Photos of Zing installed

Last year I was approached by the Sculpture Placement Group (SPG) who asked whether I would like to contribute any of my sculptural works in long-term storage to the Sculpture Adoption Scheme, an adoption service for sculptures, seeking to match works of art with new guardians.




"The Sculpture Adoption Scheme will bring sculptural joy into people’s daily lives and will test a new model for circulating artworks, increasing access to art ownership and alleviating artists of the pressures of storage and space. Let’s give work hidden in storage a new life!"

It was launched as part of the exhibition Sculpture Showroom which ran from the 20th April – 7th May during Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2018

I was delighted to hear that my sculptures Zing are being enjoyed by the independent organisation North Lanarkshire Advocacy who adopted my artwork last year. They sent me some photos of the work installed.



https://sculptureplacementgroup.org.uk/sculpture-adoption-scheme/sculpture-adoption-scheme-2/

Glasgow Women's Library nominated for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018

Glasgow Women's Library


I was delighted to hear (on BBC Radio 4's Front Row) that Glasgow Women's Library was one of the 5 finalists for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b85m9b

The others on the shortlist were Brooklands Museum, Ferens Art Gallery, The Postal Museum, and Tate St Ives.


Glasgow Women's Library is the only accredited museum in the UK dedicated to women's lives, histories and achievements, Glasgow Women's Library offers archives, exhibitions and events in the heart of the city's East End.

The library began as a grassroots project in 1991 and has since grown to become a multi-award-winning resource attracting leading academics and artists.

As well as offering a free lending library, GWL holds a treasure trove of historical and contemporary artefacts and archive materials, from Suffragette memorabilia and 1930s dress-making patterns to rare 1970s Scottish Women’s Liberation newsletters, making it a Recognised Collection of National Significance.



Aiming to empower women whatever their background, the library offers a range of events and learning opportunities from one-to-one literacy tutoring and creative workshops to film screenings and guided walks exploring the hidden histories of women in Glasgow.

Tate St Ives was declared the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018 last week.

For more information please visit

https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/museums-and-galleries/glasgow-womens-library


https://womenslibrary.org.uk/


https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/museum-of-the-year

Sculpture Placement Group Curators' Talk - Sculpture Showroom, Gi 2018 @GiFestival

Join Sculpture Placement Group for a talk about Sculpture Showroom at Glasgow Sculpture Studios on Sunday 6th May at 3pm. 

Sculpture Placement Group will lead a walk round their newest project Sculpture Showroom, an adoption service for sculptures, seeking to match works of art with new guardians. Participants will be able to learn more about the works included in the exhibition and the wider adoption scheme that includes 95 works, all of which are available for adoption.

The talk will take place on Sunday 6th May at 3pm and will last for around 1hr. Places are free of charge, but places are limited so please book your place using this Eventbrite link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sculpture-showroom-curators-tour-tickets-44668794567

Sculpture Showroom takes place at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, The Whisky Bond, 2 Dawson Road, Glasgow, G4 9SS

Opening of Sculpture Showroom, 21st April 3-5pm at Glasgow Sculpture Studios

I am pleased to be contributing to Sculpture Showroom, an adoption service for sculptures, seeking to match works of art with new guardians. The project is conceived and curated by Sculpture Placement Group (SPG), a new organisation seeking to prolong the lifespan of sculptural works.

For Sculpture Showroom, SPG have worked with artists to identify sculptural works in long-term storage with no current future that they are happy to offer for adoption by community groups and other organisations. Sculpture Showroom will bring sculptural joy into people’s daily lives and will test a new model for circulating artworks, increasing access to art ownership and alleviating artists of the pressures of storage and space. Let’s give work hidden in storage a new life!

When looking through the catalogue I realised how many of the artworks are stored by members of the artist's family. From my Granny's garage to the attic of Miriam Mallalieu's ex-boyfriend, artwork is being stored, and indeed hidden, in all kinds of 'empty' space.

Sculpture Showroom will act as a pilot for SPG’s ongoing sculpture adoption scheme and is launched as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2018. There are 95 works by 54 artists currently offered for adoption and these are presented within a catalogue and exhibition. All works included are available for adoption during the festival and beyond. 

The catalogue includes: Alex Allan, Beth Shapeero, Tom Alan, Daisy Richardson, Jennifer Wicks, Laura Aldridge & Anna Mayer, Laura Aldridge, Tessa Lynch, Victoria Evans, Cate Newton, Catalina Barroso-Luque, Helen Shaddock, Tim Sandys, Louise Gibson, Allison and Bray, Thom Rees, Beagles & Ramsay, Oona Wilkinson, Craig Coulthard, Nick Evans, Louise Barrington, Graham Fagen, James McLardy, Ally Wallace, Raymond Strachan, Zsofia Jakab, Marcin Krupa, Alys Owen, Littlewhitehead, Elaine Allison, Arieh Frosh, Janie Nicoll, Joseph Buckley, Jolanta Dolewska, Elke Finkenauer, David Sherry, Laura Buttons, Oliver Braid, WeiKeong Tan, Lada Wilson, Mary Redmond, Rachel Barron, Andrew Lacon, Emma Pratt, Felix Welch, Corrie Thomson, Rae-Yen Song, Kevin Andrew Morris, Ellie Harrison, Graeme Durant, Leontios Toumpouris, Hannah Imlach, Kate V Robertson, Toby Paterson, Rachel Lowther, Ilana Halperin and Jock Mooney. 

The exhibition includes: Laura Aldridge, Beagles and Ramsay, Mary Redmond, Andrew Lacon, Rachel Lowther, Nick Evans, Felix Welch and Littlewhitehead.

Sculpture Showroom will run from 20th April - 7th May at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, The Whisky Bond, 2 Dawson Road, Glasgow, G4 9SS.

For more information please visit https://sculptureplacementgroup.org.uk/

RISOTTO's RISO ROOM at The Lighthouse, Glasgow

Between 23rd March-13th May RISOTTO will be taking over Gallery 1 of the Lighthouse for a jam-packed print programme + exhibition, celebrating all things RISOGRAPH!

Throughout this period, the space will play host to a full programme of unique events. 

Highlights include:

Specialist workshops from leading movers and shakers of the print world; CORNERS (South Korea), http://corners.kr/   Atelier Bingo (France) http://atelier-bingo.fr/   and Wobby.club (Netherlands), https://www.wobby.club/ focusing on specialist prepress techniques, playful collage, and a collaborative zine workshops, respectively. 

This will be the first time these studios have delivered workshops in Scotland, offering a chance to learn from world-leading Risograph experts.

Poster Nights; our cheapest, fastest and most popular workshop will be back; and at 25 participants strong, this is as much a social as it is an intro to the print process. 

These workshops always produce a whole concoction of patterned prints for participants to take home.

Find out more about the RISO ROOM here:

https://www.risottostudio.com/category/specialworkshop/

BBC Arts Digital features designer Gabriella Marcella, Director of RISOTTO

BBC Arts Digital has created a series of short films focusing on specialist artists and craftspeople. 

The second episode in the series features Gabriella Marcella, a designer and Director of RISOTTO, Scotland’s leading risograph print specialist, and stationery company. 

Set up in 2012, RISOTTO produces creative print for a range of clients – from leading art organisations to bands and brands, quickly and sustainably.

Risograph printing is similar to screen-printing, using rich spot colours and stencils to create tactile and vibrant prints, affordably and with little impact to the environment.

I've had things printed at RISOTTO in the past, and they are great! As you will see from the clip below, Gabriella is really knowledgeable and her helpful and friendly approach makes RISOTTO an excellent company to work with.

Check out the RISOTTO website here

https://www.risottostudio.com/

A cast from the past...

I was recently contacted by a friend in Glasgow who had purchased a piece of my work a number of years ago. He kindly sent me the above photo of the work displayed in his house. It was a lovely reminder of a past body of work that was exhibited at 1 Royal Terrace, and an example of how the work now lives on in many different people's homes.

I'm taking part in an adoption scheme for modern sculpture

An adoption scheme for modern sculpture is being launched by a group of contemporary artists in Glasgow, and I am delighted to be part of it.

Sculpture Placement Group, (L-R) Kate V Robertson, Michelle Emery-Barker and Martin Craig 

The Sculpture Placement Group will give charities and other organisations the chance to borrow sculptures which are currently in long-term storage.

Organisers say it will provide an opportunity to take artworks to places they would not otherwise be shown.

The scheme will be piloted at Glasgow Sculpture Studios as part of Glasgow International 2018, which takes place 20 April to 7 May. A selection of works will be displayed in mock environments designed by the artists, with a larger number of works also available via an accompanying catalogue.

Adoption will be free but "guardians" will take responsibility for care and display of the artwork.

The move follows previous success with the innovative Art Lending Library.

Kate V Robertson, one of the three curators behind the project, said there is "loads of enthusiasm" within the art community for the idea.

She said: "All over the country there are superb sculptures by respected artists that are hidden away and have no clear future when they could be seen and enjoyed by new and wider audiences.

"The art market puts a lot of emphasis on new work by sculptors with little provision for what happens to pieces after an exhibition is over. Some is destroyed but the artists put much of it into long-term storage.

"We've been talking to artists about whether they would like to give new life to some of their work by offering it for adoption and the response has been great, loads of enthusiasm."




Glasgow artist Rachel Lowther said she is looking forward to seeing who comes forward to adopt the pieces she is putting forward.

She said: "My studio is full of sculpture now and it can be a problem finding space to create anything new. Sculptors either have to keep work in their studios or pay extra for storage.

"This is a great experiment - it is better to have art out in the world than in boxes. A sculpture is a better place to meet and talk than a water cooler."



Fellow artist Nick Evans said: "A few years ago I was invited to do a solo exhibition at Tramway, which was great, I really threw myself into creating the pieces. There were a dozen large plaster sculptures around 1.5m tall and weighing 100kg each.

"I didn't want to destroy them afterwards - it was a significant moment in my career. I swapped one with my landlord for two shipping containers and space in the back yard to store the rest.

"The prospect of finding more interesting spaces and ways to display this work really interests me, as does the whole idea of giving a new sense of value to the work."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-43127639


https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/brief-glasgow-artists-launch-sculpture-adoption-scheme-peckhams-arcadia-missa-relocate-due-gentrification

The lack of funding for Glasgow Art Gallery Transmission

As a member of the Glasgow Art Gallery, Transmission, I was disappointed and shocked to hear that the arts funding body Creative Scotland has dropped the gallery from its 2018-21 portfolio of regularly funded organizations (RFOs). The impact that this is likely to have for the artistic community is significant. The following article by CHRIS SHARRATT featured in Frieze magazine, examines the situation.

Why Did Creative Scotland Defund Storied Glasgow Art Gallery Transmission?

The gallery argues that the funding body is no longer supportive of institutions that maintain a principled refusal of professionalization



For many Transmission gallery is synonymous with contemporary art in Scotland, an artist-run Glasgow institution that epitomizes the DIY attitude that has helped establish the city as an international centre for art. Judged on its recent actions, you could be forgiven for thinking that the arts funding body Creative Scotland favours a different view. It has dropped the gallery from its 2018-21 portfolio of regularly funded organizations (RFOs), a move that, based on its award for 2015-18, will lose Transmission guaranteed support of GBP£210,000 over three years. It is a decision that has left artists, curators and gallerists expressing anger and disbelief.

Transmission was founded in 1983 by graduates of Glasgow School of Art and has had a key role in the city’s visual arts ecology ever since. It has remained a vital, continually evolving force, in large part because of the way it is run. With a membership of more than 300, it is led by a rolling voluntary committee – typically consisting of six people, although at present it is four – with committee members usually staying in the role for no more than two years, occasionally more and often less. It’s a model that ensures a continual process of renewal and, by its nature, dispenses with the usual arts establishment hierarchies of CEOs, deputy directors and chief curators. Past committee members have gone on to become internationally-known artists and gallerists, and include: Claire Barclay, Christine Borland, Douglas Gordon, Jim Lambie, Tanya Leighton, Carol Rhodes, Eva Rothschild, Lucy Skaer, Simon Starling, and Modern Institute founding director Toby Webster.

The Glasgow-based artist Martin Boyce was on the Transmission committee from 1991-93; The Modern Institute, which represents him, is just around the corner from the King Street venue. ‘Transmission was and is an outsider,’ Boyce says. ‘It allows artists to be responsible for cultivating their own ecosystem that then develops outwards into the city and beyond. It becomes part of the DNA of the artists themselves.’ Remembering his involvement as a recent graduate of Glasgow School of Art, he adds: ‘For me, Transmission was a lifeline, a school, a salon, a gathering place, an invitation, typewriter and a photocopier, an excuse to reach out to other artists, self-determining, responsible, tentative, self-perpetuating, open. It was the first port of call when artists and friends arrived off the train.’

Katrina Brown, director of Glasgow’s Common Guild gallery and a former director of Glasgow International, was a Transmission committee member at the same time as Boyce. She echoes his point about Transmission’s importance to the city and its artists. ‘It’s such a fundamental and foundational component of the [Glasgow] ecology that it’s impossible to imagine the landscape without it.’ While accepting that ‘not everything should necessarily exist for ever just because it has existed once,’ she describes what the gallery offers as ‘rare, special and important’, believing it ‘fosters a strong sense of both individual and collective agency which has undoubtedly fuelled the now legendary DIY spirit in Glasgow’.

Brown also points out that the Transmission model has been copied by other artist-run spaces in many countries. This is undoubtedly the case, although aspects of its approach have in recent months been put under close scrutiny by the Transmission committee itself. In June 2017, it took the surprise step of postponing the gallery’s annual members’ show, citing ‘multiple burnouts’ amongst the committee due to the pressures of fulfilling their unpaid roles while also holding down paid work. The committee’s decision was accompanied by a pledge to strive ‘towards an alternative’ model that doesn’t rely on free labour and all the stresses and social barriers this creates. It seems that Creative Scotland concluded that an organization in such a constant state of flux does not belong in its portfolio of RFOs. Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts at Creative Scotland, puts it differently, stressing that the decision: ‘was not taken with any intention to damage Transmission. We respect and value their very long and quite exceptional history in terms of being an artist-run space’. Citing Creative Scotland’s Visual Arts Sector Review, which was published in October 2016, she tells me: ‘There are many artist-run spaces across Scotland, it’s a different landscape to 35 years ago. What we wish to do is create a targeted fund that will support many artist-run initiatives across the country, including Transmission, and create a much more considered and strategic response to their needs.’ She adds that the gallery has transitional funding in place up to October, ‘and then we will work with them to see where that leaves us’.

Transmission was aware of the still to be confirmed artist-run fund when it issued its robustly-worded statement in response to the Creative Scotland decision. It expresses the view that Transmission was considered ‘too messy and unpredictable’ and ‘subject to quick change’ for Creative Scotland to continue investing in it: ‘Transmission believes that Creative Scotland has chosen to cut our funding because they are no longer prepared to invest in an institution that refuses professionalization, and yet by virtue of its unique history operates at a scale comparable to more professionalized institutions.’

Paradoxically, this rejection of professionalization makes the certainty of regular funding all the more crucial, offering continuity as the organizing committee keeps changing. And while Catto states that her organization is ‘very aware of the vulnerability and precarity of all these [artist-run] spaces’, to remove Transmission’s existing route to funding before any new strategy has been developed seems – whether by accident or design – to be perversely destructive. As Kirsty Ogg, director of New Contemporaries and another former Transmission committee member, puts it: ‘It’s crazy to think that the voluntary committee structure could sustain the gallery’s activity through project-by-project funding applications – they [Creative Scotland] clearly have no sense of the pressures that younger artists are under as members of the precariat. The incredible, cooperative membership-based structure that has lasted for 35 years needs at least one cornerstone of stability.’

The backlash over the decision to drop Transmission is just one aspect of a wider crisis that is enveloping Creative Scotland following its recent regular funding announcement, which included the defunding of three performance companies working with people with disabilities. Two board members – the journalist Ruth Wishart and Professor Emerita of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Maggie Kinloch – have resigned over the lack of time and information they had to consider the decisions, with Wishart stating that Creative Scotland ‘finds itself a family at war with many of those it seeks to serve.’ In total, 20 organizations have been dropped. Other visual arts bodies that have lost their RFO status include the Glasgow-based public art producer NVA and Edinburgh’s Dovecot Foundation. (There have also been 19 additions, with Stills Gallery in Edinburgh becoming an RFO for the first time.) As for Transmission, Boyce captures the feeling of so many artists, curators and others in the visual arts who are perplexed by the Creative Scotland decision. ‘Transmission introduced me to the idea of a supportive network that has always stayed with me. It is unfathomable to me to understand why this ethos is no longer considered relevant.’

https://frieze.com/article/why-did-creative-scotland-defund-storied-glasgow-art-gallery-transmission

Catherine Yass Artist talk

The visiting artist at Newcastle University this week was Catherine Yass, the London-based artist. Abandoned urban spaces and sites in a process of construction or deconstruction are of interest to Yass, and often feature in her work. People are usually absent from her work, but this is not the case in High Wire (2008), a multi-screen film and video installation.

High Wire (2008) was filmed at the Red Road housing estate in North Glasgow. When it was built in the early 1960s, Red Road was the highest social housing in Europe, a major achievement for the city planners who sought to rebuild the city. Yet in 2008 it was due to be demolished.

Akin to the utopian principles that were in place at the time that the Red Road housing estate was built, Yass wanted to make a work about "walking in the air, out of nothing." She advertised for a tightrope walker to walk between two of the high rise buildings at Red Road.

Yass worked with French high-wire artist Didier Pasquette. In the talk Yass spoke about her unease when Pasquette told her that he did not want to wear a safety harness. Her terror increased as Pasquette began the tightrope walk and it became clear that the weather conditions were much worse than had been forecast, and Pasquette would need to turn round. He edged his way back to the starting platform.



Yass spoke about how she considered not exhibiting the work as the intention of Pasquette walking from one building to the other had not been fulfilled. However, she began to see this as a strength of the work. I believe that it echoes the situation at the Red Road housing estate; grand ideas of what would exist turned out to be unachievable, and this adds another layer to the work.

More photos of setting up Circus Between Worlds

I was recently sent some additional photos taken by Mark Pinder from the Circus Between Worlds event. Here are a selection of images from the setting up of the Circus and rehearsals.

Neil and I consult the running order

Pardon?

Along with Deanna Smith and Sarah Grundy, and I was one of the performers in Deanna's performance.

Sarah, Dee and me cosy in Dee's costume

Three heads popping out of a black tent-like costume

Here we go!

Me and Dee waiting for our cue 

Charlie Dearnley kindly assisted me with my performance.

Where is it?

Charlie fills his bucket

Ooh! That's a good stretch!

If only this would stay on my head

Ready for action

In action

All images copyright of Mark Pinder, 2016

Project Title: Walker & Bromwich

’

s Circus between Worlds

Or: Circus between Worlds, a project by Zoe Walker and Neil

Bromwich

At: Glasgow International, Gi2016

Circus between Worlds, a project by Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich

At Glasgow International, Gi2016

Project Title: Walker & Bromwich

’

s Circus between Worlds

Or: Circus between Worlds, a project by Zoe Walker and Neil

Bromwich

At: Glasgow International, Gi2016

Project Title: Walker & Bromwich

’

s Circus between Worlds

Or: Circus between Worlds, a project by Zoe Walker and Neil

Bromwich

At: Glasgow International, Gi2016