Off the Charts
The inaugural year of the Blackie House Graduate Awards.
Launching this year as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, Blackie House Graduate Awards have been presented to one final-year student from each of the four of Scotland’s principal art schools – Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow – in recognition of the student’s dedication to developing a unique and robust art practice.
The four artists selected to receive the awards are:
Alyth Krzyzanowska @krzyzska (Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen)
Elena Nieva @_eguski_ (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee)
Milly Toplis @milly.toplis (Edinburgh College of Art)
Eve Giltinan Allais @evegilal (Glasgow School of Art)
Each artist receives a prize of £2,500 to support a new piece/body of site-specific work made in response to items in the Blackie House collection, and exhibited at BHLM’s satellite venue, Garagespace. The resulting work will be presented as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2026.
In this group exhibition for the 2026 Award, the four emerging artists have responded to a selection of maps, globes and books held in the Blackie House Library and Museum, which chart Scotland’s land and seascapes: its hills, mountains and valleys, its lochs, rivers and canals, its paths and roads, its windmills and oil rigs, coastline and islands. In the age of GPS, the new commissions consider what positions creative minds occupy in and around these natural and man-made features, finding their points of orientation across various media. Told individually and collectively, their stories take shape in the Blackie House’s unique satellite space: a 250-year-old garage.
13-30 August 2026
Weds-Sun, 11am-4pm
Drop-In, FREE
6 George Square Lane, EH8 9AB
Alyth Krzyzanowska @krzyzska
Holding a magnifying glass to both the silly and the mundane, I employ speculative fiction and intervention to propose an alternative existence.
I often work with found media, coincidence, and passing fancies; I want to give in to them, mix what is real with what could be. Through my investigations and interventions I question our predisposition to conformity and ask if we could make our narratives just a touch more scintillating. As a multimedia artist I realise these ideas primarily through installation, collage, video, performance, and text. I published my first print collection of text work, You Can Lead a Horse to Water but You Can’t Make it Up, in June 2026. My greater mission is to uphold the good name of Fife.
Elena Nieva @_eguski_
I am a Dundee based multimedia conceptual artist. My work explores the contemporary cultural response to conflict with a specific interest in how conflict is experienced at all levels in our culture, from international to interpersonal. From young teams to sport teams to politics and countries, the presence of conflict possesses an unparalleled ability to unite and divide. Group identity in youth culture might derive from a root conflict, which is culturally processed through smaller simulated incidents.
My work for this collaboration with the Blackie House Museum and Library explores the influence of Scottish history on contemporary Scottish identities.
Milly Toplis @milly.toplis
I am a multimedia artist who makes work grounded in both the material and conceptual realms. My practice spans sculpture, moving image, performance and beyond. My approach to art making is rooted in post-humanist discourse, exploring how bodies interact with their environment and the natural landscapes around us. Considering how we interact spatially as humans with our local landscape is fundamental to my work. My pieces are a visualisation of my research into the importance of place and the climate crisis, asking the viewer to consider their own place on the earth. I work with the materiality of our environment, questioning what is nature? My work acknowledges that we are interconnected to the world around us whether in cities or rural settings. Responding to Blackie House’s extensive archives, I consider our relationship with the Scottish landscape over time. Using material play, I create tensions between the organic and the man-made, transforming delicate matter into permanent structures. The outside is moved into a gallery setting and, as a result, attention is focussed on its displacement. There is both a care and a destruction in my sculptures: an intimacy and a brutalist harshness, a dichotomy which asks the viewer to map their own place and actions within the natural world.
Eve Giltinan Allais @evegilal
My work is responsive to the everyday. I am interested in the patterns and routines that shape how we move through the world. Patterns and routine are loud in my head. I want to understand why, as humans, we do what we do. I am drawn to the small moments we rarely hold onto: picking up our phones, looking at maps, waiting for a loading symbol to spin. I am responding to the exact moment that is now. These moments feel so ordinary that we almost forget they exist, but when we pay attention to them they become strange, funny and full of suspense. I often place the digital alongside the physical. My intention is not to question our relationship with technology itself, but what it asks of us, and how we respond to it. The pauses, the waiting, the moments of uncertainty reveal something deeply human. My work is not trying to explain these moments as much as notice them. Through drawing and moving image, I try to hold onto the present for a little longer. I want my work to act as a record of this moment; not to explain it, but to bear witness to it. This is why I find myself returning to the in-between – to anticipation, waiting and suspense. It is here that we begin to notice the often overlooked, sweet absurdity of everyday life.
Special edition t-shirts
Please email us at contact@blackiehouse.org if you would like to purchase any of these special edition t-shirts. They are £25 each.