Fouzia Zafar

This print was created in conjunction with the Glasgow Print Studio 50th Anniversary Here & Now Legacy Project. "Kelvingrove Park in the west end of Glasgow holds many memories for me as a child: slides that stretched to the sky, a frozen pond that almost swallowed my neighbour and many great snowball fights."

"Today it is still a key focus of my day, for me and my own family. It grounds me in the morning with a meandering walk up and down the hills. At the end of the day, I visit it again with my seven-year-old son, watching him wind down the many paths that trail the park on his bike or scooter. It has always struck me how many paths were crammed into a small amount of space on a hill. I have tried to capture some of this in the print and the composition invites you to wind up and down the image."

"A park is a place to wind down in many ways. There are many benches peppered throughout the park, and a large number circle around the Stewart Memorial Fountain (1872), built by James Sellars, which is captured in the bottom right of the print."

"I often make more about places, objects and spaces that hold memories for me. I have used the process of etching to create this print on a steel plate using a series of collaged stencils. Creating the collages invites 'play' into the practice."

Fouzia Zafar was born in 1971 in Glasgow and is a visual artist working in a diversity of media, including paint, video and print. She completed her MA in Fine Art with a distinction at the City and Guilds of London Art School in 2013. Upon graduating she received the Gwen May Student Award, from the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, the Curwen Studio Award and was shortlisted for the Clifford Chance Postgraduate Printmaking Award. She was voted Printmakers Printer at Cumbria Printfest 2015, and was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2018. She has exhibited across the UK and abroad including the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy, London. Her work is held in private collections, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Ashmolean Museum and Scarborough Gallery.

Fouzia became a member of the Glasgow Print Studio in 2017. Her work responds to the themes of family histories, migration, absence and the strangeness of memory. Her figureless exteriors/interiors and looming objects create a nostalgic atmosphere that point to traces of humanity. She describes play as a key concept of her work. Play encompasses repeatedly finding, composing and constructing new tools and processes to explore objects; history, surfaces, and qualities, whilst also constructing new narratives.