The Ring in the Fish is a collaborative body of work that includes a series of moving image vignettes on 16mm film, alongside photographs and audio interviews of memory and place. Drawing inspiration from the tale of St. Mungo—patron saint and founder of Glasgow—and the story of the fish and the ring, the title becomes a conduit for the transformative nature of both individual and collective narratives inviting an intimate exploration of journeys, separation, memory, and identity.

The Ring in the Fish explores what role imagination holds in migration, and how these images carried across multiple generations of migrants create new psychic landscapes, enabling new ways of being—reworking filmmaker Humphrey Jennings’ notion of “making visible the delicate re-balancing of facts, events and ideas”.

Centred on storytelling and oral narratives, the dialogues within this work illuminate how histories exist in the multiple spaces between national identities, race, gender and diaspora. Syed conjures images and stories from the inner worlds of South Asian people who came to Glasgow in the 60s and 70s, for whom the will to imagine served as a bridge to buffer the harsh realities of post-war Britain against a backdrop of political change. Matter is simultaneously revealed and redacted, forcing different forms of viewing, and allowing different temporalities to surface.

Curated by Shalmali Shetty.

Public Programme

We'll run a public programme of workshops, talks and panel discussions to explore the themes of the exhibtion. More information here.

Alia Syed

Alia Syed, born in Swansea and currently living between London and Glasgow, has been creating experimental films in Britain for over three decades. She is interested in how subjectivities are produced through culture, diaspora and location; and her practice therefore interrogates the protean nature of self-narration: enfolding fact, fiction, present, past, and how histories are made and unmade. Her work has been shown extensively in cinemas and galleries around the world.

In 2018 she was shortlisted for the Jarman Award; and exhibited in Delirium // Equilibrium at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. In 2019 she was ‘Artist in Focus’ at Courtisane Festival in Gent, Belgium; and her film Meta Incognita: Missive II (2019) was showcased in Migrating Worlds: The Art of the Moving Image in Britain at the Yale Centre of British Art (2019), as well as (Im)material worlds: Tracing creative practice, histories and environmental contexts in artists’ moving image from Southeast Asia and United Kingdom (2022). In 2023, her seminal work Fatima’s Letter (1992) was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of Life is more important than Art.

Shalmali Shetty

Shalmali Shetty is an independent curator, writer and artist based in Glasgow and working between the UK and India. Her research interests include themes of archives, memories and hauntology, extending her focus through the familiar framework of India and its neo-colonial relationship to the West. She intends to coalesce her backgrounds in art practice and theory in the production of the curatorial. Shalmali holds a BVA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda (India), an MA in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India), and an MLitt in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) from the Glasgow School of Art (UK), supported by the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship. She is the recipient of the Visual Arts and Craft Makers Award 2022 (Glasgow); the Skinny Magazine x Edinburgh Art Festival Emerging Writers 2023 (Edinburgh), and the Art South Asia Project x Serendipity Arts Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship 2023 (UK and India). Amongst various independent projects, Shalmali currently serves as a Trustee on the Board of Scottish Contemporary Art Network (SCAN), and writes for various arts platforms.

BSL Film Interpretation

The films in this exhibition will have BSL interpretation on the following dates, available from 11am - 6pm.

Saturday 12th July

Tuesday 15th July

Saturday 26th July

Interpreted by Bharti Kothari.