GSA Degree Show 2026: Master of Fine Art

This year, The Glasgow School of Art’s exhibiting Master of Fine Art programme graduands' Degree Show work redefines the relationship between artist and audience by occupying new planes of viewing. Tender sentimentality elopes with the multi-disciplinary, producing a breadth of material conversations. Many have reflected on how their own personal history cohabitates not only ideas of the self but of how we perceive the world around us. What do we keep and choose to leave behind?

Frank Waterton’s process of ‘journeying’ captures human experience situated within natural spaces through a deliberate walking practice. Raw, organic materials pressed into man-made forms display the relationship between artist and land. These works suggest moments of connection leading us to consider the time they exist within as well as moments lost to them. As the work erodes, the viewer is faced with reflecting on their own role in shaping landscapes.

Rho McGuire.

Choin Lee considers similar environmental sensibilities as the foundation for sculptural explorations of queer identity. Lee’s mixed media installations evoke such sensory reflexes as fogged up lenses, or moisture in the air preceding a storm. Dampness and leaking are key motifs, evoking perspiration, decay and shame. Identity is presented as a damp spot that will never dry, accumulating over time. Sinking contours and delicate metalwork immersed in material ripplings guide the viewer through a shifting atmosphere.

Movement and transition remain at the forefront as we are invited to stretch into a new state. Rho McGuire disentangles binary movement through bodily exploration and collaboration. With a background in dance, clowning and radio, this cross-pollination results in a practice stressing the importance of co-creation and community. McGuire's experimental workshops toe the line between improvised and choreographed. Participants are asked to reflect on the freedom of space afforded by the environment, directed with simple prompts or non-verbal environmental instruction encouraging an instinctual physical response. In McGuire’s pilgrimage to feel alive, performance creates ephemeral space, inviting viewers to slow down, enter and transcend.

Intangible spaces and shifting perception are expressed in the work of Colm Moore through analogue photography and sculpture. Moore captures tactile space, referencing exposure, duration and physical intervention represented in the material process but also by the tenderness of image creation. Where McGuire's documentation eliminates physical surroundings, focusing our attention on the space created by the performers, Moore uses natural manipulations of light to focus our attention on the space it creates. Moore’s sculptural work blends environment with image, co-exhibiting darkroom prints with steel structures and drifting soundscapes. The viewer participates in this space, interacting with the palpable surface detail of a beam of light.

Finn Robinson. 

Kathrine Glenn captures memory through a series of mirror self portraits. By reproducing images of mirror selfies, initially taken as visual journal entries, oil paint marks these memories with a profound sense of time. Glenn challenges us to consider how memory is stored, reinterpreted and reversed. Finn Robinson approaches painting as if setting a stage, directing actors in grandiose compositions, blending a rich colour palette and dreamlike figuration. We are induced to imagine the lives behind the smirks, rippling flesh and sparkling metallic threads of his compositions. Viewers glimpse into fictitious landscapes and private conversations. Both Glenn and Robinson translate the fleeting into a materially dictated, lengthy process. Intimate personal histories are frozen in detail through painting. Viewer becomes archeologist, confronted with deciphering the truths and untruths within the drying paint.

By playing with norms of artistic engagement, these graduands represent an expansive and ambitious cohort of young artists who look primed to push boundaries in Scotland’s creative sphere and beyond.

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Master of Fine Art Degree Show, Stow Building,
13-21 Jun