Thursday, January 08, 2004

Report : Glasgow

Glasgow's a great city if you like your art. Your never too far from something happening, you don't even have to look too hard to find it. Tap in to the openings on King Street (a street in the East End of the city centre that boasts Transmission, Intermedia, Street Level and Glasgow Print Studio galleries, has the Project Room gallery and Free Gallery just round the corner, and two great pubs), and you are well on your way to a good night. Things seem to flow in this city; one thing leads to another and after a few swift house-brewed pints in Mono, you are breathing heavily, having climbed to the top of a 5-storey tenement warehouse somewhere on the edge of the red light district. Up there it is Paradise, a studio run by a group of artists; left open-plan, it doubles up as a great party loft, replete with projections, alcohol and music from the new 'art wave'.

It’s the flow that makes stuff happen there. Everybody mixes, the artists, the musicians, the students, they’re probably even one and the same person a lot of the time. It makes for some great nights out but it also generates fantastic opportunities. Things happen and if what you want isn't happening, well you can make it happen. That's what Switchspace did when they started a gallery in their living room, it's what Transmission did 20 years ago in the face of the commercial monopoly on painting, it's what Franz Ferdinand and the artists who set up the Chateau did when they turned a derelict art deco warehouse in to an amazing (if a little structurally questionable and still covered with pigeon poo) music and arts venue, it's the philosophy that my organization, E m e r g e D, is built on: see, think, do.


For more information check out these web sites:

www.emerged.net
www.switchspace.co.uk
www.chateaugateau.co.uk
www.transmissiongallery.org
http://www.sl-photoworks.demon.co.uk

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This report was commissioned by Spy, a free publication created and distributed by Leeds Visual Arts Forum (LVAF). It was published in March 2004.

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