Robert Barry: Words and Music @ The Common Guild

There is nothing about conceptual art to be scared of. It was developed in the 1960s as an incremental step in the ongoing discussion around the nature of visual art. Its groundbreaking achievement is perhaps its undermining the physicality of the art object; that an artwork, despite its corporeal form, exists to a large degree in the mind of the viewer. This usurped traditional methods of art production, such as painting and sculpture, now deemed contingent, and art took alternative forms, as text on the gallery wall, for instance. This was art as ideas instead of art as objects.

Perhaps one of the most defining moments of this era was when Robert Barry closed the gallery for the duration of his solo exhibition in 1969. Not only did this advance the main claim of conceptual art, that artworks exist mainly in our minds, but also introduced a critique of the art institution, identifying the gallery as a fundamental component in our experience of art, far from the neutral space it longs to be.

For his forthcoming solo show at The Common Guild Barry will thankfully be keeping the gallery open, we are told, and will include a brand new installation designed specifically for the space. If the title of the exhibition is anything to go by, it will perhaps include words and music. Unquestionably, for anyone remotely interested in visual art and its fraught history, you must not miss this show.

Pleasingly, The Common Guild has commissioned a series of talks, including an artist talk by Barry himself, as well as contributions from Glasgow based artists Neil Clements, Sue Tompkins and Ross Birrell.