23 February 2023
This month we will be making our way to the City Art Centre for their new exhibition Glean: Early 20th century women filmmakers and photographers, where we will be joined by the exhibition curator Jenny Brownrigg.
This ground-breaking exhibition presents the work of fourteen pioneering women photographers and filmmakers working in Scotland during the early 20th century. The women are Violet Banks (1886-1985), Helen Biggar (1909-1953), Christina Broom (1862-1939), M.E.M. Donaldson (1876-1958), Dr Beatrice Garvie (1872-1959), Jenny Gilbertson (1902-1990), Isobel F Grant (1887–1983), Ruby Grierson (1904-1940), Marion Grierson (1907-1998), Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889-1982), Johanna Kissling (1875-1961), Isabell Burton-MacKenzie (1872-1958), Margaret Fay Shaw (1903-2004) and Margaret Watkins (1884-1969).
These women present different accounts of Scotland, covering both rural and city places and communities. The exhibition will show the breadth of their photography and filmmaking, offering a critical analysis of their work and how these informed the work they made, and the different narratives we see emerging from their work in Scotland. It is the first time their work will have been seen together, and it uncovers a previously untold story within the history of Scottish photography. Exhibits will be drawn from a broad selection of private and public collections.
Jenny Brownrigg is Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Scottish women artists.
26 November 2004 at 6pm
Some of you may have heard Ed Ruscha speak with his old friend Janet Street Porter earlier in the month about his artistic practice and life in LA. We now have a chance to look at selected works in more depth, in the company of Glasgow-based artist, Ross Birrell.
Ruscha is a (anti-)hero of American art, and the exhibition at the SNGMA is a thrillingly comprehensive survey, starting with his very early pieces from 1961-2, and going right the way through to some great new works from this year. He was one of the first artists to combine word and image, popular material and philosophical concerns. Less widely known than the East coast Pop artists, Ruscha’s profile has been slow-burning, but his influence has been huge amongst designers, artists and filmmakers. Ruscha is the original and quintessential recorder of roadside signs and highway petrol stations – the current fad for books of Boring Postcards would not exist without him – but he is far from glib. With sustained viewing, elements of lyricism and compassion emerge from underneath his wryly observed phrases.
Like Ruscha, Ross Birrell explores, re-uses (and sometimes abuses) texts. His sources are more overtly literary and theoretical, but he nevertheless navigates the weirdness of human culture and experience in similar ways to Ruscha. He makes films, photographs, and text pieces based on his travels around the globe. He was co-editor of Justified Sinners, a survey of Scottish counter-culture. Ross won the Absolut Open at Inverleith House in 1999 and has shown recently in Amsterdam and Graz.
