I am an early career artist, performer and puppeteer based in Glasgow.
My practice centers public performance and participation to explore the therapeutic potential of the communal dream. I do this through a holistic approach to making and animation of performing objects within the expanded field of puppetry, and I draw from the anthropological history of the trance and other eccentric methods of dreaming as sources to inform my image-making. I like mechanical magic, countercultural mischief and more-than-sculptures, especially ones that get the public to engage with their ordinary surroundings in new ways, to evoke the personal, historical and ecological poetics of shared public spaces.
My works generally stick to an ethos laid out by Bread & Puppet Theatre in the Why Cheap Art Manifesto (1984), and hope to contribute to developing economically and environmentally mindful systems of making.
email me at: fibicowley(at)gmail(dot)com
my insta is @wispies
I am part of the School of the Damned 2022-24 Cohort. The school was founded in 2014 as a reaction to the increasing financialisation of Higher Education in the UK. SotD has no tuition fees, is student led and peer supported. Scotland SOTD'ers have been part of the community occupying the old M&S on Sauchiehall Street since 2023.
In 2021, I lived and worked at/with DARP, an open source system for living and practicing together, based in an old Steiner School in Derbyshire. Together we put together the show: Playground, at Artcore Derby, during our residency there. We also hosted local Notthingham artists for a DARP weekender, within which me and Ella Yolande shared the work: Motherbug.
NB: In their current form, DARP are known as The Field. The space is temporary, as it is run through a guardianship scheme- visit them while you can!
During my studies, I helped to found a short-lived collective called BOG. It was fun while it lasted. Together we put on two shows and were residents for the iconic but now defunct art disco Rhythm Machine at Summerhall Arts Centre. Lots of good memories :-)
