Manus Manus @ Project Rooms

Art enthusiasts keen to spot the next Tracy Emin or Sarah Lucus would be well advised to pay a visit to Manus Manus, an exhibition of work from the City of Glasgow College’s HND Fine Art students, showing at the Trongate from the 13 – 18 May.

Manus Manus, a Latin term meaning ‘band’, has been adopted by the students as a name for their artistic collective, which, as well as featuring work from 19 artists in different mediums and disciplines, has been organised, promoted and curated by the young artists.

Many of the artists are showing work that deals with the idea of narrative, often exploring challenging themes. Karina Braekkan’s installation features a glitter-encrusted sculpture of a human jawbone set atop a bedside table. Referencing the novel Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk's, in which a supermodel is forced to revaluate life after an accident ruins her looks, the work questions the traditional ideas of beauty.

Also exploring narrative is Greg Dumbreck’s deliberately ambiguous series of circular ink drawings, Symbol. Inspired by the cycle of death and rebirth described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the regularity of the circles is disturbed by colours bleeding into each other and beyond the edges of the shapes, hinting at the unpredictability of life.

Another highlight of the show promises to be Sonya Elder’s collographs – Rothko-esque prints exploring and abstracting the banality of the traditional still life, creating subtle gradients of colour within rigid geometric boundaries.

Like any other collaborative show, the exhibition will have both highs and lows. It’s nonetheless a rare opportunity to see young artists’ work at the beginning of their careers, before they launch themselves into the next stage of their artistic development.