It’s that time of year again, summer has sprung and the art & design students of Glasgow have collated the sum of 4 years experience into one eclectic whirlwind of a show. The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show began on 13 June and continues until 20 June, featuring work from graduating students across the schools of Design, Fine Art and Architecture.

Due to the fire which devastated the Mackintosh building this time last year the Fine Art show is taking place in the Tontine Building in the Merchant City while the Design show is running in the newly built Reid Building in Garnethill. Despite the physical distance separating the two shows, the work exhibited across the two venues maintains the strongly unique spirit that ties The Glasgow School of Art students together.

Entering the Tontine Building I was excited to see how the Fine Art students had adapted to their new space and curious to find out how it affected the work they produced. The first piece that caught my eye was Jess Kelly’s beautiful installation ‘Translucent.’ The work effectively acts as a walk-in kaleidoscope with seamlessly moving images projected behind a screen within the structure. The viewer becomes immersed within the installation and becomes part of the artwork itself.

Jess Kelly, Translucent

From sculpture I moved through to the painting rooms, this is where I found Anna Thomson’s work. Her large-scale paintings display serious skill with a deep understanding of texture and subtlety of palette, a perfect combination of bold and understated.

Anna Thomson

Anna Thomson

After leaving the bright white of the painting room, I ventured into the darkness of a windowless alcove where I bunkered down on a huge beanbag, intrigued by a voice that echoed around the small room. When the visuals began, I knew this was a piece worth getting comfortable for.

Jack Boutwood

The short film by Jack Boutwood explores collective memory through an intimate and engaging series of pondering thoughts and observations on modern existence. This skilfully written narrative is refreshing in its honesty and simplicity, nostalgically reminding the viewer of the beauty in the common everyday.

It was time to move on, although I could have stayed much longer revelling in the wonders of the fine art studios, I knew there was so much more to see. Entering the Reid building you cannot help but be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the place; it is without doubt a fantastic building to exhibit within. As I enter the Communication Design Department I was struck by the vast array of varying styles of work, ranging from fine art style large-scale installations to cutting edge graphic design.

Romany Rowell, Time Through Colour

It was the work of Romany Rowell that first caught my attention, in this thought-provoking and frankly very clever piece of work, Romany investigates the way in which time is measured – in numbers – alters our perception of time. The aim of this project is to challenge the viewer’s perception of time by use of colour, light and movement.

Hannah Jane Nixon

At the other end of the Communication Design spectrum is the highly appealing and humorous work of Hannah Jane Nixon, her brightly coloured screen prints display a bravery and uniqueness all of her own. Obviously inspired by popular culture, Hannah has also made a comic book based on the childhood of tennis superstar Roger Federer.

Another Illustration graduate who stood out for me was Sam Russell Walker.

Sam Russell Walker, Bygone Magic Stone

‘Bygone Magic Stone’ is a double sided poster book born out of the idea that each generation looks to their predecessors for inspiration, imparting their own interpretations, creating a kind of Chinese whispers through time.

Calum Douglas, Only the dead have seen the end of war

From the Photography department of Communication Design I spy the work of Calum Douglas. Calum produced a series of powerful images as a response to the unseen and misunderstood aspects of war. The series shows a body of simplified and re-appropriated images that represent key events throughout the Middle Eastern conflict over the past three decades. The way in which the images are presented invites the viewer to question what they see.

Leaving the Communication Design department my head is spinning with all that I have witnessed but I am eager to see more as I venture into the fashion and textiles exhibit space. In this room I feel like a kid in a candy shop, the colours and textures of the work screaming out to be held, stroked and worn. Hardly knowing were to begin I am drawn, as if by a tractor beam to the explosion of pattern on display by fashion designer Luis Miguel Sanchez Garzas; nothing about this work is mundane, everything about it makes me happy.

Luis Miguel Sanchez Garzas

Luis Miguel Sanchez Garzas

There is a passion for abstract forms and playful use of scale alongside a surreal use of found objects, all of which speaks of a great humour that warmly invites the viewer to rethink both traditional forms and functionality within fashion.

I was also very impressed by the work of Elinor McCue, who, like myself is a great fan of fringes. Elinor uses a mixture of hand cut leather, laser cut mdf and acrylic to create her wonderful fringed panels.

Elinor McCue

All in all this year’s Glasgow School of Art Degree Show has been a great success with too much quality work to go through in one review, I have not even mentioned the work of Product Design or Architecture but I strongly advise taking a look at the intriguing designs of Cheng Zhai Wei and the exciting concept piece ‘Tent in the Tenement’ by Michael MacFarlane.

If you want to see more, the show will be running until 20 June from 10am-5pm daily. Information on artist and designers who are participating in the show can be found here.

See Emma’s work online here.

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Joanne Dawson is a final year student of the BA(hons) Painting and Printmaking course at The Glasgow School of Art, graduating from the School of Fine Art a year after the fire of the Mackintosh Building. She is currently working up to the 2015 Degree Show using a variety of video, sculpture, screen-print and installation. She tells us more about what this year’s graduating Painting & Printmaking students have planned.

47 graduates from the Glasgow School of Art Painting and Printmaking course will exhibit their work in London at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane on the 2 – 6 July, as part of The Free Range Show. With the destruction of the Mackintosh Building, we lost a valuable platform for showcasing the culmination of four years hard work. We were in third year during the fire, so our work was not personally damaged, but we worked very closely with graduate students during that time, and we know how much it affected them along with the following repercussion that impacted ourselves in our final year. ALL YOU CAN EAT is the perfect opportunity for us to take our work beyond Glasgow and to exhibit to a wide new audience in a location central to London’s art scene.

Image of Rosie Swan by Ewan McCaffrey

Image of Nathan Cook by Ewan McCaffrey

ALL YOU CAN EAT is more than a painting show. We are an eclectic group and we will be running community workshops, performances, poetry readings and other events throughout the week in London. There is very little restriction on what will come out of the show, however we want to project how strong we have all been as a year together. We initiated this project entirely off our own back, and have been fundraising ourselves over the past year. With huge support and with much gratitude, our Kickstarter raised £3000 in just over a week (here is a link with a video by Gary Zhang). £3,000 is only half of the full cost. If we do not reach our target the show must and will go on. The cogs for potential resolutions to a lack of funding are already in motion. We are trying to supplement our funding through other avenues, writing proposals to different arts charities, throwing club nights, events, and bake sales.

After the funding is fully realised our largest challenge will be safely delivering, curating and installing the best possible show. The event, in the Old Truman Brewery in London, takes place between 2 – 6 July, a fortnight after the official Fine Art degree show in Glasgow will be held in Tontine House, off Trongate Cross in Merchant City from 13 – 20 June. The building surrounds a public art project of Douglas Gordon – his EMPIRE sign.

Image of Jude Hagan by Ewan McCaffrey

Image of Lewis Prosser by Ewan McCaffrey

Image of Jessie Whiteley by Ewan McCaffrey

You can follow our Instagram account here @gsa_painting with regular updates throughout our degree show and lead up to ALL YOU CAN EAT Graduate show. Preview students’ work on The Free Range Portfolio site here. Information will also be posted on The Glasgow School of Art’s website about our upcoming Fine Art Degree Show in the new Tontine Building.

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The Last Days of Art School came about in quite chaotic circumstances. With just over a week to go before the final degree submission deadline my tutor suggested that it might be a good idea for me to produce another piece of work for my submission portfolio. At first I thought he wasn’t serious; but he was.

My major project was photographic, so I thought a contrast to that would be good. I had dabbled in film on and off over my degree and it was actually his preference that I make a film. In a week! Normally I ponder, deliberate and procrastinate quite a bit, but there was no time so a film it was, and a film about what was going on all around me was the obvious/only choice. I did briefly worry that it might not be that interesting, but little was I to know about the events that were about to strike the Art School.

Looking back I think the time pressure really helped, as I couldn’t afford to worry too much about what I was doing, I just had to go and do it. The structure of the film – the fact that there is no synced sound i.e. that what is being said does not match what you see, is the direct result of the technical restraints I encountered. It was just impossible for one person to film and record usable sound at the same time. I’d go in the morning and shoot for a couple of hours, record sound for an hour, edit for a couple, then shoot for a couple more in the afternoon, more sound and then edit again into the night. As I would be shooting right up until hand-in day, there was no time to edit after all the shooting was complete – I had to edit as I went. So the structure of the film developed as it went, one day at a time. Once one day was done that was it. There was no going back. And no knowing what would come next.

As well as this there was the ordering of frames for the degree show, the finishing of the making of my photobook (my main project), the incessant palaver of trying to book time on the digital photo printers, all to be done. I’d managed to get the bulk of the book done and kicked the frames off before the film started, so that was a massive help. Luckily, and I mean that sincerely, I hit no major snags in any of this which meant I was able to get those things underway as planned and complete the film on time. Not everyone had such a relatively smooth ride.

The other benefit of this was that I couldn’t really worry about the show and what was coming. There was no time. And then once we hit the deadline it’s all out of your hands and you can’t worry anymore. Then it’s the fun bit – putting up the work and stepping back and letting it exist for others to see. Apart from the actual putting up of the work which inevitably ends up with 50 people chasing one screwdriver round a gallery space. After that though, step back and relax.

For anyone about to go through this experience, I would offer some words of advice which may or may not help. It sounds obvious but the first thing is to plan what you need to do in advance. Write all the steps down and don’t underplay anything. Think realistically about how long things are going to take. One mistake we made early on is to think, ‘oh, I need to print X number of A3 prints, that should only take a morning’. It may well only take a morning under normal circumstances, but if you have 20 people trying to do the same thing on one printer, it could well end up taking the best part of a week. So plan early, talk to the other people who are likely to be in that queue with you (you quickly find out who they are) and negotiate and plan with them. And most importantly, figure out how long something will realistically take, and then double it. This is especially true of anything involving technology. Computers love to through up errors, printers love to throw a strop and refuse to print and exporting a film from an edit is never incident free. The second thing I would suggest is make sure you have access to your own spirit level, drill and screws – this will make the hang a lot less stressful.

To read more from Cliff and see some of his photography, check out his Life After Art School feature on Central Station.

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Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Muscle Theory, a solo exhibition by the Edinburgh-based artist Catherine Street, can be viewed in the Reid Gallery of The Glasgow School of Art until the 30th of April, daily from 10am to 4:30pm. Catherine Street will perform on Wed 29th and Thurs 30th of April from 3:30 to 4:30pm. A screening and talk on her work will also be presented by the Modern Edinburgh Film School in the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow on the 26th of May, at 6:30pm.

When entering the space one cannot be but intrigued by the plethora of different mediums and works – fragments that fill both space and time. Street pays close attention to the exhibition setting. The arrangement of the moving images through the video projections, which often overlap the printed works, the sounds and the narrating voices through the speakers, creates a path which invite us to contemplate her world. It is a world formed with the artist’s own body, thoughts and voice, creating an assemblage of organic images and sounds, which contrasts with the minimal aesthetic of the setting.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

The organicity of the artist’s body, the visceral qualities of its different parts and functions, is revealed as one of Catherine Street’s recurring themes. In previous works, such as Your body of objects (2010), a text performed at Cabin:Codex (Centrespace, VRC, DCA, Dundee, May 2011) and in the installation/performance work Sway & Muscle, developed at Project!!WAKAKA! (Edinburg, April 2014), Street also addresses a transformative fragmented body and its organicity, which she carries throughout her practice.

In Muscle Theory the body, as presented in the moving images, is often disorientated and displaced. At the same time, the frame of the video projections is also divided and broken, functioning as a fragmentation of the narration itself. In parallel, the use of the voices, mainly her own, in the audio works Conceptual Emergency and Inside In, found in the smaller space of the gallery, retains a visceral quality that fills the room. A sofa with two speakers in front of it, invites the viewer to sit facing the window, thus creating and re-enforcing a sense of displacement between staring at the outside world and immersing oneself in the narration of the work.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Catherine Street’s performance Breathing then speaking, which takes place in the same space as the audio works, has a futuristic twist. The artist enters the space wearing a tablet in front of her eyes. She walks slowly and stands in front of a microphone. Breathing at first, narrating in the process, her live voice comes into discourse with her prerecorded narration and the mixture of sounds deriving from the outside world. Although one might think, or even expect, that the tablet in front of Street’s eyes creates a feeling of uncanniness or a resemblance to a cyborg, the actual result is once again rendering, this time live, the artist’s body fragmented. The voice is separated from the eyes, and the artist is isolated from the audience. In the tablet’s screen, which is relatively small and not very clear to the viewer, moving images seem to appear and disappear in a way that seems random. We can guess that these are images of a body, but the precise content is left to our imagination.

Breathing then speaking talks back to itself – at a certain instance, Street says ’see images clearly in the screen‘. It is almost as if we are witnessing the artist looking back to herself and seeing her work in a constant, paradoxical and yet unpredictable loop. The performance brings the exhibition alive and finishes with the gallery attendant whispering ’the gallery is closed now‘, re-enforcing the idea of an infinite loop,  an assemblage of images, sounds, and mediums functioning as an organic entity, an assemblage of organicity.

Installation view MUSCLE THEORY: Catherine Street, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 18 – 30 April 2015. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Catherine Street has shown her work widely both in performance festivals and exhibition venues. For more information on her work please visit catherinestreet.net.

For more about Catherine Street’s exhibition on Central Station, visit here.

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Edinburgh based artist Catherine Street presents new work at the Reid Gallery this spring. Expect an exhibition which can also be considered as an unfolding piece of theatre. Voice recordings, flickering projections and live performances combine to create an atmosphere of intense reverie.

Street often incorporates her own body into an installation setting that has video, audio, drawn, sculptural, and written elements. The atmosphere is usually unnerving, tense, sensual, comical. Intense breathing sounds give the viewer the feeling of moving inside the lungs, the body’s cavities – whilst her writings often describe a desire to break apart the flesh and return it to its constituent elements.

During the exhibition, there will be several live performances where the artist’s voice is slow and meditative as she combines live and recorded spoken word. The looped imaginings, calculations and speculations mingle with intense breathing and whistling sounds as well as field recordings made in the streets surrounding GSA. The performance is conceived as part of the installation, audience members are encouraged to come and go as they please.

Catherine Street will be exhibiting new works at Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art from 18 – 30 April. Performances will take place on 22 – 25 April and 29 – 30 April from 3.30-4.30pm.

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Shapes of an Art School is a workshop which was devised and led by MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) student Emma Campbell. Emma has been undertaking a work placement with GSA Exhibitions where she has been exploring ways in which exhibitions can engage with audiences in fresh and interesting ways, particularly through events and workshops.

The workshop which was designed as a response to Grizedale Arts’ exhibition The Politics of Craft: After Ford 151. In addition to exploring the historical and contemporary notions of craft, Grizedale Arts presented an exhibition which explored the idea of activating objects within the gallery space. The inclusion of the Grizedale Honest Shop at GSA encouraged the participation of the local art school community who were asked to contribute handmade, functional objects to sell in aid of Dementia Dogs. This invitation became the premise for Shapes of an Art School, inspiring me to invite people to create objects for a purpose in an interesting and fresh environment.

The first workshop participants had the opportunity to experiment with texture, scale and function to create a series of small clay objects. A variety of techniques were demonstrated, teaching attendants how to fabricate and decorate clay through markings and the exploration of repetition. Laser-cut stencils, inspired by visuals from throughout The Glasgow School of Art, were designed specifically for the project. The clay objects produced in the first workshop acted as a canvas for the participants on the second workshop who decorated and painted them, ready for selling in Grizedale. A palette of ochre, brown and turquoise was used to create unique and functional objects. Sophia Platts-Palmer used an object as a canvas for one of her abstract illustrations (featured) while others opted for pattern based decoration.

The workshop provided a chance for participants to learn new skills in an inspiring and unusual working environment. By using the gallery as the location for the workshop, participants were excited to respond directly to the themes of the exhibition, including functionality and collaboration. In addition, it allowed visitors to the space a chance to witness activities which would normally be confined to studios and so became an interesting platform for discussion about the art school community.

See Emma’s jewellery work online here.

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Rachel Boyd finished Secondary School this year and will start the Portfolio preparation course at Tramway’s Open Studio in August. She collaborated with Glasgow CAMRA to produce the logo for this year’s Glasgow Real Ale Festival (GRAF), and has worked alongside Hamilton Sculptor Allan Potter to produce a design for The Merryton Roundabout Project, entitled ‘Working Hands’, commissioned in August 2011.

As a major focus of the GENERATION festival is to engage a younger audience, The Glasgow School of Art asked 18 year old Rachel to review Graham Fagen’s exhibition – Cabbages in an Orchard; The formers and forms of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Graham Fagen. She interviewed Graham and her review of his exhibition which is currently on display at the GSA’s Reid Building is below.

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My first confrontation with the Reid Gallery was met with the intrusion of faceless teeth.

Open, vast and echoing; I entered in through the mouth of the Reid Gallery. Two giant, wooden doors enclose its gape. Launched in 2014, each new show brings forward the thought processes of each forthcoming artist into aesthetic contemplation. To paraphrase Jenny Brownrigg, Exhibitions Director of The Glasgow School of Art: “A gallery is almost like looking into someone’s head…”

In Cabbages in an Orchard; The formers and forms of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Graham Fagen, contemporary Glasgow-based Artist Graham Fagen has manipulated the notions of “Nature, Thinking and Form.” Each element of this exhibition is divided into ‘Schemes’. ‘Scheme’, by definition, may relate to an ‘estate of social housing’ or the precise, intent arrangement of each artwork in kinship to another. Firstly, a Scheme for Consciousness. A series of faceless teeth, aligned randomly, group themselves on three separate walls of the exhibition. Taken primarily from a previous work, Under Heavy Manners (2011), Fagen projects a sensory approach to representing the most common of human forms – our teeth, felt with our tongues; front teeth, then back. Their sculptural relations, titled Scheme for Support, are just as tactile. All three of these toothy impressions (divided into three separate sculptures) were supported by mounts of concrete pillars. In one, the bloodied, gummy-looking mould presides over a ceramic mould of two clenched fists, expressing the distance between the teeth and the hands; thinking and doing. Unlike Under Heavy Manners, these newer developments attempt to “draw consciousness”:
“I argue that everybody in the world has teeth, we’ve all got them, and at the same time, they’re unique. But they are a form, they do a job. Another thing we’ve all got is a consciousness – but you can’t see consciousness in the same way you see teeth. I think that’s what I’m interested in; a collective consciousness…the consciousness of a community, or a culture, but also of the individual.”

Scheme of Consciousness continues. Indian ink – in variants of colour, size and shape – penetrate through paper, manifesting each twinge and trip of feeling as we drag ourselves along missing fillings; the enamel detail hinting at long-softened veneers. “Perhaps all heads are mine…but no two heads are the same; No two thoughts are the same – perhaps that’s what thinking is like, what consciousness is like.” As Fagen muses, these inverted views of the skull – marked by two bulbous splodges of ink, nostrils or eyes – delve deep into our ‘roots’.

The title of this exhibition is another point of interest when considering the gallery as a thinking space. ‘Formers and Forms’ is a phrase coined by Fagen to describe his creative practice. It refers both to what defines our character – the formers of location, family background, childhood and occupation – but also to anatomical, even architectural, structures which ‘form’ the environment and encapsulate our strongest sense of being.

One such ‘former’ is exemplified within Scheme for a Cannabis Tree House. Consisting of a collection of photographs taken from Fagen’s background growing up in the Scottish New Town of Irvine, he seems to pinpoint his greatest influences upon some very ordinary landmarks: a tree, collared by an old tyre; the outside of his childhood home; a rosebush in the garden. Original colour images are juxtaposed by their opposites – inverted colour schemes that imply an exuberant ‘flipside’ to a typical suburban upbringing.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Watercolour, Cabbages in an Orchard (1894), is reminiscent of such a concept. The young Mackintosh was christened as one of ‘The Immortals’ for a then revolutionary approach to visuals; visuals which transcended time and place in the name of creating small philosophies: one of which is evident in Cabbages in an Orchard. This subject matter, however banal, reincarnates the humble cabbage as a symbol of endurance. Use of purples, pinks and greens create a weighted undertone of ethereal beauty; highlighting the cabbage not as a vegetable or even as an object – but a balloon, hung high in the sky. Composition instils common ground between Fagen and Mackintosh. This symmetry between their works is emphasized in placing of the twelve ‘heads’ within Scheme of Consciousness to reflect the position of twelve Cabbages in Mackintosh’s Orchard.

Cabbages in an Orchard is featured alongside other Mackintosh watercolours The Tree of Influence (1896), and The Tree of Personal Growth (1896). These three watercolours were originally published in ‘The Magazine’; a student-run publication founded by Mackintosh and his peers – arguably, all of whom were the ‘formers’ for his creative development.

Mackintosh’s titular references to creative development almost insist upon his role not just as an artist, but as the philosopher to Fagen’s Sociologist:
“I like them [the watercolours] all the more for that sense of searching. I think what I’m always trying to do within my work is find something worth searching for.”

A notable influence upon the respective artists is their mutual focus on botany; intrinsically, the belief that the plant is at the core of all living things. Whilst Mackintosh endeavoured to preserve the meaning behind these symbolic forms through watercolour, Fagen’s pragmatic approach to Conceptualism once again relies upon preserving the literal, actual beauty behind nature. A realist at heart, his work Scheme for Nature features a fig tree cast in bronze. After casting, Fagen left the plant outside to ‘weather’ for about a year. This has since caused the plant to age and develop outside of its precious overcoat; allowing the viewer to observe a work of creation in its existing form.

Scheme of Conscience, a bronze sculpture, imitates the organic, linear form of Mackintosh’s watercolour trees. Each branch extends out toward cubes of concrete, mild steel, ceramic and gold lustre; united, alongside Scheme of Nature, in a quality of preciousness. The emblem of tree – at least, its capacity to grow, and establish itself within the soil – is symbolic of the potential of the human mind; an idea as significant to Fagen as it was to Mackintosh.

I left the gallery. Teeth gurned. A lone bronze tree, facing outward onto the Mackintosh Building, blinked in the light. The watercolours – more relevant now than ever – remained.

Cabbages in an Orchard; The formers and forms of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Graham Fagen runs until 29 August at the GSA Reid Building. For more information about the exhibition, see the GSA website. To see more from Rachel Boyd, check out her blog.

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Kim from Central Station gives an overview of a selection of works on show:

Entering the newly opened Reid building with a camera in hand and a notepad, Lesley Booth (GSA Press Officer) greets me and outlines where each programme is located. I head to the press launch where I get chatting to two journalists who seem mightily impressed that I’m here for the show; they reveal they’re actually here to try and interview a couple students on how the fire has affected them. I realise I’m in the wrong place and head downstairs to see the graduates’ work. On the upside, the Design students have the honour of being the very first to exhibit in Steven Holl’s specially designed building.

‘Speak & Speak Immediately’ by Lyndsey Smith

‘Saudade’ by Cliff Andrade

Aptly, I come across Lyndsey Smith’s photographs of journalists and can’t help but smile at the natural order of things. Cliff Andrade is another photographer who catches my eye with his photos of the island of Madeira, he explains his journey exploring heritage.

The typography is especially strong this year. Nicholas Davis presents ‘Life of a Letterform’ which challenges the perception of form in a refreshing way. Additionally, Zheng Li’s 3D letters and screen prints grabbed my attention with the letters themselves appearing to be in motion.

‘Life of a Letterform’ by Nicholas Davis

’3D Letters Photography’ by Zheng Li

Using the first perfect number as her starting point, Alice Rooney uses #6 to create systems dispersed across 6 sheets of acetate. Sean Mulvenna also uses systems, albeit in a very different way. Inspired by the Augurs of Ancient Rome (religious figures who interpret the will of the Gods by studying bird flight), Mulvenna has cleverly introduced a method of divining narratives.

‘Perfect Circle’ by Alice Rooney

‘Augur’ by Sean Mulvenna

Female empowerment and gender inequality is explored in both Franc González and Rachel-Jane Findlay’s works. González has scanned the female figure in 3D and returned it back into the physical world as an unrefined 3D print. Findlay’s study of female action heroes screen printed as movie posters reinforces the strength of the woman’s role.

‘Untreated Bodies’ by Franc González

‘The Development of the female action hero: Sarah Connor’ by Rachel-Jane Findlay

The Visual Communication department seems to be such a tight knit, organised bunch. They keep a regular blog, hold events and even have their very own Twitter page. Perhaps the lack of physical barriers (they work in an open plan studio) is a real advantage in growing together as a collective.

Catriona Clark

Nicole McCarron

Of the jewellers, I was particularly drawn to Catriona Clark and Nicole McCarron’s angular pieces and Kara MacAulay’s red seaweed-like necklace which hangs beautifully near Jordane Symington’s contrasting materials.

Kara MacAulay

Jordane Symington

The Fashion and Textiles work is not to be missed, in particular Michelle Ho’s futuristic prints and Catherine MacGruer’s geometric designs. As well as Laura Muir who makes kitting look cooler than ever with her ‘Knit, Knot, Knit’ merino wool creations.

Michelle Ho

Catherine MacGruer

Laura Muir

Each Fine Art graduate has a digital print hung anonymously in the McLellan Galleries. I ask Lesley for a floor plan, however none seems available at present and I sincerely hope the artists gain recognition for the public opening. Interestingly, in most cases, it is still possible to distinguish the painters from the sculptors, photographers and environmental artists. Below are a selection of prints I enjoyed.

Unfortunately, the Product and Interior Designers were still installing their work at the time of my visit, though I’ve since been told there’s much to see!

You can download a short guide to the show online here. A 214 page limited edition book of prints featuring each student print is available in The Glasgow School of Art Shop.

An open studio event for the Digital Culture programme takes place this Thursday 19 June from 10.00 – 16.00. Degree Show 2014 is open to the public until 21 June.

Words and photos by Kim Stewart.

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Please visit here for more Degree Show reviews on Central Station.

In August 2013 a group of seventeen scholars, artists and organisers made their way to Raasay, a small island off Skye, for a short residency, responding to the legacy of 6th Century Irish monk Colm Cille. Participants include curator Jenny Brownrigg, artist/researcher John Hartley, Prof Clare Lees, Prof Thomas Joshua Cooper, PhD candidate Kathryn Maud, CCA Director Francis McKee, PhD candidate Emma Balkind, lecturer/artist Susan Brind, artist Caroline Dear, artist Hardeep Pandhal, typographic artist Edwin Pickstone, artist Michail Mersinis, artist Jessica Ramm, writer Johnny Rodger, artist/singer Ceara Conway and artist Augustus Veinoglou.

A month later the group then re-gathered in Glasgow, to give their creative responses over an afternoon event on 11 October at CCA, and in an exhibition at the Mackintosh Museum on show until 1 November. The work will then travel onto London Street Gallery, Derry~Londonderry, for an exhibition opening 30 November, showing all the presentations from the UK and Eire that make up Colm Cille’s Spiral.

Artist Ceara Conway developed and presented a voice performance and sound installation for the first stage in Colm Cille’s Spiral. Taking place in a curragh on the river Foyle, the work explored themes of exile and immigration, the lament and economic myths.

‘Convocation’ is part of the Derry~Londonderry City of Culture project ‘Colm Cille’s Spiral’ colmcillespiral.net, and is one of 6 projects across UK and EIRE that creates an artistic engagement with significant sites along once-vital perimeters and sea routes, including Lindisfarne, Derry~Londonderry and Bradwell-on-Sea.

Colm Cille’s Spiral is part of Creative Futures, a Creative Scotland talent development programme which aims to promote the professional development, capabilities, connectivity and ambitions of Scotland’s creative practitioners and organisations. See Head of Photography at GSA, Thomas Joshua Cooper’s project here and read more blogs by the participants on residency here.

Colm Cille’s Spiral is a Difference Exchange project in partnership with The Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, at Kings College London. ‘Convocation’ is supported by The Glasgow School of Art, CCA, ATLAS Arts and University of Glasgow.

The exhibition in the Mackintosh Museum at The Glasgow School of Art is on display until 1 November. The works will go on to be shown at London Street Gallery, Derry~Londonderry from 30 November – 15 December.

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To visit the Mackintosh Museum during The Glasgow School of Art’s current exhibition, A conspiracy of detail, is to find yourself stepping into a cabinet of curiosities occupied by artefacts and trinkets that might have originated from any number of exotic places and, seemingly, from any period in time. This feeling of eclecticism is accented by the show’s environment: Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s exquisitely rendered arts and crafts style museum space complements the theme of the exhibition. As the title of the show suggests, the chosen artworks are devious in their presentation. There are sculptures feigning a crumbling, timeworn appearance, a heavy-looking head that is in fact made from play dough and even a set of sculptures posing as brilliantly preserved futuristic tools. Stained, worn, dirty, gleaming, glossy, matte, threadbare- this is an exhibition that really does celebrate art’s relationship with materiality and craftsmanship.

Installation view, image courtesy The Glasgow School of Art, photograph by Janet Wilson

A conspiracy of detail comes at a time when many of us are struggling with the notion of authenticity and when substance is all too often overruled by style. Quantifying material value in the 21st century is difficult namely because many of the things we now value are immaterial or are caught up in the cycle of fashion. This dematerialisation of our world could also account for the more recent fetishisation of materials in the plastic arts (think of the notable resurgence in oil painting). The Glasgow School of Art’s latest exhibition is a refreshing and vital look at materials and the values we invest in them.

A combination of national and international artists has been selected for the show for whom ‘adornment’ and unconventional materials are important. For these artists the magic is in the finer details. The exhibition boasts GSA alumni, Alex Pollard, Jim Lambie and Pio Abad, as well as internationally renowned Hew Locke, Karin Ruggaber, Eva Rothschild, Jonathon Baldock and Renee So.

Alex Pollard, image courtesy The Glasgow School of Art, photograph by Janet Wilson

Alex Pollard and Jim Lambie’s works are imbued with a sly, deadpan humour. Whilst visitors will be suppressing the urge to touch the very tactile artworks on display in this show, Pollard flips gallery etiquette on its head, allowing visitors to literally trample all over him (or his portrait at least). The work, which takes the form of a giant, soiled doormat, features a roughly sketched portrait of the artist. Things become complicated once it is understood that the curator of the exhibition, Jenny Brownrigg, made the initial sketch. By engaging with the politics of the art world and questioning the hierarchy of roles within it, Alex Pollard poses difficult questions about originality and authenticity. Similarly, Jim Lambie, who has a history of working with everyday objects such as belts and handbags, turns his attention towards the art world itself. With tongue firmly in cheek, the former Turner Prize nominee offers up an oversized gold-plated belt, perhaps mocking an art market that sees artwork in monetary terms.

Hew Locke, image courtesy The Glasgow School of Art, photograph by Janet Wilson

Hew Locke doesn’t use gold, but cheap and vibrant plastic knick-knacks to create his portrait of the Queen. Up close, ‘Demeter’ resembles a snowball that has gathered pace in a pound shop. Stepping back, one can see the monarch’s profile lurking within the psychedelic madness. Locke responds to global power structures, in this case the lasting influence of the monarchy, with a personal and shrewd fervour. ‘Demeter’ comes as a welcome antidote to the hysteria surrounding the recent addition to the royal family.

Also using embellishment to political ends, GSA alumnus, Pio Abad has installed a pseudo-museum: an arrangement of real and fabricated ‘artefacts’ addressing Ferdinand and Imelda Marco’s tyrannous rule in the Philippines, where Abad was born. Like ‘Demeter’, Abad’s installation draws our attention to the less palatable aspects of power by utilising irony. The cheerfully coloured pop objects are accompanied by a text written by the artist, revealing the sinister narratives behind the work. Pio Abad’s cool and critical response to these outrageous historical figures is both commendable and powerful.

Jonathan Badlock, image courtesy The Glasgow School of Art, photograph by Janet Wilson

Like Pio Abad, Renee So and Jonathon Baldock are inspired by the past, be it historical myth or fact. The exhibition features elegantly crafted heads from both artists, but it is Baldock’s ‘Sacred Letter Tools’ that is the highlight of the show. Beautiful objects in Yves Klein blue adorn the gallery wall, one omitting a strong scent of lavender- or is it lemongrass? These objects are precious, not because of the materials from which they are made, but the time and care that has evidently gone into their creation.

The same can be said of Josh Blackwell’s intensively embroidered plastic bags, which float in stark contrast to Eva Rothchild’s heavy, totemic sculpture, ‘The Lady Vanishes’. Rothchild’s sculpture, an imposing tower of stacked ‘boxes’, is violently arresting with its cactus-like forms shifting within. Similarly, Karen Ruggaber’s ‘Relief #96’ is caught in moment of flux. There is a palpable tension between the mosaic-like components on the gallery wall, reminiscent of the sense of movement captured in Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematist paintings of the 1910’s. The rugged concrete from which the components are crafted counters the exact, minimal forms of the wall relief.

As is the case with all good art, the subject and the means by which it is made are inseparable- something that is made explicitly clear in A conspiracy of detail. Resonating with the Arts and Crafts movement as championed by William Morris, the artists’ ideas are directly reflected in the materials they use. Rigorous in their exploration of materiality and demonstrating an imaginative and versatile approach to their work, these artists produce art that resists the temporality of fashion.

A conspiracy of detail runs until 29 September at the Mackintosh Museum, The Glasgow School of Art.

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