“It not only revolves around the personal but the work goes beyond this, expanding into otherness and current ‘emergencies’.”
“The installation has a great visceral and energetic directness to it — in use of moving image, mark-making via sewing, night-time field recordings and in the glowing sculptural ‘flotsam’ materiality.”

Michelle Hannah 2022

This Is An Emergency Service is a project that explores the artists’ creation and re-enactment of queer urban grief rituals. Emma’s installation is made up of wall hangings and two dance films; the larger of which was her main project of 2022 and documents dance in multiple sites across Glasgow city after nightfall (15:19 minutes in length). All costume materials are found or donated up-cycled hi-vis workwear, transformed into grief scores.

Emma uses choreography derived from traditional English folk dances and this influence is apparent in the modern-day straw-bear-like costume with tassels that bounce and surround the dancer. Her repertoire also draws from research into movement sequences designed as coping mechanisms for dealing with grief and speaks to a collective urgency to grieve.

Special thanks to Olivier Julien and Odile Postic for their support.