Case Study - Bibo Keeley

Bibo is a visual artist whose practice is informed by her life experiences and her deep feelings of being connected with nature. 

She responds to themes which resonate with her, and which influence her world view, e.g. illness, climate change, and the pandemic.  

Bibo works in a variety of media, including sculpture, performance, moving image and sound art.

More recently, Bibo has been co-shielding in a two-artist household since the start of the pandemic, and this has led to a shift towards collaborative working, with an emphasis on moving image and word-based practice.  Within this new context, her themes continue to be informed by her personal experiences and revolve around the need for healing, allowing time and space for reflection, re-thinking and re-connecting.

At the time of applying Bibo had received the Tom McGrath Maverick Award 2021 to support the creation of new moving image work, a film, based on her autobiographical story and diaries she had written when her now husband was critically ill. 

The project would see Bibo collaborate with Brian Keeley, Bibo’s husband and artist, and Susan Worsfold a theatre director.

The award she had received by the Tom McGrath Trust allowed Bibo to have a few mentor sessions with Susan. However, with the additional support of VACMA Bibo felt she would be able to expand on this crucial aspect of her project.  

Bibo explains, “Susan’s passion to work with marginalised people and to help them to expand their sense of self, would help me to develop my skills and artist practice and bring the right sensitivity and focus to my project.”

The VACMA fund supported Bibo to have a number of extra mentor sessions with Susan. 

“My source text was over 80,000 words so I needed to edit down my text a lot.  A lot of our time together was allocated to that preparation work and this VACMA funding then allowed for extra meetings. 

This extra help was really appreciated. It helped me in a lot of ways as it provided a focus and a structure that I get from working with people outside of myself and my household - having deadlines to meet and external structure.” 

The additional mentoring support also gave Bibo the confidence she needed to take the project where it had to go. “The project evolved and developed organically and naturally. It veered away from what I set out to do, but Susan encouraged this and would check in and help me to develop the project in the way it needed to go. Her experience is in autobiographical stories, as a theatre producer and director, so she has a lot of knowledge and input that I would not have had access to if it had not been for working with her.”

Susan offered guidance in the development of the narrative and assisted in script editing so the focus became on the voice of the carer, the voice of Bibo, an often-overlooked narrative. 

“The VACMA funding helped me really explore this with Susan, doing voice recording exercises so we could really create intimacy within my voice performance. She did exercises with me, where I could create space and do exercises which took me mentally in a space where I wasn’t focussed on my performance but had more freedom to try things out. My recordings became something totally different and took me to a place where I was comfortable listening to my own voice. 

In retrospect it was fantastic to have those as it really took me on a journey and opened up different possibilities.

The final outcome is an artwork where all three of us are really happy to put our names to it.” 

For Bibo the project gave her insight into working with someone from a totally different background – from theatre, and out with her previous experience of art performance. 

She says, “Susan as a producer has got a very different way of looking at things and structuring a project and devising and developing a project. This was good experience for me and something that I can carry over to my own practice.”

It’s also helped Bibo embrace more spoken word into future works when working with moving image.

“I’m currently collaborating with another local artist on a small development fund award where we’re looking at writing task and moving image and spoken word. So, I’m now taking these concepts into new projects.”

It has also laid the foundation for further collaborations with Susan. “We really found ourselves on the same wavelength. And we’re open to continuing the collaboration and opening the foundation out to future projects. Whether that’s a theatrical performance or something else but we would love to go back to the original idea of a stage performance.” 

'The Shared Light' film which was created with the support of a Tom McGrath Trust Maverick Award and an additional VACMA funding in collaboration among Bibo & Brian Keeley and Susan Worsfold was premiered at the CCA Glasgow as part of the opening event at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) 2022. In addition, Bibo and Brian also received a separate short film commission from the same festival.

“If you don’t get VACMA first round, don’t be discouraged. Don’t give up. It was a very rewarding journey and was very exciting.

"The VACMA award has been important for me in many ways. It’s important to understand that I’m currently isolated, or marginalised due to immune compromised household. I don’t have the opportunity to engage with the art world currently, VACMA remains accessible and it allowed creation of work that could be accessible. 

"Through experience of co-shielding, I could create my own project and my own rules and get support that way. It’s an important way to access opportunities. “