17 March 2010 at 6.30pm
We will be visiting the newly established artist-run gallery and studios – the duchy – to view their latest exhibition by emerging artist, Lauren Gault, who will personally walk us through her exhibition of new works and talk to us about her practice.
The Dundee-based artist focuses her practice on an interest in the realm beyond instinct, investigating both Lacan’s attack on the flaws in the nature of understanding and Girard’s focus on the mimesis of desire: a study that combines the impotency of meaning with the self-unfulfilling agency of desire.
For her solo show at the duchy, Gault will exhibit video sequences, sculpture and carefully hand-wrought objects. Gault explores desire as a spacial metaphor, using objects as tools and props relating to each other in sculptural parable. The work is unapologetic and often irreverent and always referencing the notion that metaphor brings about a new configuration of thoughts.
Founded in June of 2009, the duchy is a new non-profit, artist-run gallery and studio space located in two adjoining shop-fronts on Duke Street, Glasgow. Their intention is to support emerging and early career artists committed to their practice, providing space to create and show work.
25 February 2010 at 6pm
This month, we will explore the Collective Gallerys latest exhibition Documentalist – an international group show presenting work that explores blurred boundaries between fiction and reality through drawing, sculpture and film.
Chris Evans deliberately muddles the roles of artist and patron, genius and muse. Evans will show two sculptural pieces Warm Hermaphrodite and Repeat Horizon, both of which form visual motifs created by Evans in response to interviews with four elderly Italian politicians. All were asked about sacrifice and after a life in the public eye, on the choices they made.
Deimantas Narkevicius will show his film Revisiting Solaris. Trained as a sculptor, Narkevicius has developed a practice, based on video and film that explores fascinating, problematic and overlooked passages of recent post-communist European history, including his personal history of living and working in Lithuania during the soviet era and after.
Suzanne Treister’s practice deals with notions of identity, history, power and the hallucinatory. She will present Alchemy, a series of works which transcribe front pages of international daily newspapers into alchemical drawings, reframing the world as a place animated by strange forces, powers and belief systems.
Joining us to explore individual works and to discuss each artist’s relationship to the title Documentalist will be Kate Gray, Director of The Collective Gallery.
17 February 2010 at 6.30pm
A visit to the curated group exhibition LOVE at the Sorcha Dallas Gallery. The exhibition celebrates artists working in partnership, from long-term collaborators such as Gilbert and George and local duo, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan to Rita Donagh and Richard Hamilton – two independent artists whose marriage has forged a common concern over the years in their artistic subject matter. The exhibitions title is an ironic take on the idea of respect or ‘love’ in some way assisting in the formation of the work and a contradiction to the political subtext and criticality inherent in each of the artists practice.
For LOVE, Hamilton and Donagh exhibit works from their Northern Ireland conflict series. Gilbert and George exhibit two video works from 1972, A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men and In the Bush. Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan exhibit two sculptures alongside four new drawings made for their Artists Taking the Lead Olympic bid, titled An unsuccessful proposal for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, The experience being an experience like an experience you just had.
We will be joined in discussion by gallerist and curator, Sorcha Dallas.
Sorcha Dallas graduated from the Painting Department at Glasgow School of Art in 1998. Between 1999-2004 she co-founded and curated the moving gallery Switchspace, which delivered a programme of exhibitions showcasing Glasgow-based artists, at varying stages in their careers, in ever-changing unused spaces throughout Glasgow. The support and interest Switchspace generated, evolved into the establishment of a permanent gallery space by Sorcha Dallas, to offer a sustainable support structure for a new generation of emerging artists based in the city. The gallery currently represents fourteen artists on a local, national and international level, in commissioning, exhibiting and purchasing opportunities.
During the five years since its inception, the gallery has shown new and innovative work from the very best emerging Glasgow based artists as well as showcasing the most exciting emerging and established international talent. The gallery is also committed to supporting artists books, having made ten publications over the last five years, with two retrospective monographs on the artists Kate Davis and Alan Michael planned for 2010.
25 June 2009 at 6pm
This month we will be visiting the recently opened gallery space Sierra Metro, located in a disused testing facility for the Northern Lighthouse Board in Granton, to see ‘The Reckoning’ Part One.
Curated by Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, in collaboration with Kings Artist Run Initiative from Melbourne, The Reckoning features sculpture, film and installation by eight artists from Scotland and Melbourne which will then tour to Australia in Autumn 2009.
We will be joined by some of the exhibiting artists including Derek Sutherland who uses low-tech, ostensibly mundane materials to create unexpected configurations and arrangements; Jonathan Owen creates sculptures from found objects and intricate cut-outs in 2D to address the themes of British suburbia; Danica Chappell makes work using photography, video and installation to explore concepts of oppressiveness; and Darren Farquhar is a performance artist based in Edinburgh who draws his influences from cult cinema and drum-based, sub-pop music.
Other exhibiting artists featured in the exhibition include Kel Glaister, Tamsin Green and Jackie McNamee from Melbourne, Australia and Edinburgh-based Jessica Harrison – who some of you will remember from the Spin event at Edinburgh Printmakers’ last year.
20 May 2009 at 6.30pm
Please join our host Alhena Katsof and curator Claire Jackson to view and discuss Phil Collins’ current solo exhibition, the world wont listen at Tramway.
Phil Collins uses video and photography to negotiate problems of representation by underlining the complex and unpredictable transferences that occur between the producer, the subject and the viewer. He often works in socially and politically contested regions, employing elements of popular culture, low-budget television and reportage-style documentary to articulate a form of critical proximity to contemporary media – both a fascination with and wariness of the ways in which they structure the lived experience itself.
For the exhibition at Tramway, Collins will present the European premiere of his acclaimed three-part video installation the world won’t listen. Filmed in Colombia, Turkey and Indonesia, the trilogy features fans of the influential indie-rock band The Smiths performing karaoke versions of tracks from their 1987 compilation album of the same name. The work has been generously loaned to Tramway by the Dallas Museum of Art, where it premiered in November 2007.
20 February 2008 at 5.45pm
Spin: Glasgow’s next event will be a visit to Glasgow School of Art to view a new exhibition by Craig Mulholland. Members will also have the chance to attend a special screening of his new film and a talk by Craig at the GFT as part of the Glasgow Film Festival. We will meet the exhibitions curator, Grainne Rice.
Grandes Et Petites Machines refers to the Grande Machines of the French salon, large-scale history paintings, which focus on the physical mechanics of human struggle or violent revolution usually set against the crumbling architecture of authority.
This exhibition will endeavour to dramatically highlight the ethical issues raised by various information theories and their related technologies, focusing on their contribution to ideas of progress, entropy and their social, cultural and legal impact. In particular it will seek to expose the coercive role of such technologies in representations of sensationalism, secrecy and encoding in art along with the expansion of governing institutions and patterns of detection and surveillance. An installation of paintings, sculpture and video (spanning the Mackintosh Gallery at Glasgow School of Art and Sorcha Dallas Gallery) will reflect on the changing ubiquity of digital zones, where the virtual and physical coexist, whilst exploring concepts of the artist/creator/viewer as being complicit in the surveillance and division of objects. The concrete artworks in Grandes Et Petites Machines also function virtually as animated components in the accompanying video work Peer to Peer, to be screened during the exhibition period. Peer to Peer is an Artists Film and Video production supported by the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen.
Craig Mulholland was born in Glasgow in 1969. He studied Drawing and Painting at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1991. Solo exhibitions include Hyperinflation, Tate Lightbox, London; Bearer on Demand, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; RFID, Changing Rooms, Stirling touring to the Whitechapel Project Space, London, all 2005. Recent group exhibitions include Blackberrying, Christina Wilson, Copenhagen, 2007 and The Metal Bridge, Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, 2006. Mulholland was a recent recipient of the Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Artists Film and Video Award. Mulholland lives and works in Glasgow.
29 November 2007 at 6pm
This month, we will visit doggerfisher to see the work of Ilana Halperin.
In Towards Heilprin Land, volcanic stories gathered from the Smithsonian Institution in the USA, collide with polar encounters from a fragile landmass in the far north. The nature of love is explained by a geoscientist; volcanologists talk about their long-term relationships with volcanoes from around the world and an eco-expedition aboard a ship to north-east Greenland is charted through a new series of drawings, photographs, watercolours, etchings, videos and text.
Ilana Halperin has a curiosity about the physical world. She has an interest in fathoming out the nature of geological change and the movement of time in relationship to her own life, encounters and travels. Projects often involve travelling to remote locations and performing actions or poetic gestures.
Joining us will be Ilana Halperin to discuss Towards Heilprin Land and to talk about her fascination with the relationship between geological phenomena and daily life. She will also give a performance on the evening – a very special treat for our Spin members!
19 September 2007 at 6.30pm
Dani Marti’s practice is stimulated by what we perceive as challenges within the act of portrayal. He is fascinated by what lies behind the surface of the subject as an essence to be grasped or sought after through attempting to represent it. The dialectic between the possibility and simultaneous hopelessness of this endeavour emerges in the abstraction of large-scale woven works, and videos that borrow from the language of documentary.
For Marti, both weaving and (video) taping represent an act of bondage, a ritual which enables the artist to possess the person that is portrayed. The works become representational, not only of states of feelings, but also of regimes of class and power, and the idiosyncrasies of personal psychosexualities.
Dani Marti studied fine art in Sydney, gaining a Master of Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, in 2000; and in Glasgow, gaining a MFA at the GSA, in 2006.
He will be joining us to talk about his work.
20 June 2007 at 6.30pm
We will visit a unique exhibition showcasing the work of emerging Mexican artists in an atmospheric workshop in the Merchant City. Previously shown in London earlier in the year, this is the only Scottish showing before it travels to Mexico in November.
The Dos Equis Series: Betrayal features the work of eight emerging Mexico-based artists. The exhibition showcases the country’s rich artistic tradition and demonstrates how its legacy of challenging and topical art continues with the new generation. This is an exciting opportunity to view work from outside the UK and discuss the ideas that stem from within different histories and cultures.
The missing or murdered women of the border city of Juarez are the foundation for Beatriz Canfield‘s installation Without Echo. The work consists of an emotive video projection of a bound and gagged naked woman moving in and out of focus. Hundreds of stones cover the floor, representing the women and woman’s relation to nature, while a female voice speaking in Zapoteca permeates the space.
Other works include Swings for the Alices, a playful, yet simultaneously dark, sculptural installation by the groundbreaking artist Miho Hagino. Self-Betrayal is a physically interlinked photographic series exploring constructed memories by Naim Rahal. Andrea M. Medina’s piece, We are all in both sides of the truth, is an installation of hanging light boxes with complex layered drawings.
The Dos Equis Series was conceived to capitalise on the creative energy currently emerging from Mexico. The exhibition is produced by Jonathan Bonfiglio and curated by Glasgow artist Katri Walker, both of whom have worked extensively in the Mexico City arts scene.
Katri Walker will join us in discussing the show and provide us with a greater insight into the artists, their work and contemporary art in Mexico.
21 February 2007 at 6.30pm
A visit to the Transmission Gallery and their current exhibition with artist Rob Kennedy, Something is wrong here, something should be done about it.
Transmission was set up in 1983 by graduates from Glasgow School of Art who were dissatisfied with the lack of exhibition spaces and opportunities for young artists in Glasgow. Through sponsorship and support from the Scottish Arts Council, they managed and maintained a space in which to exhibit their work. They also began to invite artists who had influenced them, to show in the gallery and become part of this dialogue. The range of contacts grew through projects with similar organisations such as City Racing in London and Artemisia in Chicago. This exchange of ideas has continued with Transmission providing a model for other artist collectives like Catalyst in Belfast and Generator in Dundee. Many of Glasgow’s well known contemporary artists served on the voluntary committee at one point or another since the gallery started and today, it still holds an important place in the visual arts network in Glasgow.
We will look at the work of Rob Kennedy, an artist based in Glasgow, whose work shifts between sculpture, video and live video manipulation.
Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Making up for lost time, part of Purescreen at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; the group show Art Today at the Goethe Institute, Sofia, Bulgaria in 2006, a collaborative project with Torsten Lauschmann and Transmission Gallery for Radiance Festival, Glasgow; and a group show, In between times, at Tramway, Glasgow in 2005.
In 2004, Kennedy’s video entitled Youre not blank, created in collaboration with Diskono, was exhibited at Tate Britain as part of Art Now Lightbox. This year he is a recipient of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screens film and video award which will enable him to produce a series of collaborative live video projects.
