Room 2: The Morton Award for lens-based Media

Gair Dunlop studied photography at the Polytechnic of Central London before completing an MSc in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee. His projects have been exhibited and received recognition internationally. 

Dunlop is an artist, researcher and senior lecturer in Contemporary Art at the University of Dundee. His interdisciplinary practice combines film, photography, archives and publication. His work explores the intersection of art, science and the environment, often developed through long-term collaborations with researchers and local communities. Dunlop works with landscapes shaped by environmental and technological change and investigates their consequences on physical space and imagination. 

Dunlop won the RSA Morton Award in 2015 and used it to explore and document UK nuclear sites. These eerily beautiful images are of the irradiated fuel caves at Dounreay Nuclear facility in Caithness. 

Paul Duke is a photographer who explores memory, identity and place through long-term documentary projects rooted in Scotland. Born and educated in Edinburgh, he studied photography at Napier University before completing a Masters at the Royal College of Art. After living and working in Italy, he returned to the UK where he works between London and Scotland. Alongside photography practice, he teaches at several art colleges, including at Middlesex University where he became a Senior Lecturer. He exhibits widely in the UK and internationally.  

A recipient of the RSA Morton Award in 2016, Duke has published two monographs: At Sea, in 2013, which comprises black and white portraits of individuals working in the fishing industry, iand No Ruined Stone in 2018, containing landscapes and portraits conveying the social crisis of Edinburgh’s Muirhouse neighbourhood. His photographs balance documentary observation with personal experience, creating deeply empathetic studies of landscape, community and social history. 

Daniel Cook was born in Edinburgh and is now based in Glasgow. Winner of the RSA Morton Award in 2019, his work blurs the boundaries between documentary, performance and fiction. He immerses himself in the lives of individuals who are on the fringes of society, revealing their intimate stories that challenge conventional portrayals of contemporary Scotland. Cook's award-winning films focus on characters who live intensely in the present despite challenging circumstances. 

Love Letters From Aberdeenshire emerged from two years spent on Scotland’s north-east coast, where Cook developed close relationships with the people he photographed and filmed. The project centres on individuals whose lives have been shaped by economic hardship and social isolation. However, they continue to sustain humour, resilience and connection. Their voices offer an alternative portrait of rural Scotland that celebrates the dignity and enduring spirit of its communities. 

Sekai Machache is a Zimbabwean Scottish visual artist and curator whose practice explores identity, ancestry and the relationship between history, spirituality and imagination. Working across photography, film and performance, Machache creates symbolic images that seek to recover invisible and undocumented histories.  

Partially supported by the 2020 RSA Morton Award, The Divine Sky is a multidisciplinary project inspired by the twelve stages of an ancient Indigo dyeing process developed in Mali, West Africa. Integrating photography, poetry, film and immersive storytelling, the work reflects on African metaphysics, Black Scottish identity, and the legacies of colonialism. In A Hint of Blue, Machache transforms the domestic still life into a site of ritual and reflection, exploring themes of memory, over-consumption and cultural exchanges. Through the recurring symbolism of blue, the artist created a space where personal and collective histories can be reimagined. 

Aqsa Arif is a Scottish Pakistani artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow. Working across film, printmaking, photography and poetry, she creates immersive installations that explore themes of dual heritage, migration and cultural dissonance. Drawing on folklore, mythology and cinematic language, her practice reimagines pre- and post-colonial histories through the lens of her own lived experience. She questions how identity is shaped, inherited and transformed. 

Arif’s acclaimed film Spicy Pink Tea has screened at BAFTA qualifying festivals, won Best Dance Film at Aesthetica Film Festival and was nominated for the Young Scottish Filmmaker Prize at Glasgow Short Film Festival. In 2023, she received both the Platform: Early Career Artist Award and the RSA Morton Award. She used the award to explore the theme of traditional Pakistani weddings, creating semi-imagined worlds and portraits drawing on family objects and memories. The women in these photographs are Arif's mother and sister.