For artist AJ Stockwell, the 2025 Freelands Studio Fellowship at University of Dundee has opened new ways to explore an ongoing interest in the relationship between human and geologic bodies. Based in Scotland’s Dunblane, their practice anchors material and sensory connection with the natural world. At Dundee, this has taken shape through a series of wind-based instruments that turn geological engagement into sound and vibration. Access to the university’s workshops, technologies, and technical expertise has expanded experiments with form and process, encouraging new approaches that build on existing methods. The daily commute between AJ's rural home and the city also seeps into their thinking and materiality, offering a reflective movement that connects landscape, rhythm, and practice.
The Fellowship’s year-long structure offers time to test ideas without the pressure of a fixed outcome. Working across departments has allowed AJ to follow unexpected directions and revisit materials like local clay, linking their research to Dundee’s wider ecological and industrial histories. Mentorship and dialogue within the art school, and sharing a studio space with students, has grounded their exploration, finely tuning an ongoing practice of experimentation, reflection and transience. For AJ, the art-school residency enabled by the Fellowship has been about more than just producing, but about working differently to invite space for slowness and deeper connection to place.