16 Nicholson Street Gallery is a Glasgow-based, non-profit arts facilitation space run by a curatorial collaborative formed in 2020. The gallery was established in 2016 and all organisation and programming is managed by Isabella Shields, Nell Cardozo, and Aga Paulina Młyńczak.
16NST curates and facilitates events, workshops, talks, mentorship programmes and exhibitions. Our aim is to create a dialogue between artists and makers from Scotland and create a network with international artists. By introducing and encouraging collaborations between established and emerging artists we hope to develop an inclusive, engaging, and intellectually rich space.
16NST is a curatorial entity with its core interest in collaboration, critical discussions and discourses. In the past, artists have largely been paid through the reception of Hope Scott Trust funds and the receipt of Creative Scotland funding in 2019. Our 2021-2022 programme has principally been funded by Creative Scotland as well as Big Lottery Fund.
16 Nicholson Street Gallery CIC (16NSt) is a non-profit limited community interest company registered in Scotland, Company Number: SC658873.
Our ground floor space is available for hiring for events. Please enquire via email.
Directors/Curators
Isabella Shields has been director and curator of 16 Nicholson Street since she established the gallery in 2016. Her academic and critical focuses are on trauma theory, intermediality, and the dissolution of boundaries within culturally prominent systems of representation. She is undertaking her PhD in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, writing on existentialism and post-structuralism in contemporary autofiction. Her critical writing has been published by FORUM, The Polyphony, and in Martyrdom, Body, State: Manifesting Power, and Complete Destruction of the Real Body. Her creative work has been published in Age of Man, and her work-in-progress novel ‘A Common Spring’ was developed into an experimental radio play for Radiophrenia.
Młyńczak (they/them) is a Glasgow-based artist who comes from a mixed Polish/Jewish background. She has experience in curatorial project development as well as media and technology-oriented art practice. She specialises in art installations involving photography, film, sound, sculpture and electronics. As an independent artist she works with the topics of non-linguistic meanings, affect theory, secondary language and foreign bodies. Camera is among her primary tools. She holds an MLitt in Photography and Moving Image from the Glasgow School of Art, and her work was recently shown at: Studio Pavilion, Radiphrenia, Embassy Gallery, Trongate 103 and Street Level Photoworks. In February 2023, she will present her recent work and speak at the LingComm conference. Later in 2023, she will collaborate with SidYoung Collective. The latter project will result in an exhibition scheduled for September 2023 in Kaunas, Lithuania. She is currently the Scotland Project Coordinator for Art360 Foundation as well as working for Standing Tall Arts as an Artist.
Nell Cardozo is a curator and producer based in Glasgow. Currently she is a curatorial director at 16 Nicholson Street Gallery. She is the Community Outreach officer for 16 Nicholson Street and leads the community programme ‘Freedom in Abstraction, Power in Creativity’ in partnership with Empower Women for Change. The roles she has undertaken whilst at the gallery have been flexible, involving curating, communications and archiving. Her creative and critical writing has been published in Martyrdom, Body, State: Manifesting Power, AIR DIVING, and Flock Circumstance, and featured in the exhibition ‘Word Turner II’ by Aga Paulina Młyńczak. Previous to and concurrent with her position as director there, she worked at the Scottish National Galleries as a Gallery Assistant and at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, curating GROWTH, an exhibition of youth artists. Cardozo graduated with an English Literature MA and a Museum Studies MSc at Glasgow University, where her thesis focused on investigating accessibility in online databases, with an internship at Art UK. She has also taught and led activities with family and lower-income audiences in the education sector of schools and museums in Albany, NY.
Web Designer/Developer
Rush Johnstone is a graphic/web designer and creative coder. They specialise in designing educational and playful interactive artefacts. They like to think and learn about technology discourse, politics, imagined futures, and how those intersect.