This Week in Scottish Art: GSA, YAKA and more
This week, find new exhibitions and events across Scotland, including GSA MFA students at Stirling Castle, new shows in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and a mural workshop in Dundee.
Glasgow School of Art MFA at Stirling Castle
We begin this week at Stirling Castle, where a selection of Glasgow School of Art's final year MFA students are exhibiting their work within this historical context. As a showcase of the current year group, the show features diverse practices and bodies of work, and this Wednesday, anyone who would like to see the exhibition will be granted free entry to the castle from 2pm.
There will also be an afternoon reception, including talks about the work on show. It’s recommended that for those wishing to attend that there is a 12:48 train from Glasgow Queen Street, the 12.33 from Edinburgh, or the 12.10 from Dundee, which get to Stirling for around 13:30 - it's then a 15 minute walk to the castle.
Graphic Design Festival Scotland
Also continuing this week, and until 25 October, Graphic Design Festival Scotland has collaborated with contemporary urban art organisation Recoat Design on Thype.
Taking place at On The Corner, the third floor of 253-259 London Road, Thype is an interdisciplinary exhibition of artists and designers who explore letter forms through their work, and who each work across collage, painting, drawing, print and installation.
The wider programme of the festival includes workshops and discussion panels, at a variety of venues across Glasgow, from 19-25 Oct.
Good Press
If you’re interested in zine distribution, and you’re looking for an opportunity to be involved with Good Press gallery and shop, this is your week. GP are currently looking for a new member for their four-person volunteer-led organisation. Full details of the application process can be found on this Creative Scotland page.
Elsewhere this week, one of that Good Press team, David Roeder, has put together new exhibition '50 Million Painters can’t be wrong', opening this Thursday in the New Glasgow Society.
Alongside Berlin-trained and now Glasgow-based Roeder’s own work, he’s also invited 8 other artists whose work is mainly (but not exclusively) in painting, with each of the participants including one work.
Glasgow exhibitions
In Visual Artist Unit in Bridgeton’s Crown Point Studios, VAU studio-holder and multimedia artist Raymond Strachan presents GHÜL, “objects, film and textile fragments” which irritate the easy dichotomy of the deliberate and accidental, and the separation of “form and formlessness”. Visits can be arranged until 28 October by appointment; arrange via email to hello@vau.org.uk
Coming from the East End back to Glasgow’s City Centre, at the Savoy Centre on Sauchiehall Street, Gallery Unit open new show Remove the Middle, Extend the Edges this Thursday at 3pm. As a collaboration of photography and drawing by two artists – Alexander Burch and Harriet Rose Morley – the work extends first from photographs as the basis of drawings. This is the first of two shows, with work related sculptural work then being exhibited this December in the Laurieston Arches.
Between this Friday and next, at 60 St Enoch Square, sculptural work will be exhibited by Ellis Luxembourg, co-founder of Glasgow Southside train platform gallery Queens Park Railway Club, as well as video, performance and machine-artist Andy Welsby, and Jamie Cooper, sculptor of industrial materials and found-objects. Zeroed runs until 23 Oct.
This Saturday sees the return of dormant young artist collective YAKA. For their exhibition in Glasgow’s Project Room, they mark a year since their last large exhibition So It Is with new show Black Hole, and explore in this event the “elusive theme of Black Hole”, including its emotive and scientific associations. There is also a look forward to their next exhibition, White Mountain in the CCA Intermedia Gallery this December. The preview of Black Hole takes place between 7-9pm this Saturday (17 Oct); the show runs until 24 Oct.
Aberdeen and Dundee events
In Aberdeen, Newave gallery’s Tomasz Wrobel has organised group show Paintings and Drawings. Not featuring in the show himself, but representing his interest in oil painting and figuration, the gallery hosts a group show by 19 recent graduates and emerging artists from across Scotland. Following an open call process, the group was assembled. For a full list of artists and information about the gallery, see the Newave website; the show runs until 3 November.
In Dundee, the Hideyuki Katsumata exhibition continues, with its commissioned mural in the DCA space and references to manga and street art. This Sunday (18 Oct) marks a good day to visit, with the activity room is given over to a mural workshop from 1-4pm. An exploration of the exhibit will be accompanied by short excerpts of music and some doodle time, before, as a group, you’ll make a painted mural. Tickets are available now for £3.