Image: Front cover of Sarah Lowndes’ book Social Sculpture: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene

One of the closing events of this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival saw visual artist Martin Boyce, curator Adam Szymczyk and author Sarah Lowndes discussing the factors that have contributed to the rise of the Glasgow arts scene since the 1970s. Lowndes is the author of Social Sculpture: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene which provided a basis for the discussion.

Central Station spoke to Martin Boyce before the event about his experiences of studying and working in the city. He was born in Hamilton and studied at Glasgow School of Art. His work includes sculpture and installation and is often inspired by modernist design and explores its role in a contemporary setting. He represented Scotland at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia in 2009 with his exhibition No Reflections.

Do you think there’s been a resurgence of interest in Glasgow’s recent cultural history?

I don’t think there’s a resurgence of interest but I think as the history has continued to accumulate there’s more and more evidence that it wasn’t just a burst of activity; it is an ongoing situation that continues to be incredibly strong and healthy. Now you can definitely say that the situation in Glasgow and the art production, culture and music really has solidified as an important centre and I think it continues to attract people into it rather than it just being something happening within it.

What do you think it is about Glasgow that has led to it being such a fertile ground for artists in recent years?

It’s difficult to know because I certainly, as an individual, didn’t feel as though I was at the forefront of saying ‘Come on let’s build a situation here’. There were more vocal people around me that would articulate that and then through being in that situation it allowed you to reflect and think yeah of course, this could be a good situation, a situation that we stay in rather than flee from.

For me Transmission Gallery was a very central thing because it was basically an HQ for people, even if you weren’t on the committee it was a gathering point. And I think that kind of thing was important, but that can be a bar or a café or somebody’s house, just a place that becomes a natural gathering point.

And you enjoyed your time at the Art School?

Yeah, it was all I’d wanted to do even though I probably didn’t even know what happened at Art School. Particularly Glasgow School of Art, I don’t know exactly for what reasons, I guess [because] I was brought up in Hamilton, just outside Glasgow, so it was just this sort of beacon of hope. I really thought it was going to be much wilder. I was a bit nervous, [thinking] ‘what if there’s going to be an orgy on the first day?!’ but of course it’s just a bunch of other people like you.

Were you inspired by the artists who went before you?

I don’t know if this happened in every other department but I was in environmental art and the way the studio was laid out… everyone mixed quite a lot. When I was in the first year I was part of the fashion show which used to be a bit less about fashion and [more] a big theatrical thing and I remember Douglas [Gordon] had some sort of performance and Roddy Buchanan and all those sorts of people so I think I met them then. So by the time [Gordon] was in fourth year and then left there was a bunch of people in different years who were all friends.

You were not influenced by their work necessarily, it was definitely people’s attitude, how they spoke about their plans for the future, what might be possible, what they wanted to do and their ambitions. There definitely were a few people whose level of, not ambition in as much as they wanted to be famous artists, but just that idea that it would naturally continue, it wasn’t that sense of ‘ok what do we do now?’ All of that seeps in and stays with you.

Is it different for graduates now?

I do think that with art schools there’s a funny thing where people who are a couple of years before you are really influential to other students, rather than other artists that are out there. I remember feeling that quite a bit and I see it when I’ve done some teaching at the art school, you do get this frustrated feeling that people’s levels of ambition are quite restricted. There are always one or two people who set their sights much further, way beyond what’s happening in the art school. It’s not about slotting into the success of someone 2 or 3 years ahead of you.

You’ve also spent time in Berlin, what was that experience like?

It was really fantastic, it just came at the right time I think. I’d always lived here [in Glasgow], I’d done an exchange in LA when I was studying in ’95 but apart from that I’d never really lived anywhere else so this opportunity came up and it seemed like a break. We put everything in storage and basically went to this new studio with virtually nothing.

Even at that time [2005] it was very popular with artists but in the last five years it’s transformed as well, so many artists and so many galleries have moved there so it’s kind of overloaded, it’s changed quite a lot. It really felt like it was still on the end of its glory period since the wall came down, a real city of possibility.

Did it give you a new perspective on Glasgow and working in the city?

There was definitely a sense of being able to view Glasgow from another viewpoint and looking at what had been built up and think about whether it’s still important to go back and be part of that.

There were lots of pros and cons, it’s just a very different city. And it’s different when it’s home. Berlin really felt like anything was possible because it’s really new to you. Also living in a city where I didn’t speak any German, you’re living in your own kind of bubble, socialising with other artists, so there was kind of a reality chunk that was missing which was very attractive for a short period of time.

Social Landscape: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene is out now in paperback and published by Luath Press Ltd.

Image: Martin Creed still from Work No. 732: Flower Kicking, 2007  © Martin Creed. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

It’s difficult to know what to make of Martin Creed. The artist, most famous for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: The lights going on and off, alternates between dead pan humour and deep sincerity (with one often impossible to distinguish from the other). And his work is much the same; it is at once playful yet also challenges everyday perceptions. Take for example Work No. 850, where Creed set up runners to sprint, every 30 seconds, through the Tate. The artist said that the regularity of the running was something that might offer comfort to the spectator, yet at the same time the piece represents an almost violent disruption to the formality of the gallery space, not to mention a display of cheeky, childlike audacity.

This mixture of fun and intrigue has made Creed a popular artist among audiences and critics alike and his latest exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh will no doubt be a popular destination this Festival season. Down Over Up is a collection of Creed’s work which reveals the artist’s fascination with steps and increments. Alongside work from the last few years, the show includes a new piece by Creed: a musical staircase where each step is another note in a scale progressing up or down depending on whether you’re ascending or descending. Creed is also working on a commission as part of the refurbishment of the Scotsman steps – a public stairwell in Edinburgh which connects the Old Town and the New Town, due to be unveiled in the new year.

If that isn’t enough, Creed is also bringing his ballet (Work No. 1020), first performed at Sadler’s Wells last year, to the Traverse Theatre between 8 – 15 August and is speaking at Edinburgh International Book Festival on 16 August about the release of two new books on his work.

I spoke to Creed last week, in between rehearsals for his performance at the Traverse, about the events he’s involved in in Edinburgh this summer, his latest commission to transform the Scotsman steps and why we might soon be seeing the Martin Creed opera show.

Image: Martin Creed, Down Over Up at The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2010

You’re in the middle of rehearsals for the ballet at the moment, is that right?

Last night was the first preview performance, which was effectively a dress rehearsal really because we’ve only had three days of rehearsals, so we’re kind of rehearsing while we do it!

Did it go well?

Aye, aye. Yeah it was just a really long day, so it’s tiring. Especially the ballet, because I’m in the ballet. But I think doing things like that for me is a chance to see what it’s like to be a thing that people are looking at, which is what my work is. It’s also different being with an audience in a room seated, not in a gallery where the audience is just coming and going and there’s no specific time that things happen.

Do you see the ballet as an extension of your piece with the runners through the Tate? There are similar ideas for example the presence and movement of the body…

Aye, that’s where it came from. You can think of the running as a really simple dance in which you’re just trying to move your body as fast as it can (because the runners at the Tate were running as fast as they could). It was that that got me into so called ‘dance’, in the sense of movements that are choreographed.

The ballet has five ballet dancers but it also has five band members who are playing the music for the dancers. One of the ideas for me is that when you’ve got five ballet dancers there on stage [and] 5 regular people next to them the people with the unchoreographed movements can look funny and diverting.

You’ve said before that it’s important for you to work across many different mediums (and the ballet being one example of that). Are there any others you’d like to explore? Online? Opera?

Yeah, I’d like to do an opera! The ballet is kind of… although it’s called ballet it contains singing, for me that’s a chance to do lots of bits and pieces. But that is on my list of one of the things I’d like to do is work with singers, trained singers. At the moment I’ve been working with me singing and other band members.

What sort of conversations did you have with Fiona Bradley at the Fruitmarket in preparation for the current exhibition there? 

She put out a list of works and I kind of said yes and added some that I thought might be good and maybe took one away and she took one away and added something and that’s how it went. She put together the main list, because the Scotsman steps [commission] kind of came from the Fruitmarket as well so I think that’s how the steps thing started because we were working on this steps commission and she was saying ‘Oh there’s all these steps in your work’ so why not make the show, so that’s how it started and I think it’s true, there are lots of steps and increments.

Are you interested in how audiences interpret and interact with your work?

Yeah definitely, in the sense that I want people to like or love my work, me and my work. In a sense I think that I make my work because I want to be loved, so I want people to like my work because that makes me feel good. But I don’t understand how it does all work… I don’t know exactly what it is that I want from people. I know that other people are really important. I don’t think I can find out about my work until I put it into public.

Tell me about the Scotsman Steps project…

They’re renovating it and they wanted an artist to do something. I proposed to actually do the steps rather than doing something on the walls and to do them in marble so that each step is made from a different type of marble. I hope it will be like a beautiful array of all the possible different colours ad textures of marble that you can get. I did make a piece with tiles of marbles, so in a way that was an earlier version which led to this.

When you get into colours of marble there are some really good pink and blue and green marbles but a lot of them are beige. So you could have a staircase of loads of different types of marble but actually they could all be brown, beige and white and I want it to really be a full contrast of different colours although within the limitations of marble, because marble is made from the ground, so it’s no surprise that it’s brown!

And are you interested in the contrast between its current state (very run down and mainly used as a toilet!) and that very precious material that you’ll be using?

It is such a toilet and there’s piss all over the place but I thought the best thing to do would be to try and make it really beautiful. Also marble is piss-proof, you know? You can hose it down or whatever.

I think the fact that it’s mainly used as a toilet is because those people don’t have anywhere to live and it is a covered staircase. So it would be nice if those people could have somewhere to live. I don’t think they should be moved out, they should be given somewhere so they don’t have to sleep there or shit there.

Or to look at it another way, if that staircase is a toilet, when I go to the toilet I like a nice toilet and marble is also traditional toilet material. So those guys should just have a really nice toilet, you know?

Martin Creed Down Over Up is on at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh until 31 October 2010. 

Work No. 1020: Ballet is showing at the Traverse Theatre 8 – 15 August 2010.

Martin Creed will be speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 16 August.