21 October 2009 at 6.30pm
Torsten Lauschmann’s recent works centre on the breaking down of the vocabularies that exist within a contemporary art practice, with his work attempting to decode the intended messages found there. Free from an obligation to communicate specific meaning, Lauschmann’s works have an openness in interpretation and manipulation, which include film and installation works, that use clips from both a personal and found collection, installed so as to strip and order the narrative. With this, Lauschmann is playfully altering a sense of time and origin, and constructing visual fables, which are deliberately invented or falsified.
For his show at the Mary Mary, Lauschmann will present a group of film works, wall paintings and a series of video and slide projections, featuring archive footage of the Fairground Sideshow and focuses on the use of light as an expressive medium both within film and painted surface.
Born 1970 in Bad Soden, Germany, Lauschmann lives and works in Glasgow. Recent exhibitions include solo shows such as Nought to Sixty, ICA, London; Arnolfini, Bristol and Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, all 2008.
21 January 2009 at 6.30pm
A discussion of Karla Black’s solo exhibition at Mary Mary with Spin host Alhena Katsof and gallerist Hannah Robinson.
Karla Black describes her works as, almost painting, performance or installation while actually, and quite definitely, being sculpture. Her fragile, yet authoritative, sculptures are caught between thoughtless gesture and an obsessive attempt at beauty. They are both compromises and protests at the same time. Black’s works seem to have been made by themselves and then hover unsupported in the ether: pure raw material, colour and sensation. For her first solo exhibition at Mary Mary since 2006, Black will spend six days working on-site to produce a group of sculptures made from materials such as body moisturising creams, chalk dust, cotton wool, sellotape, vaseline, paint and egg shells.
Karla Black was born in Alexandria, Scotland in 1972. She currently lives and works in Glasgow where she completed an MFA in 2004, a Master of Philosophy in 2000 and a BA (Hons) Fine Art in 1999, all at the Glasgow School of Art. Karla has exhibited extensively throughout Scotland, the UK and internationally. Recent exhibitions include solos at West London Projects, London; Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and group exhibitions Wollust-the presence of absence, Columbus Art Foundation, Leipzig; Strange Solution, Art Now, Tate Britain, London (all 2008). Forthcoming projects include solo exhibitions at Migros Museum, Zurich; Modern Art Oxford and Inverleith House, Edinburgh and group shows at Kunstverein Freiburg and Kunsthalle Andratz (all 2009).
20 September 2006 at 6.30pm
Mary Mary is a small, artist-run commercial gallery in the city, following in the footsteps of The Modern Institute and Sorcha Dallas, which provides support for young artists at an early stage in their career. As well as a gallery, it provides a small amount of studio spaces for artists, produces publications and represents artists at international art fairs.
Torsten Lauschmann is one of Glasgow’s most interesting contemporary artists. As an artist, filmmaker and live performer, Lauschmann celebrates glitches and out-takes, bits in between and images that might be easy to ignore.
Born in Bad Soden, Germany (1970), and now based in Glasgow, over the past decade his work has evolved beyond straight photography and film works to investigate the mechanics of digital processes, software creation, experimental editing, approaches to performance and the sculptural potential of video installation. He creates new software for mixing AV freely available to all, holds workshops and screenings on video art practices, and produces sites specifically for other new media practices. This exhibition features new photographic works and film/video projections.
22 & 23; 29 & 30 April 2006
Spin: Glasgow gave free bus tours to visitors to view some of the key exhibitions during Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.
Over two weekends (22 & 23 and 29 & 30 April 2006), Tramway curator Lorraine Wilson and artist Ruth Barker visited the Patti Smith exhibition at the Mitchell Library, Ross Sinclair at the CCA, Becks Futures 2006 at Trongate, Lily Reynauld at Mary Mary Offsite, A.R. Lamb and Anne-Marie Copestake at Glasgow Sculpture Studios and Cabin Exchange in a square in Pollokshaws.
30 April 2005 at 10.30am
2005 marked the inaugural year of Glasgow International (GI) and Francis McKee did a tremendous job creating a dialogue between the international and the local, and between stars and up-and-coming artists. From site-specific installations and artists showing in Dennistoun flats, to studios and specially curated shows – there was so much going on that it would have taken three tours to cover everything. Spin members and their guests had an exclusive ‘highlights’ tour with free entry to the Glasgow Art Fair in the afternoon.
Spin visited two major group shows Campbell’s Soup curated by Neil Mulholland at the Glasgow School of Art, and This Peaceful War: Works from the Jumex Collection curated by Francis McKee at Tramway, as well as site-specific installations by Smith/Stewart at 64 Osborne Street, and solo shows by Michael Stumpf and Craig Mulholland at Sorcha Dallas, Tobias Buche and Nick Evans at Mary Mary and Will Duke and Elin Jacobsdottir at Market Gallery.
