When asked what had drawn her to the work she is exhibiting at Glasgow International, the festival of visual arts that returns to the city this month, one artist replied: “Being ignored. Being patronised. Being written off. Being invisible. Being older than we once were.”
The festival certainly gives a platform to artists producing some of the most exciting and cutting-edge contemporary work. It also has a new director, Richard Parry, whose programme features more than 70 venues right across the city from April 20 until May 7.
GI 2018 will begin with Cellular
World at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), which aims to introduce key themes that will resurface in other commissions.
Ahead of the festival, Alex Burns spoke to some of the artists who will be exhibiting their work. What’s their style? What inspires them? And what do they think about when they think
about art?
Kate Clayton of the women’s art collective XSexcentenary
Specialism: Performance, though we turn our hands to video, photography, textiles, drawing and whatever it takes to get our ideas across to a wider public.
What will you be exhibiting at GI?
Our project is called Not Dead Yet – it celebrates life and commemorates women. Our hub space, the One Stop Memorial Shop, is part-social club and exhibition. It’s a space to spend time and donate to a collective evolving shrine to womanhood and participate in workshops such as an alternative mourning clothing workshop. Each Sunday, performative actions take place at the Necropolis.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
There are four of us (me, Norma Hunter, Wanda Zyborska and Katherine Araniello) and we all draw inspiration from different places. Perhaps it can best be summarised as the lived experience of older women.
What drew you to this field?
Being ignored. Being patronised. Being written off. Being invisible. Being older than we once were.
When I think about art …
The four of us would answer individually. I remember abandoning my course at Brighton Art School in the 1960s in part because of the sexism
and misogyny of the exclusively male tutors. I also remember, just last week, attending a tea dance organised by Platform, Easterhouse, and a woman coming up to us and asking for her own copy of the XSexcentenary handout as she’d heard such good things about what we were about.
Also, when I think about art...
I think about how exclusive it has been and how inclusive it could be.
Describe your style in five words:
Don’t be misled by the twinset and pearls we often wear: we are more substance than style. We are feminist, collaborative, transgressive, passionate and Not Dead Yet.
Not Dead Yet, One Stop Memorial Shop at Ladywell Business Centre
Hub: Mon-Wed and Fri-Sat 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm. Performances at Glasgow Necropolis: Sunday 22 April, 29 April and 6 May, 2-4pm
Mick Peter
Specialism: Sculpture, drawing and installation
What will you be exhibiting at GI?
A project called The Regenerators. With young people from across Greater Glasgow, I have created an 80m long “billboard” to cover the empty facade of a historic former gas-purifying shed in the East End of the city.
The new hoarding depicts, in drawings reminiscent of a newspaper strip cartoon, crumbling buildings from different eras, including a medieval castle, tenement housing as well as modern flats being demolished.
Peering through the windows of these buildings, visitors will see surprising and humorous scenes made by me and the young people.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
I like playful work that investigates the symbols of power and authority. I’m inspired by witty illustration, fiction and historical graphic design.
What drew you to this field?
I can’t really answer that question without sounding like I’m emoting in front of the X Factor panel.
When I think about art I don’t necessarily think about art...
I think about problem-solving, about drawing and looking. Working with other great people is something that makes me think about what I’m doing and how to do it better.
Describe your style in five words
Playful, witty, satirical, rhetorical, tricksy.
The Regenerators, Dalmarnock Gas Purifier Shed, 90 Old Dalmarnock Road,
Mon-Wed and Fri-Sun 10am-6pm, Thu 10am-8pm
Torsten Lauschmann
Specialism: Non-hierarchical use of mediums, including sculpture, video, woodwork, metalwork, audio and photography.
What will you be exhibiting at GI?
War of the Corners, a photographic and sculptural work that takes its title from a war of words that broke out in
18th-century Paris, when an elitist French opera had to make way for a wave of populist Italian opera.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
For this particular exhibition, the history of automation, the history of toys and high and low culture.
What drew you to this field?
At art school I had a photography background. After graduating, I then extended my work from the traditional to include engineering and computer coding.
My tools reflect a critical analysis of the things I am interested in. I use literally the same timer that is used
for conveyor belts in an automaton figure I have made for War of the Corners.
When I think about art …
My kids hate me.
Describe your style in five words:
Inconsistent, chaotic, playful, curious, wonderment.
Torsten Lauschmann: War of the Corners, Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art,
Mon-Wed 10am-5pm, Thu 10am-7pm,
Fri-Sun 10am-5pm
Carla Scott Fullerton
Specialism: Sculpture and printmaking.
What will you be exhibiting at GI?
I have two shows this year. The first is a solo show at Impact Arts in the East End. Several large silkscreen sculptures will dominate the space, showing imagery exposed onto the screens with pulled ink left behind from the printing processes running throughout the sculpture.
The second show is a group show in the Glasshouse at the Botanic Gardens. This is an interesting place to exhibit my work, with its mix of industrial structures and plantlife allowing me to create a conversation between my work and the surrounding forms within the space.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
I always remember going to big cities as a child and being fascinated with all the buildings and the energy you got from a city. It was very different from the farm life I had growing up. This was the start of my interest in the urban environment: how cities work, how materials are used and the forms that are created within these settings.
What drew you to this field?
After graduating from Cumbria School of Art I moved to Glasgow as I had heard how supportive it was for young artists. I graduated as a painter and was interested in paint as a material but became increasingly frustrated with what I felt were the limitations of paint and the two-dimensional work it creates. I started looking at other materials within the 3D areas of sculpture and architecture, which I am passionate about.
Describe your style in five words
Materials, forms, process, sculptural, architecture.
Carla Scott Fullerton: Stretch/Pulled/Inked, Impact Arts, 319 Craigpark Drive, Mon-Wed 10am-6pm, Thu 10am-8pm, Fri-Sun
10am- 6pm.
Glasshouse (group show), Glasgow Botanic Gardens, 20 April to 7 May, Mon-Sun 10am-6pm
Rosie O’Grady
Specialism: Often at the core of each work there is an event or temporary intervention – which takes different forms.
What will you be exhibiting at GI?
This work relates to the context of House for an Art Lover, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and artist Margaret Macdonald in 1901. My project attempts to agitate how Macdonald is represented, as her contribution is often overlooked. I have remodelled Macdonald’s gesso panel The May Queen as a crop circle.
My work begins to explore how crop circles can depart from traditional associations to become a mode of protest and distress signal.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
My work usually develops in response to the history or social context of the site where it will be made public.
May Day, House for an Art Lover, Mon-Sun, 10am-5pm
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