Glasgow International - GoMA and Glasgow School of Art

After a day working on the site, we ventured into the city to attend some of the exhibition previews.

COSIMA VON BONIN

WHO'S EXPLOITING WHO IN THE DEEP SEA?

GoMA

Von Bonin’s exhibition Who’s Exploiting Who In The Deep Sea?* brings together a series of works from 2006 onwards exploring the artist’s affection for the creatures of the sea. Working with textiles, music, sculpture, performance, video and painting, her practice is varied and often collaborative in nature.

The artist’s cast of characters are a host of contradictions – approachable creatures who are reminiscent of childhood companions are not what they seem. Weaving together humour with melancholy, these sculptures have ambiguous roles and feelings. Von Bonin is able to use these creatures as agents to explore art history, popular culture and craft, to destabilise perceived constructions of feminism. She has created her own crew to explore the deep sea, where, as an analogy of the human condition it is a true place of the unknown.

The exhibition is co-curated by Director Sarah McCrory and SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib. The exhibition will open in September at SculptureCenter.

www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/GoMA

TESSA LYNCH

PAINTER’S TABLE

GoMA

Lynch works predominantly with sculpture and performance. Projects develop from research concerned with the emotional impact of the built environment and the questionable existence of the female flâneur, which refers to a man who saunters around observing society, or ‘flâneuse’.

Lynch describes her new exhibition as an architectural drama: a collection of new sculptural works which loosely mimic the objects, scenarios and histories found on her daily commute. The mundane examination of this regular transition from home life to work life generates a self-portrait, exposing what it is to be a female artist living in this city.

Frequently using performance as an active framework for making, Lynch has shared her commute with writers Jenny Richards and Rhona Warwick Paterson to create a new text and performance work. Similar to how a map allows one to navigate city roads and streets, the text offers viewers a script through which one can navigate this installation.

SERENA KORDA

HOLD FAST, STAND SURE, I SCREAM A REVOLUTION

Reid Gallery, Reid Building, The Glasgow School of Art

Korda has produced a new sound sculpture that combines her interest in primitive impulses, invented tradition and our skewed relationship to nature. Taking her inspiration from the politically radical history of Garnethill (where the Reid Gallery is situated), Korda continues her investigation into ‘thin places’, anomalies in the landscape which were viewed in pre-Christian times as access points to the afterlife. Foraging expeditions on the Isle of Mull presented the deadly potential of some fungi as possible pathways to ‘thin places’. Mushrooms are imbued in our consciousness as grotesque, magic and poisonous. They attract and repulse in equal measure.

Korda is producing a series of sound experiments performed by an army of ‘agitators’ gathered from the communities of Garnethill and Mull.

Supported by Glasgow International, The Glasgow School of Art, Comar and The Henry Moore Foundation.

www.gsa.ac.uk

On play

When reading about the Atelier Public event to be held at GoMA, I came across some interesting notes 'on play'.

playful curiosity
joyful reconstruction
play absorbs
PLAY SATURATES – a volatility in what play does that means it can be an escape from the norm

pure play has no rules
play transcends boundaries only to engender new ones

Proliferation of meaning of play renders play to mean nothing…can we work with play and no fixed meaning to work constantly int he present so that meaning is continually constructed?

Play is considered truthful
play to develop the self in social form
play guarantees modern values and attitudes
Play puts us in contact with the world
Play as aesthetic regulation and presentation

The destructive act – is it play or a reaction against repression?

Play is the ‘precondition’ for meaningful work

play implies freedom
curation implies constraint – crafted to give a rich and meaningful experience

play / institution as a site or production – cultural production is that what we are doing

play – an intervention of irrational thought into the layout of the norm

play forgets all moves that came before and destroys to begin again

If we look at play can we evolve a new way of experiencing art & translate the experience of art beyond the spectatorship of art?

Play as failures within the institution

Lessons of the camp in play…. Joy Division…. with the understanding that play is not necessarily something good

Learn to play love games… ie: operate in the space between love and existence and offer everything that is different…more eperiential and affects existence

‘Art is breaking rules – if you don’t break rules you don’t make art’

Make new rules

There are rules that hold the games and rules that transgress the game

PLAY creating conditions for unruliness and overstepping of boundaries

Institutions create the meaningful space for play to happen.

All museums are playful – they work with the space between the viewer and the object

Conditions for Play – conditions for questions – a moment in time…

Our use of play can be seen a colonial or patronising… do we seek t o claim it for a more grown up or serious canon… can we every just leave play to the children/experts

Play – openness and incompleteness& desire not to be finished

For more, visit http://atelierpublic.wordpress.com

ATELIER PUBLIC#2

As the launch of Glasgow International (Gi) Visual Art Festival draws closer, one exhibition that is part of the Gi programme is about to open. 

ATELIER PUBLIC#2

GoMA
20 FEBRUARY – 27 MAY 2014

ATELIER PUBLIC#2 is a re-presentation of a 2011 exhibition at GoMA where members of the public were invited to make artworks using materials available in the gallery. In the spirit of ATELIER PUBLIC, visitors are invited to use the materials to make new work, which will be installed in the gallery for other visitors to see. These materials may change over the course of the 13 weeks the exhibition is open, and the works may be used by others as part of their creative and playful practice in the studio. As in 2011, some artists  have been invited to work within the parameters of the framework of ATELIER PUBLIC#2 and develop the installation.

There are a number of events scheduled for the duration of the exhibition, and more information can be seen at: http://atelierpublic.wordpress.com/how-to-participate/events/

The hashtag for Twitter, Vine, Instagram, and You Tube is #ATELIERPUBLIC, and you can follow us @GlasgowGoMA

I look forward to seeing the changing elements and creations throughout this exhibition, and am interested to see how the public interact with the work and embrace the invitation to contribute to the exhibition.

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.

Friday 20th April

Day 1

Theresa Margolles - Glasgow Sculpture Studios





Karla Black - Gallery of Modern Art