Hotworks, was a year long Postgraduate research project, exploring the communal identity of contemporary Lanarkshire through methods of Painting and drawing. The concluding works were exhibited at The Glasgow School of Art Master's Degree Show in August 2024, Stow Building. 

 Lanarkshire is a county based in between Glasgow & Edinburgh, Scotland, with a rich cultural and industrial heritage. The series, titled Hotworks, addresses the regions de-industrialization as a significant shift in cultural identity, dispelling a much grander fallout in terms of personal and communal identity of those living in the area. By delving into the North Lanarkshire Cultural Archive to further unpick the rise and fall of the Motherwell Steelworks, April's paintings employ traces of such  archival material to explore the transient state of the landscape surrounding the factory site. 

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Objects in stasis, semi abandoned, sprawled across the horizontal landscape. Objects made from molten hotworks processes, rusting, obscuring, leaning. Markers in landscape, indicators of a former communal identity or state of being. Through methods of collapse and renewal, April's paintings delve into themes of agency, nature and material tensions. Affirming that the landscape of Lanarkshire remains a contested, transient space, shaped by the people and things who inhabit it.