This Week in Scottish Art: 2-8 May

Tue 2 May: The Number Shop and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Paste Table Gallery has a popup show in The Number Shop’s Project Space. The small show displays new collage works by eighteen artists. The exhibition is viewable from the street due to night-time lighting, but if you’d like to get beyond the glass panel, visit between noon and 5pm.

ARTIST ROOMS: Music from the Balconies – Ed Ruscha and Los Angeles is the new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The works on display are paintings, drawings and photographic series from the 1960s to the 2000s selected from the ARTIST ROOMS collection. Images of Los Angeles’ urban landscape and ubiquitous architectural edifices, cinemas and petrol stations illustrate Ruscha’s fascination with the West Coast, American culture and the seduction and aspiration of the American Dream. Ruscha’s seminal practice bridges characteristics of conceptual art (grids and repetition) and Pop Art (the everyday). There’s plenty of time to see this exhibition; it’s on display until 29 April of next year and open everyday from 10am to 5pm; admission is free.  

Wed 3 May: Ingleby Gallery, Tramway and GENERATORprojects

and per se and: part V – Laurence Sterne & Ben Cauchi opens at Ingleby Gallery today. This new edition of and per se and, Ingleby’s year-long rolling programme of two-weekly exhibitions pairing two works by two artists, features Sterne’s black page from his The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and Cauchi’s unique and untitled ambrotype black pages. Cauchi’s practice refers to outmoded techniques of photograph development to reintroduce traditional ways of making and seeing in the present day. and per se and: part V runs until 13 May; visit Wednesday to Saturday from 11am to 5pm.

Dance International Glasgow presents Meg Stuart and Tim Etchells’ Shown and Told at Tramway tonight and tomorrow night from 8 to 10pm. Shown and Told arose from exchanges between choreographer and dancer Stuart and writer and performance-maker Etchells. The performance reveals differences between both artists’ practices and sensibilities, while exploring relationships between performing bodies, movement and image. Shown and Tell cites and includes physical and linguistic images, studio improvisation and free-play. Tickets cost £12 (£9 concession rate), and can be bought at the boxoffice, online here or over the phone on 08453 303501; prices are subject to booking fees.  

Art Angel: Young Peoples Exhibition previews at GENERATORprojects this evening from 6.30 to 8.30pm. Art Angel is a project advocating art-based activities for positive self-expression, self-development and communication for and by people with mental health difficulties. The exhibition features work by Art Angel young peoples group. It is only open tomorrow from noon to 5pm so come out to support the initiative. Admission is free, but donations are welcome to sustain Art Angel’s important work.    

Thu 4 May: Glasgow Project Room, The Common Guild, 103 Trongate, and ART PARK

In the Glasgow Project Room, artist Fiona Robertson’s show of neo-expressionistic, surreal paintings is accompanied by a new work by performer Carrie Skinner during gallery hours. From 6pm, Steven Anderson presents a score in response to one of the paintings. Finishing the day, a panel discussion with the three artists will take place from 7-7.40pm. Free, open to all, no booking necessary.

Matthew Fox, Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow, delivers an exhibition talk at The Common Guild at 6pm this evening. Fox will speak on the relationship between materiality and mythology. His talk is inspired by Steven Claydon’s work concerned with fluctuating aesthetic, financial and functional value systems for objects; Claydon’s exhibition The Archipelago of Contented Peoples: Endurance Groups is currently showing at The Common Guild. Buy your tickets here via Eventbrite to guarantee a space.  

An Interval of Time opens today at 103 Trongate. An Interval of Time is the New Photographers Guild’s second annual exhibition featuring new work by eight emergent photographers based in Scotland. Over the last six months, participators of The New Photographers Guild, a mentorship initiative in association with Street Level Photoworks and led by Elaine Livingstone, Claire Stewart and James Pfaff, have made work in response to the theme of ‘Space’. This exhibition remains on display till 11 June; visit Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm and from noon till 5pm on Sundays.

Glasgow School of Art’s MLitt Fine Art Practice in Painting host Somewhere Far From the Subject Itself at Art Park Glasgow at House for an Art Lover. The exhibition, featuring work by ten students, opens tonight from 6-8pm and is open daily from 11am to 4pm until 13 May.

Fri 5 May: GSA Galleries and GENERATORprojects

Glasgow School of Art's MFA Interim Show 2017 previews from 6-8pm this evening in the Reid Building’s Ground Floor Corridor. Work in various media by twenty-six first year Master of Fine Art students is on display until 13 May; visit Monday to Sunday 10am to 4.30pm.

A Hidden Record, a project by Peter Amoore with Valerie Norris and Lauren Printy Currie; Alex Millar and Viki Mladenovski, previews at GENERATORprojects tonight from 7pm. A Hidden Record is part of GENERATORprojects’ current archival residency programme. Work featured by the five artists was made in response to GENERATORprojects’ archive of artist activity spanning twenty years.

The resulting projects – Amoore, Norris and Currie’s drawing exercises and abstract collages, Millar’s ‘ready-mades’ sculptures, Mladenovski’s new posters, and rearrangements of selected parts of archival material – take inspiration from gaps in our understanding in forms of documentation and showcase differing responses by various artists to the same material. The exhibition is only on this weekend, so make sure to visit between noon and 5pm.

Sat 6 May: Transmission Gallery, The Modern Institute, Talbot Rice Gallery, The Pipe Factory, Hidden Lane Gallery and Jupiter Artland

Visit Edinburgh-based Irineu Destourelles’ show Tainted Verbal from 11am to 5pm at Transmission. Tainted Verbal is Transmission’s annual Scottish solo exhibition. Paintings, moving-image and text work by Destourelles seek to question mechanisms of ‘othering’, in relation to contemporary society’s reproduction of colonial patterns of thought, and address their social functions within the gallery space. The artist also reflects on personal experience of sharp and sustained social divisions in UK contemporary media culture.

Scott Myles’ exhibition This Way Out at The Modern Institute is open today from noon till 5pm. For This Way Out, Myles has turned the Aird’s Lane exhibition space into his studio space.

Between poles and tides, The Torrie Collection and Michael Barr’s Hospitalidade all close today at Talbot Rice, open from noon till 5pm. Between poles and tides is a display of work by twelve artists including Katie Paterson, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Luc Tuymans and recent graduates from Edinburgh College of Art, newly acquired by the University of Edinburgh’s Art Collection. The works on display are universal, but personal responses to elemental forces, cosmology, natural rhythms and destruction, politics and social displacement.

The Torrie Collection is the first display for more than a decade of the University of Edinburgh’s founding collection, received by Sir James Erskine in 1836. The display in Gallery 2’s Georgian interior includes some of Scotland’s finest Renaissance sculptures and Dutch paintings. Hospitalidade documents Glasgow-based Michael Barr’s six-month ‘residency’ in the Old College Quad where the artist staged about thirty performative interventions based on a story of a female puma, which roamed the Georgian Gallery in 1827. The exhibition creatively documents his ‘residency’ and includes Barr’s costume worn during his performances, an etching and a video installation alongside a sculptural monument and historic images of said puma.   

Talk to the Barking Dogs previews at The Pipe Factory this evening from 5 to 9pm. Still House Plants (Finlay Clark, Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach and David Kennedy) and Nina Cavaciuti return to The Pipe Factory after their residency this February. Talk to the Barking Dogs is a celebration of self-development through communal art practice. The exhibition stems from an exploration of performative conventions and Western instrumentation to investigate sound and form’s construction as a reflection of the mind. The exhibition is open Sun 7 & Mon 8 May from 11am to 5pm, and then by appointment between 10am and 5pm, 9-12 May.

Hidden Lane Gallery presents Inprint by writer and artist Alastair Gray. Signed limited edition prints by Gray are on display and for sale, with some featuring work by Gray never previously available in print form. Inprint will be on display until July, visit Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 5pm; 1081 Argyle St, Finnieston.

Café Party, a permanent new commission by Nicolas Party is unveiled at Jupiter Artland in Bonnington House’s grounds today. Party has transformed Jupiter Artland’s café with a new mural, site-specific decorated tabletops, crockery, furniture and menus. The special commission transforming the space into an immersive stage for unique dining follows Party’s early performative dinners. Party’s artistic practice cites historical references to Guiseppe Arcimboldo and David Hockney amongst many others. Purchase a ticket here (£8.50 full price, £6 OAP concession rate, £4.50 children and student rate) for entry to all of Jupiter Artland’s exhibitions.

Sun 7 May: Platform

Today is the last day of Pester & Rossi’s exhibition Balancing Acts at Platform open today from 9am to 7pm. (Ruby) Pester & (Nadia) Rossi have created immersive installations and performances across Platform’s Studios, Exhibition Wall and Easterhouse Library. The exhibition features sculpture, film, largescale banners and performances, in collaboration with Ortonandon and Fallopé & the Tubes, and by contributors Sally Hackett and the Platform’s Nu Gen Art Group led by the exhibiting duo. Pester & Rossi’s practice extends to social experiments celebrating all things home-made and exploring childhood nostalgia.

Mon 8 May: GoMA

Visit GoMA today from 10am to 5pm to see Please Turn Us On part II with work by artists Susan Mogul, Heather Phillipson, Carole Roussopoulos and Stansfield/Hooykaas. The exhibition includes work exploring international countercultures and early video art. Phillipson’s You Can Use Your Smartphone (2014) questions the normalisation of video recording and Stansfield/Hooykaas’ What’s it to you (1975) allowed local communities to directly respond to ground-breaking technological innovations. These works remain on display from the first part of this exhibition. Mogul and Roussopoulos’ works investigate early 1970s radical feminist groups’ important use of video technology.