16NSt Gallery is a Glasgow-based itinerant gallery run by a curatorial collective formed in 2020 which consists of Isabella Shields, Aga Paulina Młyńczak and Nell Cardozo. The gallery was established in 2016. Currently, all organisation and programming is managed by 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.
Directors/Curators
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.
Młyńczak (they/them) is a Glasgow-based interdisciplinary artist with a Polish/Jewish background. She has held a curatorial position at the 16NSt since 2019 and became a curatorial director in 2020. She dedicates her research to networked art practice while specialising in installation art involving photography, film, sound, sculpture and electronics. As an independent artist she works with the topics of peripheral meanings created by linguistic communication, affect theory, the notion of a 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 was one of the art panellists and presented ‘Teach me a word you’re afraid to forget’ at the LingComm conference for linguistics communication. She is currently the Scotland Project Coordinator for Art360 Foundation as well as working as an Artist for Standing Tall Scotland.
Isabella Shields (on leave)
Shields has been a 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.
Curatorial Assistant
Kelly Rappleye
Rappleye is a digital project manager with a background in curation and arts writing. Kelly was Director of Development & Digital Engagement with LA-based contemporary art magazine Artillery, where she co-authored a serial column Provenance and launched the first digital issue of the magazine after 15 years in-print. After completing her MA in Contemporary Art Theory with Goldsmiths, UOL, Kelly has developed interests in urban and digital spatiality in moving image arts, and guest curated projects with the Borough Road Collection Digital Archive, SmartArtistHub, Goldsmiths Visual Cultures Society, and ClimateFringe in Glasgow.
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.