Goose Flesh is a photography zine featuring artists from, living in or otherwise linked to Glasgow. The zine aims to showcase the work of emerging and established artists in a compact, accessible, affordable form.
Goose Flesh favours the observational and incidental over the conceptual. Sarah Amy Fishlock started the zine in summer 2013 with a small grant from arts charity IdeasTap, and has nearly produced three quarterly issues since then:
“Photographers are so used to seeing our work on-screen, but the opportunities for emerging photographers to see their work in print after graduation are few and far between. There’s something wonderful about looking at a printed photograph – it holds your attention far longer than an image on a screen. Unfortunately, it’s also an expensive way of realising your work that can seem like an extravagance if it’s not absolutely necessary, especially to cash-strapped graduates! I wanted to gather together some of the amazing work that I see from Glasgow-based and Glasgow-linked photographers, and distribute it in an accessible way.
I design and produce Goose Flesh as well as curating the content of each issue. I don’t have an open submissions process because each volume is about finding artists whose work fits well together, and not all of the great work out there is suitable for the zine. That being said, I do try to keep abreast of what’s going on in Glasgow, and am always interested to hear from anyone who is interested in contributing. The first issue’s contributors were myself, Ross Finnie, Jenny Wicks, Sandy Carson and Michael Jones. I planned a small launch event and exhibition in Coffee Chocolate & Tea to stimulate interest in the zine and introduce Goose Flesh to Glasgow’s photographic community – it ended up being really, really busy, which was encouraging! Our second volume featured Kotryna Ula Kiliulyte, Robert Ormerod, Emily Macinnes, Tristan Hutchinson and Marco Scerri, with an accompanying event and show in the Arches. The response to the second zine was brilliant and I’m sure this will continue with GF3.
The zine contains little text – just credits and a short introduction, each volume by a different writer. So far, introductions have been by Glasgow-based or -linked writers Cayleigh-May Forbes, Sean Welsh and Kirsty Logan. I usually approach writers from outside the world of art criticism, and ask them to respond to the images in an intuitive way rather than attempting to critique the work. Goose Flesh’s ethos is that photographs are different things to different people – looking at a photograph can conjure up thoughts, ideas, memories, joys, griefs – so I wanted the introduction to be subjective too, a non-photographer’s view of each selection. In this way, I hope to celebrate what I think is great about photography – it’s an immediate, subjective, democratic way of capturing the weird beauty of the world around us.
In the future, I’d like to explore funding options for further issues of the zine, and for associated events like pop-up exhibitions and artist talks. There is still a small amount of the original funding left, as well as proceeds from zine sales so far, but it would be great to be able to dedicate more time to it in the future. As anyone working in the creative industries knows, it can be an uphill struggle at times, but the positive response from contributors, stockists and members of the public has been amazing. I’m really proud that Goose Flesh has been so warmly adopted by such a unique and vibrant photography community!”
Goose Flesh Volume 3 launches on 15 May at Street Level Photoworks (Gallery 103), featuring work by Alan Knox, Claire Maxwell, Kirsty Mackay, Veronica Melendez, and Kate Oldham.
The zine was recently highlighted by Dazed Magazine as one of May’s ‘Ten zines to look out for.’
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