Fire at Glasgow School of Art

It was with great sadness that last night I was informed about the fire at Glasgow School of Art. 

Four years ago I was in the historic building when a fire broke out and caused excessive damage. It is an experience that I will never forget and I still get a very physical and emotional response when I think about it. The people of Glasgow and beyond showed exceptional resilience, generosity and determination to restore the important building and support the students who were effected. This is evidence of the huge impact that the building has had on many people, not just those who have had the privilege of working in the building. I hope that the same fighting spirit can be mustered once again. Thankfully, the 2014 fire did not cause any deaths, and I am relieved to find out that the same is true of the latest fire. My heart goes out to Glasgow and the GSA community. 

Circus Between Worlds introduces Nuclear Jelly

Nuclear Jelly's interests vary to encompass various mediums including dance, movement, costume, music/sound; whilst extending to further realms of ceramics, film, video, narratives, characters and beyond within their own personal practice. ‪#‎GI2016‬ Glasgow International

Nuclear Jelly brings a performance based upon a set of narratives surrounding the life cycles of jellyfish and nuclear power stations, which seeks to test the reactive relationships between sound, costume, musicians and movers in attempt to diminish individual control.

Circus Between Worlds Rehearsal with artists from Edinburgh and Glasgow Schools of Art

Spent an exciting and productive day at Edinburgh School of Art meeting with the artists taking part in Circus Between Worlds from Edinburgh School of Art and Glasgow School of Art. 



After some initial performance warm up exercises, we showed each other the performances that we are developing for Circus Between Worlds.

A musical jellyfish performance

A wandering, stumbling, shuffling, music making creature

Tatoo woman

Fortune Telling mermaid

Hand whistle

Darth Vadar

Workshopping circus noises for Deanna Smith

Restoration of the Mackintosh Building takes major step forward

https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/restoration-of-the-mackintosh-building-takes-major-step-forward

Glasgow School of Art has announced Page\Park Architects as the design team to lead the restoration of the Mackintosh Building after last year’s major fire

Page\Park Architects have been named as the design team which will lead the restoration of Glasgow School of Art’s iconic Mackintosh Building, following presentations by a shortlist of five leading practices in March.

“The team assembled by Page\Park Architects impressed us not only with their deep knowledge of the building, but of the wider work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh,” said Professor Tom Inns, Director of Glasgow School of Art. “They also bring an understanding of the building’s particular importance to Glasgow – its people and history – as well as of its status as an international design icon.”

He added: “This is the beginning of an exciting journey of discovery. There will be many fascinating questions to be addressed as we undertake this complex restoration project.”

David Page, Head of Architecture at Page \ Park Architects said: “We have, over many years, had the privilege to work on and in the context of the Mackintosh legacy, the highlight of which will now be the opportunity to bring The Glasgow School of Art into splendid re-use for its students and staff, the people of Glasgow and the huge audience beyond the city.”

The Glasgow-based architects lay claim to a track record in both restoring and reanimating the city’s major historic buildings. They have also worked more widely on array of Mackintosh’s designs from the domestic – at the Hillhouse, through commercial – at the former Glasgow Herald offices (now The Lighthouse), to his finest cultural and academic work at the School of Art itself. Work is expected to start on the building in spring 2016 with the objective of academic access from 2017-18.

Phoenix Bursary programme

The news comes as a specially curated group exhibition of new work by the artists supported by the Phoenix Bursary programme has been announced for the Reid Building at The Glasgow School of Art from 24 July – 2 August 2015.

Following the major fire in the Mackintosh Building last year, which dramatically affected the final year Fine Art students’ degree show, the GSA set up a programme with support a £750,000 grant from the Scottish Government and its sister academic institutions across the world. It offered the recent graduates up to 15 weeks studio time, a bursary and materials budget in order to develop their practice and create a project, with roughly half of the artists remaining in Glasgow with others taking the opportunity to work overseas.

Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs Fiona Hyslop said:“The response from institutions around the globe, in opening up their doors to welcome graduates from GSA, has been wonderful. I’m looking forward to seeing the work created by the artists as their talent rises from the flames.”

Inspirational landscapes

I love getting recommendations from friends with artworks I should see, books I should read, films I should watch, places I should visit etc, and the sheer excellence at what they suggest shows how well they know me and how lucky I am to have such interesting friends.

The photos below featured in The Guardian's Culture section, and are truly breathtaking.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/aug/27/rainbow-world-the-most-colourful-places-on-earth-in-pictures?CMP=soc_1944\

 Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Photograph: Jeff Foott

Dallol, a volcanic crater in Ethiopia. Photograph: Dr. Richard Roscoe

 The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. Photograph: Xuan Che/Getty Images

 Mustard fields in Yunnan province, China. Photograph: Katie Garrod/Corbis

 Rock formations at the Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu Province, China. Photograph: Xin Ran/Corbis

‘The Wave’, a 190m-year-old Jurassic-age sandstone rock formation in Arizona. Photograph: Blaine Harrington III/Corbis

Please keep those recommendations coming!

Forthcoming Event - The Future for Culture in Scotland! - Friday 18th July - Glasgow

The Future for Culture in Scotland!

Reid Lecture Theatre
Glasgow School of Art
Glasgow

Friday, 18 July 2014 from 13:00 to 16:00


Hosted by Glasgow School of Art, this is your opportunity to hear more about Fiona Hyslop’s, (the Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs), vision for the arts, screen and creative industries in an independent Scotland and to take part in discussion and debate about what this means to you.


There will be opportunities to ask questions, make statements and to share your views both with the Scottish Government and with the wider creative community.


After the presentation and Q&A there will be a chance to network over tea and coffee before the event finishes at 4pm.


For more information and to book tickets, please visit
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-future-for-culture-in-scotland-tickets-12102445741

MFA Degree Show 2014 at The Glue Factory

It's that time of year again, degree show time! Wednesday evening saw the opening of the Master of Fine Art Degree Exhibition at The Glue Factory.

Turner Prize Nominees Announced

I am delighted that my friend and colleague, Ciara Phillips has been nominated for the 2014 Turner Prize. 

Once again, Glasgow-based or Glasgow-educated artists feature heavily. Out of the four nominees, three are GSA alumni. Tris Vonn Michell , Ciara Phillips and Duncan Campbell are all shortlisted for the prize, awarded to an outstanding British artist under the age of 50.

Tris Vonna-Michell (Fine Art Photography, 2005) is noted for his semi-improvised presentations, often using slide projections, with an egg-timer to let him know when he has reached his limit. He has been nominated for a solo show in Brussels.

Ciara Phillips (MFA, 2004) is nominated for a two-month project at The Showroom gallery in London, where she set up a temporary workshop and invited artists, designers, and local women's groups to produce new screen prints.

Duncan Campbell (MFA, 1998) is nominated for his presentation at the Scottish Pavilion of the 2013 Venice Biennale in which he screened the 1953 film Statues Also Die alongside his response – a film which featured choreography by Michael Clark and explored the commercialisation of African art.

James Richards is the final shortlisted artist. He graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 2006. He is nominated for his work called Rosebud which was exhibited in Venice.



Read what the papers have to say:

Mark Brown, arts correspondent, The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/07/turner-prize-2014-shortlist-unveiled

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/07/four-artists-shortlisted-turner-prize-2014




Nick Clark‎, The Independent‎

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/turner-prize-2014-shortlist-duncan-campbell-and-ciara-phillips-among-nominees-9330686.html




James Lachno and PA, The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/turner-prize/10812735/Turner-Prize-2014-shortlist-of-nominees-announced.html




James Howe, The List

http://www.list.co.uk/article/60710-nominees-for-turner-prize-2014-announced/

My response – Michael Stumpf: This Song Belongs to Those who Sing It

Jenny Brownrigg, Exhibitions Director at Glasgow School of Art asked me to write a response to Michael Stumpf's current exhibition: This Song Belongs to Those who Sing It. 

I was honoured to be asked (if a little daunted), but thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. My intention was to avoid a review as such, but to write about my personal experience of the work.

Central Station have published my text online.

Read it here
http://thisiscentralstation.com/featured/michael-stumpf-this-song-belongs-to-those-who-sing-it/

Glasgow Open House

Yesterday I ended my day of exhibitions at 1 Royal Terrace, with the opening of Below The Spillway, a solo exhibition by Augustus Veinoglou as part of Glasgow Open House, the art festival with the aim to "offer an alternative format for public interaction with art outside of the gallery, generating discussion around the way art is exhibited and consumed both in and out of doors." 

The small group of Glasgow School of Art graduates that make up the Glasgow Open House committee began planning the festival in the Summer of 2013. They were "keen to engage with new audiences by opening up their living and working environments to neighbours, fellow artists and the public."

There was an open call for exhibition proposals, and as a result, "the 2014 programme of visual arts, performance and music includes the work of over 80 artists scattered across 32 venues in every corner of Glasgow. It includes exhibitions and events in flats, gardens, sheds and other unexpected locations, reflecting the work of individual artists, collaborative groups and organisations."

For more information about the festival, visit http://glasgowopenhouse.co.uk/#

Today I ventured to Westerton for A Secluded Sketching Ground, an exhibition by Lynn Hynd and Sara Barker.

"Using the visual framework of the garden & wooden shed, Hynd & Barker explore the languages of flatness & space, painting & sculpture, and the thresholds between interior & exterior space, collapsed and re materialized through an active engagement with ‘process’.

The garden is an extension of the artists’ studio, the brink at which the external world is contemplated. The garden’s enclosures, platforms, stages, grounds, surface, colours and roots create an adaptive environment for, and blurr the boundaries of the work itself.

An obsession with surface is everywhere in a garden & the artists’ respective practices are linked in their exploration of the perception & palpability of material , as the blurring of boundaries allow the values of indoor space to escape to the outdoors, evoking a conversation between structure & activity."

I look forward to exploring more Glasgow Open House exhibitions over the next week.

Thinking and Talking about Contemporary Painting - Symposium

I have been helping organise the 'Thinking and Talking about Contemporary Painting symposium' which took place today. It was a collaborative project between Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and GoMA.

The backdrop of this symposium was A Picture Show but the day focussed on wider issues within contemporary painting with key note speakers; artist Melissa Gordon and artist & curator at Norway’s National Gallery Gavin Jantjes.  The day started at GoMA with Jim Birrell, Head of Painting and Printmaking at GSA giving a brief introduction to the conditions and nature of Contemporary Painting. Melissa Gordon then discussed her work and its position in the history of Painting. In the afternoon we moved to the Mackintosh Lecture theatre at GSA where Gavin Jantjes delivered his talk titled 'To paint in the face of doubt.' This was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Hanneline Visnes and Sarah Wilson, with Rachal Bradley, Dr Frances Robertson and Alex Dordoy.

Anne-Marie Watson

This afternoon I had the pleasure of introducing Anne-Marie Watson to the First year Painting and Printmaking students at Glasgow School of Art. She delivered an excellent lecture about 'Drawing', referencing a wide range of historical and contemporary artists and covering drawing in it's many forms.

Anne-Marie Watson is an independent Curator, Writer and Artist. Like me, she went to Leeds College of Art and Design to do an Art Foundation course, before moving to Glasgow to study Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art.  

After graduating Watson co-ran an organisation in Glasgow called SEAM (2003 - 2005) where they organised a programme of exhibitions with young Glasgow-based artists including Camilla Low, Charlie Hammond, Nick Evans and Lynn Hynd. 

She then became Assistant Curator (2004 - 2006) at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, followed by Curator (2006 - 2007), working with artists including Johanna Billing, David Shrigley, Ahlam Shibli, Christopher Orr, Ilana Halperin, Bridget Smith and Jordan Baseman.

In 2007 she relocated to London where she was Exhibitions Programmer at Camden Arts Centre, London until April 2013. In this role, Watson worked closely with a number of artists on solo exhibitions including Claire Barclay, Allen Ruppersberg, Chantal Akerman, Anya Gallaccio, Christine Borland, Mathilde Rosier and Haroon Mirza. In 2009 she worked with Paulina Olowska on her selected group exhibition Head-Wig. 

Now working as an independent Curator, Writer and Artist, Watson has been busy with a project called HOUSE.

 

HOUSE is a series of collaborations between artists, dwellers, curators and writers taking place in domestic settings across London. Through public facing interventions into these private, lived spaces, HOUSE thinks through the relationships between people, spaces they inhabit, art and process.

HOUSE developed after an invitation from a friend to use their home for an exhibition. In response, co-curators Alex McDonald and Anne-Marie Watson were interested in instigating an on-going, open ended creative process involving artists and others in discussions around the spaces and places of their life and work. Over plates of food, on studio visits and in coffee shops around the city, conversations have taken place where diverse subjects have been tossed around from Inuit throat singing to rats living under the floor-boards.

Three houses were selected for the project in three diverse areas of the city; Clapton, Forest Gate and Notting Hill and six artists were chosen to take part. Through these relationships with different places, spaces and people a narrative begins to emerge which draws individuals’ stories of living in London into a shared public experience.

The six artists, through their work, are interested in space in different ways; environmental, the space of the body, intimacy, non-space, undefined spaces, exotic, hidden spaces, memory, affect and psychological effect of spaces on people.

HOUSE, in opening up these intimate places for living and working, creates imaginative spaces of vulnerability, risk and the unknown for dwellers, artists and audiences.

HOUSE 1: Anne Hardy & Stephen Setford
Preview Sat 14 Sept 6 – 8pm / Sat 14 & Sun 15 Sept 2013, 11am-6pm
19 Kinnoul Mansions, Rowhill Rd. Hackney. E5 8EB

Hallway – Anne Hardy, Soundtrack (Fieldwork), a work in progress (2013)
Living room – Stephen Setford, Torrent (2013)

Clapton (Mat Jenner) is in the midst of the regeneration of Hackney. This is a shared house, occupied by different people, differing in life-style and age.

HOUSE 2: Angus Mill & Jo Addison
Preview Fri 4 Oct 6 – 8pm / Sat 5 & Sun 6 Oct 2013, 11am-6pm
62 Cranmer Rd. Forest Gate. E7 0JL

Forest Gate (Anne-Marie Watson) is on the edge of Epping Forest in the outer borough of Newham. This house is a typical terrace occupied by four people who are connected via threads of friendship and art.

HOUSE 3: Rachael Champion & Renee Vaughan Sutherland
Closing Sun 20 Oct 4 – 6pm / Sat 19 & Sun 20 Oct 2013, 11am-6pm
2 Londsdale Rd. Nottinghill. W11 2DE

Notting Hill (Daniel Fitzpatrick) is in West London. This house, traditionally built for railway workers and their families has subsequently been owned and occupied by a variety of people who have changed along with the transforming area.

For more information please visit 

housemcdonaldwatson.wordpress.com

MFA exhibition at the Glue Factory

Today I visited the Glue Factory to see this year's MFA exhibition. This exhibition marks the end of the student's two year postgraduate degree at Glasgow School of Art. As is the usual case with such exhibitions at the Glue Factory, some work is enhanced by the gritty, dirty surroundings, while other works would be better suited to a 'white cube' gallery context.

Fraser Sim has embraced the individual features of the space by, for instance, using the fireplace in the wall as a focal point for his installation titled UNITS.

The variety of coloured blocks become like 'coffee-table books'. 

Each block is exquisitely handmade and individual, but I believe that when displayed as a collective group such as in this exhibition, they become so much more interesting as we are asked to consider them as part of a whole rather than individual pieces.

Studio Project Exhibition at Market Gallery

This morning I made a few adjustments to the lighting in the exhibition, so as to ensure that all areas of the gallery is lit and to minimise any light shining directly into the viewers eye as they look at a work. I also tidied up the cables so that people would not trip over them. I was concerned that some people at the opening were not going into certain areas of the gallery because they needed to walk over lighting wires, and so tried to prevent this by moving the wires.

I like the dramatic effect that the lighting creates with it being from the floor as opposed to from above. It matches the angular nature of the sculptures, and makes for some interesting shadows.

I also reassembled the large birch plywood structure so that it stands, using strong wood contact adhesive to secure the two pieces together. I will monitor whether this proves to be an effective solution.

I was delighted that the exhibition was well attended on the first day of it being open, and pleased that people are enjoying the work.

I had a wonderful conversation with Jenny Brownrigg, the Exhibitions Director at Glasgow School of Art, who enjoyed being surprised by discovering more pieces in unusual places the longer that she spent in the space.

I told her that I was hoping to arrange for a kind of 'in conversation' event to be held whilst the exhibition is on. I would like the opportunity to talk with a selected group of artists about some fundamental elements that the exhibition raises such as materiality and colour. I am in discussions with the Market Gallery committee about making this happen, and will keep you posted.

Alistair Payne - 'Resistance and Persisitance',

I have just re-watched the footage of Alistair Payne presenting his paper, 'Resistance and Persisitance', at one of the 2012/13 Friday Events, and my head is buzzing with ideas.

Dr Alistair Payne Resistance and Persistance from GSA on Vimeo.


http://vimeo.com/54841238

Studio 58 Symposium

Studio 58 Symposium
The Glasgow School of Art

Speakers:
Susannah Waters, GSA Archivist
Peter Trowles, GSA Curator
Andrea Kusel - Curator of Art, Paisley Museum
Sarah Lowndes - Studio 58 Curator
Stacy Boldrick - Research and Interpretation Manager at The Fruitmarket Gallery

Sarah Lowndes mentioned that there were a number of sub themes to the exhibition:
1. Still life - Still life as an interior landscape when it was not possible to go outside
2. Artists with illness / handicap

Lowndes was interested in meetings between artists, particularly meetings between two or more artists who had never met before

"I do feel the more you know something, the more you get out of it" Joan Eardley

Master of Letters Degree Show exhibition - Glasgow School of Art

http://www.mastersofletters.com/Masters_of_Letters/Masters_of_Letters.html

http://mastersofletters.tumblr.com/