Gi diary - Friday 18th April

After work this afternoon I met up with Michael Stumpf in the Mackintosh Gallery to discuss his current exhibition This Song Belongs to Those who Sing It at Glasgow School of Art. Exhibitions Director, Jenny Brownrigg and Exhibitions Coordinator Talitha Kotzé have invited me to write a response to the exhibition, and bearing this in mind, I had a few questions to pose to Michael.

I then battled my way through the crowds on Buchanan Street (the sun was shining so everyone was out), along to 42 Carlton Place to see the exhibition of work by Christina Ramberg.

Ramberg is best known for imagery of bound, fetishised hands and bodies, and for schematised torsos that can shade into ‘pure’ diagrammatic abstraction.

Once again, 42 Carlton Place offers something refreshing to the Gi programme, an exhibition of drawings and paintings that are immediate and intimate.

Rowena and I then popped into The Modern Institute on Osborne Street to visit the current exhibition by Tobias Madison, Emanuel Rosseti and Stefan Tcherepnin. The most interesting part for me was the painted doorway and facade to the building that nods to the aesthetic of ghost trains and set design.

We then went to Alistair Frost's makeshift nail bar where people can get motifs painted onto their nails. These motifs are picked from a selection of paintings and objects produced by Frost which are installed throughout the space. I felt a little cheated as neither was the artist nor the nail technician there, and therefore was hardly a functioning social atmosphere which the artist is supposedly investigating.

At Glasgow Print Studio, by far the most interesting work for me, was the rectangular block of sand that was in the centre of the space. A triangular shape had been stencilled onto the top surface using metallic spray paint. One corner of the work slab had begun to collapse as the conditions forced the sand to dry out and crumble. How this piece related to the other works in the exhibition is beyond me!

Mary Mary presents an interesting exhibition of ceramics by London-based Jesse Wine. "Amidst an array of traditional materials and methods, Wine’s practice has a strong engagement with the process of making, which sees him pursue a line of chance and surprise in the final outcomes. The works are gestural with Wine pushing the boundaries of how clay, glazes and ceramic forms act when the maker relinquishes control of the end result."

The final exhibition stop of the day was to Universal Studios, part of Open House (a Gi fringe festival). The two-person exhibition featured collages, pin-hole camera photographs, a video and the pinhole cameras themselves.