Cath Keay, Emma Bowen, Victoria Hume
Aberdeen Art Gallery
6 June 2026–10 Jan 2027

https://sites.aberdeencity.gov.uk/AAGM/whats-aberdeen-art-galleries-and-museums/elevated-dreams

Elevated Dreams is a collaboration between Cath Keay, Emma Bowen and Victoria Hume. Together they celebrate the extraordinary creativity of Antonia Jabloner, 1908-2002, whose potential as an artist and architect was marginalised by her gender, exile and ill health.

Antonia attended the prestigious Kunstgewerbeschule, the applied arts school in Vienna from 1928-32. In 1939 she fled Nazi oppression, eventually coming to work as a housekeeper in Deeside. By the 1970s Antonia was living in long-term psychiatric care in Aberdeen, where art therapist Joyce Laing recognised her remarkable artistry. Laing assembled the Art Extraordinary collection, held at Glasgow Life Museums, to recognise the work of artists, like Antonia, who experienced exclusion from the mainstream art world.

Antonia’s embroideries, paintings and notebooks in the Art Extraordinary collection represent a remarkable body of work indicating other possibilities for her. Her sketchbook entitled Plans for Another World is filled with architectural plans for community buildings dedicated to music, warmth and conviviality.

Cath Keay has created a series of sculptures that reflect Antonia’s work, to visualise her identities as housekeeper, refugee and pioneering woman artist and architect. Emma Bowen revisioned locations and influences from Antonia’s life using legacy film and animations. Victoria Hume composed music using sound recordings from Antonia’s home city of Vienna and lyrics drawing from Antonia’s writings.

The exhibition is supported by the Creative Scotland Open Fund, The Elephant Trust, Glasgow Medical Humanities Network and Aberdeen City Council.