HAAR(BOUR) Contemporary Art Journal
2019
HAAR(BOUR) (formally Haar Contemporary Art Journal) is the product of two Aberdeen-based artists and graphic designers, Phoebe McBride and Abby Beatrice Quick.
Existing in its original form as a one-off publication in response to notions of Imagined Geographies, the duo seek to make links between the North East and wider arts community through examining dualities, creating a meeting point between the real and the imagined.
Haar(bour) continues as a publication design collective that hopes to collaborate with artists and organisations to tell stories through conceptually driven processes.
‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ can be felt as a monumental block for artists who have grown up in the shadow of oil, such as ourselves. A tethering of sorts which throws us into an intricate web of familial and ethical complexities. The majority of the people we know, ourselves included, would not be living in Aberdeen if it weren’t for the oil industry. It has become a part of our everyday lives, commuting past oil offices and sponsored roundabouts without a second thought.
We are living in a climate crisis. And yet, it is important to us that the peripheries and fringes of a post-oil community are acknowledged in their raw and crude state, as within the pages of this publication.
Drawn to the ‘invisibility of oil’ as a concept that has been woven into the exhibitions curatorial framework, we felt it would be interesting to play with imagery that reflects and rethinks ideas of spatiotemporality and the intangible. With shades of rust and petrol spilled throughout the broadsheet-style newsprint, archival imagery from both of our father’s time spent offshore provide a tender and nuanced space for conversation between the public and private worlds of Black Gold.
Outside of haar(bour) projects, Abby Beatrice Quick is an image-maker (of the moving and the still), writer, artist and sometimes DJ in worlds of myth between swamp and sky.
Phoebe McBride is a visual artist and creative practitioner. When she isn’t writing letters to lonely weather buoys, she’s capturing the world through moving image and speculative fiction.
![]()
Existing in its original form as a one-off publication in response to notions of Imagined Geographies, the duo seek to make links between the North East and wider arts community through examining dualities, creating a meeting point between the real and the imagined.
Haar(bour) continues as a publication design collective that hopes to collaborate with artists and organisations to tell stories through conceptually driven processes.
‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ can be felt as a monumental block for artists who have grown up in the shadow of oil, such as ourselves. A tethering of sorts which throws us into an intricate web of familial and ethical complexities. The majority of the people we know, ourselves included, would not be living in Aberdeen if it weren’t for the oil industry. It has become a part of our everyday lives, commuting past oil offices and sponsored roundabouts without a second thought.
We are living in a climate crisis. And yet, it is important to us that the peripheries and fringes of a post-oil community are acknowledged in their raw and crude state, as within the pages of this publication.
Drawn to the ‘invisibility of oil’ as a concept that has been woven into the exhibitions curatorial framework, we felt it would be interesting to play with imagery that reflects and rethinks ideas of spatiotemporality and the intangible. With shades of rust and petrol spilled throughout the broadsheet-style newsprint, archival imagery from both of our father’s time spent offshore provide a tender and nuanced space for conversation between the public and private worlds of Black Gold.
Outside of haar(bour) projects, Abby Beatrice Quick is an image-maker (of the moving and the still), writer, artist and sometimes DJ in worlds of myth between swamp and sky.
Phoebe McBride is a visual artist and creative practitioner. When she isn’t writing letters to lonely weather buoys, she’s capturing the world through moving image and speculative fiction.
