Matthew Urquhart is a Scottish artist who graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2025 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Practice. His mixed-media practice explores identity, memory and the quiet narratives embedded in built spaces. Drawing from architectural sculpture and set design, Urquhart treats buildings not as static objects, but as vessels for identity, memory and storytelling.
Inspired by his journeys between Limekilns and Aberdeen, the works exhibited reflect the relationship between Scotland’s industrial remnants, structures once driven by collective purpose and prehistoric monuments.
From stones piled by ancient hands to structures forged in steel and steam, both echo the same restless faith in a future worth striving for and the people who moulded their creation. This project examines the shared ritualistic impulse behind both ancient and industrial architecture.
While prehistoric structures embodied ceremonial and spiritual belief systems, industrial buildings were shaped by faith in progress and production. When commercial structures are abandoned, their purpose dissolves as they become monuments once more, carriers of memory, myth and nostalgia. As time erodes distinction, industrial ruin and ancient stones converge, revealing a shared human impulse to build meaning into matter, and to leave stories behind in walls, steel and earth.
