This Month in Scottish Art: September 2017

The month begins with the Glasgow School of Art’s Graduate Degree Show. From across the postgraduate roster, newly graduated students present their final show from Research, Design and Fine Art across the Tontine and Reid Buildings. After the opening on 1 Sep, the show continues from 2-7 Sep.

From 1-17 Sep at CCA, artist Tako Taal presents Compound in the Intermedia space. The two new videos presented in the show examine ‘figures of the stranger and an extended family,’ with one shot at The Gambia Tourism Hospitality Institute, along with documents from a family archive, print and objects. The exhibition borrows its form from a common living arrangement in West Africa.

Throughout the month, there is Czech Season in Scotland, with two photo exhibitions across Glasgow venues 16 Nicholson Street and Street Level Photoworks, both showcasing Prague-based photography.

Also this week, after a much needed soujourn and postponement, Transmission return from a summer break with the annual Members’ Show. Membership is open to all, and the show opens on 9 Sep.

As the second show of its brand new gallery space, Peacock Arts in Aberdeen have invited artists Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch to mount their exhibition Ignore the Management, opening Friday 8 Sep and continuing until 21 Oct. With a focus on their native Ireland, their activities find and develop models that challenge the societal measures and institutional values that aim to manage and orient human behaviour in our increasingly technocratic world. 

From 15 Sep, Embassy presents its graduate show with four artists selected from across the Scottish degree shows. The exhibition continues until 8 Oct.

In Glasgow School of Art’s corridor space on Garnethill, they have assembled a series of printed textile works from their archive of patterns printed in the School’s Centre for Advanced Textiles. Titled Pioneers of Post-War Pattern, they focus on the output of mid-20th century female designers and GSA alumni Sylvia Chalmers, Dorothy Smith and Margaret Stewart, making an eclectic mix of vibrant colours and abstract patterns. Sahej Rahal's new exhibition opens at CCA on 16 Sep, continuing until 29 Oct; read our interview with Rahal in this month's issue.

In Dundee, artist Kelly Richardson’s exhibition The Weather Makers opens at DCA from 23 Sep - 26 Nov. Richardson imagines the cataclysmic end of global environmental strains in a series for large scale CGI animations.

In Dundee again, from 29 Sep, Cooper Gallery present a programme of screenings surrounding the film work and writings of renowned theorist Laura Mulvey and collaborator Peter Wollen. Over two weeks, their experimental videos will be shown over a series of evening and weekend events. On 29 Sep, Mulvey will open the programme with a talk at 7pm.

In Tramway from 2 Sep, new exhibitions come from artists Stuart Middleton and Luiz Roque. For his largest solo exhibition, Middleton shows a new video of an undernourished dog prowling a white vivisection laboratory. Meanwhile Roque’s European premiere of HEAVEN, which speculates a version of 2080 in which a new virus affects mainly the trans population. Within this landscape, Roque sets a story of love under pressure.

At the end of the month, Tramway host an evening event by Coco Fusco. On 28 Sep, the artist will present her performative lecture Ethology: Primate Visions of the Human Mind, in which she revives and embodies the chimpanzee animal psychologist Dr. Zira from the original Planet of the Apes films of the late 1960s and early 1970s to deliver an intelligent and satirical filmed performance work.