Projects
Embarking on Immersive Arts
Embarking on Immersive Arts
Glenda Rolston is a Northern Ireland-based visual artist whose delicate, sculptural works explore themes of memory and impermanence.
With support from Immersive Arts, Glenda Rolston is beginning an exciting new phase in her creative practice, exploring how augmented reality and immersive technologies might expand the way she makes and shares her work. Glenda’s practice is rooted in the exploration of memory—particularly its fragility, impermanence, and the ways it can shift or fragment over time. Her delicate sculptural works, often created from Japanese rice paper, embody these themes through their translucent surfaces, stitched lines, and organic, ephemeral forms. Now, she is looking to extend these ideas beyond the physical object and into the digital and immersive realm.
Through this project, Glenda hopes to experiment with augmented reality as a tool for deepening the audience’s experience of her work. She is interested in how AR might allow viewers to engage with layered narratives and shifting perspectives, mirroring the elusive and fragmented nature of memory itself.
Although the exact outcome of this exploration is still open, Glenda is excited by the potential to create work that responds to audiences and environments in new ways. She hopes that this project will lay the groundwork for future immersive and site-specific installations, where people can experience her themes of memory, loss, and connection through both physical and digital encounters.
Explore
£5,000
Aims of the Project
I aim to expand my creative practice by exploring how immersive technologies can enhance the themes of memory and impermanence that are central to my work.
This funding offers me the opportunity to begin learning the technical skills required to integrate AR into my practice. My goal is to explore how these technologies can create experiences that are participatory, allowing audiences to engage with my work in more personal ways.
I am particularly interested in creating work that exists in public spaces and is accessible to a wider audience, turning ordinary places into sites for quiet reflection, connection, and shared experience.
This funding will allow me to undertake research, attend workshops, and collaborate with technologists and other artists to develop the knowledge and tools I need to move my practice forward. Ultimately, I hope this project will lay the foundations for future immersive installations that combine my interest in fragile, hand-crafted materials with the possibilities of digital technology.
Meet the artist
Glenda Rolston
Lead artist
she/her
Glenda Rolston is a multidisciplinary artist and arts facilitator based in Limavady, Northern Ireland. With a background in graphic design and a BA in Fine and Applied Art, she creates delicate three-dimensional drawings from Japanese rice paper and thread.
Her work explores memory and identity, influenced by her experience of dementia care. Glenda has exhibited in both solo and group shows and has worked extensively in arts administration and community engagement, developing creative projects and participatory workshops. She is now expanding her practice into immersive, collaborative experiences incorporating sound, narrative, and sensory elements.
