installations. Hattie explains: “My utter love for the buttery, deliciousness of paint and its emotive qualities means I’ve always worked predominantly in oil on canvas, however recently I’ve wanted to expand off the wall, using installation to create an all-encompassing world for them to sit in. With the paintings, a lot of work goes into the ground before applying paint, to be able to create the slippery surface I desire. Then it's just built up in layers, often with a crisis halfway through! I sketch a lot too - whether that be plans for installations or sculptures I wish I could create, or compositions for paintings.”

Working on live projects is part and parcel of studying at ECA for many of our students. Charlie comments: “Projects like this one with Summerhall provide ‘real-life’ experience for students in articulating their work and responses within a designated format to an external body in relation to a specific site. This exercise will hopefully serve all participants well in regards to post-graduation opportunities and applications. The project also marks a fruitful collaboration between ECA & Summerhall, signalling mutual support between the two institutions, and takes the work being generated at ECA out into the wider community.” 

Hattie is in the final stages of completing her studies which will culminate in her participation in this year’s Graduate Show. She says: “Because my solo show is close to the grad show, it’s actually changed what I would have installed in my ECA space had I not won. I was planning much more of an installation type thing but now I am contemplating really peeling it back to let the paintings stand alone.” 

Hattie's show is sponsored by Mimi's Bakehouse.

If you can’t make it along to Summerhall, Hattie’s work will be on display at our 2025 Graduate Show which is open to the public from Friday 30 May to Friday 6 June.