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Staff Profile

Mx Angel Cohn Castle

Lecturer in Fine Art

Background

Angel Cohn Castle is an artist working in moving image and performance, alongside curation and producing. Angel's works often feature music and song, and explore monstrosity, history and sites of performance, and the reimagining of live cabaret with moving image. Cohn Castle's latest project, created in collaboration with Davide Bugarin, is Sore Throat, (or Magang Lalamunan in Tagalog). The work is an interactive film that explores the impact of sound overheard through walls and how this has impacted queer people and queer spaces in the Philippines, where the interpretation of sounds is informed by monstrous mythology and the distortions of colonisation and gentrification. Sore Throat uses a specially created interactive technology developed with Studio Autonomic. 

 

Cohn Castle has created moving image and performance works commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery and BBC Scotland / LUX Scotland. His work has been exhibited at galleries including Fruitmarket, Edinburgh; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson. Castle has curated for organisations including British Film Institute (BFI) and Historic Environment Scotland. Castle is founded Edinburgh Artists’ Moving Image Festival and queer arts company Pollyanna, producing films and live shows where Angel perfoms as Pollyfilla. A major Pollyanna project that Angel produced is OMOS (2022), a moving image work directed by Rhys Hollis that pays homage to the history of Black people featuring in performances in the Scottish Royal Court. OMOS has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at galleries including KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Royal Scottish Academy and screenings at Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro and Cinemateca, Bogotá

Research

Moving image


Sore Throat (2023) (Co-creator with Davide Bugarin)

  • Solo exhibition: Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, November 2023
  • Funder: Creative Informatics/University of Edinburgh, Creative Scotland, Fruitmarket


OMOS (2022) (Producer) Directed by Rhys Hollis with Andrea Baker, Divine Tasinda and Kheanna Walker


  • Solo exhibition: KINDL Centre for Contemporary Arts, Berlin, March-July 2023
  • Solo exhibition: Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, March 2023
  • Solo exhibition: Stirling Castle, Stirling, October-December 2022
  • Solo exhibition: Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, September-October 2022
  • Solo exhibition: Dunoon Burgh Hall, Dunoon, March-April 2022
  • Film festival: Opening Film of Glasgow Short Film Festival, Glasgow Film Theatre, March 2023
  • Film Festival: #NarrarElFuturo: Festival of Film & New Media, Cinemateca de Bogotá, Colombia, September 2023
  • Film Festival: Atlanta Black Pride LGBTQ International Film Festival, September 2023
  • Film Festival: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, November 2023
  • Film Festival: Leeds International Film Festival, November 2023
  • Film Festival: Rencontres Internationales, Paris, November 2023
  • Joint solo screening at Festival ECRÃ at Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 2023
  • Performance: Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, October 2022; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, October 2022; SchwuZ, Berlin with KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, July 2023
  • Funder: Creative Scotland, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic Environment Scotland, People’s Postcode Trust, City of Edinburgh Council, EventScotland, Goethe Institut and others.
  • Media: BBC Radio 4, BBC Scotland Radio and in The Scotsman, The List, The Skinny, The Daily Record, Snack Magazine, Somewhere For Us.


12-month part-time Research and Development (2020)


  • Funder: Creative Scotland


Lupi Lupi Lu (2019)


  • Solo presentation: BBC website, 2019-present
  • Group exhibition: Kunstmuseum, Bonn, March-April 2021
  • Film festival: Glasgow Short Film Festival, March 2021
  • Online archive: blinkvideo curated video art platform, 2021-present
  • Arts festival: Birkbeck, May 2021
  • Funder: BBC Scotland / LUX Scotland


Tonight Tonight No More (2018) [Moving image, sound art and performance]

  • Solo exhibition: St Cecilia’s Hall/Talbot Rice Gallery, May 2018
  • Funder: Talbot Rice Gallery


TRG3 Residency (2017-18)

  • Residencey with gallery, plus research trip to Venice Biennale
  • Funder: Talbot Rice Gallery


Entertainment (2017)

  • Group exhibition: Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, March-April 2018
  • Joint solo screening: Talbot Rice Gallery, September 2017
  • Group exhibition: Gallery 23, Edinburgh, August 2018


To Me You Mean The Most (2017) (Co-creator with Ed Twaddle)

  • Group exhibition: Block 336, January-March 2018
  • Group exhibition: BALTIC, Gateshead, September-November 2017
  • Joint solo screening: Talbot Rice Gallery, September 2017


Right Now (2016)

  • Group exhibition: KisUzem, Budapest, May 2016
  • Group exhibition: Telep, Budapest, May 2016


Screensaver (2015)

  • Group exhibition: Threewalls Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2015
  • Screening: Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, 2015
  • Screening: Dikeou Collection, Denver, 2015
  • Touring US group gallery screening: at Recess, New York; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; SEDIMENT, Richmond; Double Double Land, Toronto; The Cave, Detroit; Skylab, Columbus; The Luminary, St. Louis; Threewalls, Chicago; The White Page, Minneapolis; Leisure Gallery, Denver; FalseFront, Portland; StoreFront Lab, San Francisco, 2015
  • Film festival: Incubarte Festival, Valencia, 2015
  • Group Exhibition: International Symposium for Electronic Arts, Vancouver, 2015
  • Film Festival: Miami New Media Art Festival, Miami, 2015
  • Film Festival: Digital Muddy Expanded Media Festival, Illinois, 2015



Other performance

  • Mean Most (duo performance), Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 2017
  • Pollyfilla performances, Pollyanna cabaret, various venues, over 100 shows, 2015-present
  • Buy now! and Presents Presently (solo performance), Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 2019 & 2021
  • soursop (solo performance), Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018
  • Puppet Karaoke, (solo performance) at JW3 Jewish Cultural Centre, London, 2013


Publications


  • Catalague for Videonale.18
  • FELT Book, eFELT epublication, The Institute for New Feeling
  • Catalogue for International Symposium for Electronic Arts
  • Catalogue for Incubarte Festival
  • Interview in Stigmart Videofocus annual video art journal



Curator/Creative producer


Director of Pollyanna queer arts company and Edinburgh Artists' Moving Image Festival

2015 to present


Curator, Historic Environment Scotland July 2021 - March 2022


Producer, Into the New, festival of contemporary performance, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland November to March 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23


Film Programmer (Dance), Aesthetica Short Film Festival March - July 2021, 2022 and 2023


Curator and Producer, Centre for Cultural Value July - December 2020 Industry


Events Programmer, BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival January - March 2020


Curator, Open Out week, film night, The Fruitmarket Gallery February 2018 and 2019


Curator, Curator commission for Royal Hospital for Sick Children & Department for Clinical Neurosciences, NHS Lothian October 2017 - January 2018



Teaching

Angel teaches studio practice across undergraduate and postgraduate in Fine Art, and is Module Coordinator for First Year of BA (Hons) Fine Art.


Angel has also taught Fine Art at The University of Edinburgh and on the Space and Performance module at Birkbeck, University of London.

Publications

  • Digital or Visual Media

    • Castle A. Lupi Lupi Lu. BBC Website: BBC Scotland, 2019. Film. In Preparation.

  • Exhibitions

  • Performance

    • Castle A. Tonight Tonight No More. 2018. 50 Niddry St, Edinburgh EH1 1LG: St Cecilia’s Hall, 60min.