The Kurds

The Kurds is a group of six wooden portrait heads of members of the migrant Kurdish community in Edinburgh. The output builds on Dagg’s longstanding practice research into figurative sculpture, in particular techniques and processes of woodcarving, including novel approaches to polychrome. It brings this research expertise to a focused interrogation of the meaning and potential of portrait sculpture with respect to a particular, marginalised community. It investigates how portrait sculpture can meaningfully function as a mode of community engagement and through this foreground broader questions around migration, identity and exclusion.Three of the heads were exhibited in After The Storm, Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh, April 2017. Two heads were selected for the Society of Portrait Sculptors Annual Exhibition in London: FACE 2019, 3–8 June 2019 in La Galleria Pall Mall, the only forum for contemporary portrait sculpture in the UK. One of the sculptures, The Poser, was the only sculpture to be selected from over 700 entries for the Scottish Portrait Awards, which was held at Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh, 26 October – 1 December 2018, and Glasgow Arts Club,Glasgow, 21 January – 9 February 2019. The Poser was shortlisted as one of six finalists by a distinguished judging panel (including the artist John Byrne, and deputy director and chief curator of the Scottish Portrait Gallery, Imogen Gibbons) and was awarded the Glasgow Arts Club Award for Fine Art. The Matriarch, won runner-up in the Heatherley School of Fine Art Prize for the best 3D human portrait, June 2019."