Contemporary Visual Art
by Francis McKee, Curator - Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art
Francis McKee is a writer and curator based in Glasgow. He is a part-time lecturer and research fellow at The Glasgow School of Art. Since 2005 he has also been curator of Glasgow International, a festival of contemporary visual art, and the interim director of CCA, the Centre for Contemporary Arts.
Glasgow’s contemporary art scene is recognised globally as one of the most exciting today. A combination of factors have helped create this situation and to reverse the traditional wisdom which suggested that success in the arts could only follow emigration to London.
The accelerated growth of global communications and the development of cheaper air travel have played a large part in this story. The international art world ceased to be a distant dream. Cities such as New York, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin were all within easy reach now and a generation of younger artists began to travel and meet their peers across the world, establishing new networks and inviting artists and curators back to Glasgow.
The post industrial landscape of the city was ideal for an emerging art scene. There was an openness to new ideas and a plentiful supply of buildings that could be transformed into temporary exhibition space, perfectly suited to an artworld reacting to the excesses of commodification in the 1980s. The raw energy of Glasgow, allied to it’s intimacy and friendliness, impressed artists and curators from abroad. There was a Do-It-Yourself spirit, a legacy of punk perhaps, that created an unstoppable momentum.
Given the benefits of cheaper air travel, Scottish artists were able to find success abroad and continue to live in Scotland. Glasgow School of Art – itself a powerful generator of ideas – quickly took advantage of this situation and employed these artists to teach on a part-time basis. Now students could rub shoulders with successful artists, barely older than themselves, who could pass on practical knowledge. At the same time their presence was proof that an international career was possible and could be accommodated in Scotland.
Some figurative painters in the 1980s had already achieved recognition such as Stephen Campbell, Peter Howson and John Byrne. In the early ‘90s, however, recognition flooded in. Douglas Gordon won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1996 and in the following year Christine Borland was also nominated for the award. Hans Ulrich Obrist, one of the artworld’s best known curators, was moved to describe what he perceived as ‘the Glasgow miracle’.
The miracle was sustained as the city invested in it’s arts infrastructure, and organisations such as CCA, Tramway and the small but highly influential Transmission Gallery provided platforms for a mixture of emerging artists and international stars. Evidence that the art scene continued to expand came in the guise of more awards – Beck’s Futures winners such as Roderick Buchanan, Toby Paterson and Rosalind Nashashibi, and in 2005 a Turner win by Simon Starling who just pipped another Glasgwegian, Jim Lambie, to the prize.
Awards, though, are only a side effect of a burgeoning art scene, a recognition of something much larger and vital that cannot be encompassed by a prize. Glasgow is now in a positive feedback loop where the excitement of the ‘90s arts scene has attracted students from around the world to the city’s school of art. There they may enter a course such as the Masters of Fine Art for two years and concurrently engage with the local arts scene. Very often, those students will then remain in the city after they graduate, intensifying the momentum and contributing to what is now a cosmopolitan arts community whose numbers are far beyond the norm for a city of Glasgow’s scale.
It is impossible to name all of the artists currently working here and gaining international recognition. Citing figures such as David Shrigley, Clare Barclay, Alex Pollard, Louise Hopkins, Joanne Tatham and Tom O´Sullivan, Richard Wright, Cathy Wilkes and Sue Tompkins only begins to scratch the surface of the activity in the city. Likewise the rise of semi-commercial galleries such The Modern Institute, Sorcha Dallas, and Mary Mary indicates a different kind of sophistication emerging from the grassroots spaces across the city as a whole. Since 2005, this energy has also begun to make itself felt in the creation of Glasgow International, a festival of contemporary visual art, which plans to become a biennial event after it’s 2006 programme. The festival now brings together all the key organisations across the spectrum of the city’s art scene, presenting a unique event rooted in the achievements of the local community while drawing on the international networks linked to Glasgow.