The Skinny Showcase: Dear Green

Looking out the window of the Moabit railway depot in Berlin, the artist-curators Beth Dynowski and Melissa Canbaz can't see the industrial landscape without thinking of being down by the Clyde at the docks. Working with this affinity between the two cities, they've put together Dear Green: an exhibition of 37 artists working in Glasgow or Berlin.

Key to the formation of this large group show was a distancing from the traditional notions of the curator as an authority. In favour of a more dialogical curatorial approach, both were keen to promote a less tight and restrictive approach to the curation of Dear Green. This kind of productive informality is familiar to Dynowski from her experience as a Glasgow School of Art graduate. "In Glasgow, there's different ways to work as an artist, you can be reliant on curators picking you up for a show. But there are people doing it themselves in Glasgow. Who's a curator and who's an artist is a lot more flexible." This is apparent in Dear Green itself; Dynowski is both putting the show together as well as exhibiting within it.

As strong a sense of self-sufficiency as there is in both Glasgow and Berlin, Dynowski makes clear that Dear Green's as much a product of the communitarian ethic that's so central to the Glasgow and Berlin art scenes, "where it's just people supporting each there in a non hierarchical way: just being there for each other and helping each other out, bouncing off of one another even if what you do is really different. The thing we've focused on in the show is difference. There's a lot of difference in the practices, but that supportive ethos is always there in the background." These sorts of mutual support networks operate even at the most practical level, with many welcoming Berlin hosts opening their homes to the otherwise self-funding Glaswegians.

Pointing out a specific example of the oppositions that they've set up in the show, Canbaz and Dynowski mention one contributor Hella Gerlach who works with very tactile and aesthetically pleasing ceramics. While Gerlach does not speak overtly about politics and economy in her work, these subjects are completely apparent in Glasgow-based Stephen Grainger's work. For Dear Green, Grainger will legally transfer all his possessions for the duration of the evening of the opening. In spite of their obvious differences, put in the same room a certain common ground becomes visible, which Dynowski articulates as "putting the responsibility on the viewer to activate a sense of performativity around objects that absolutely puts the responsibility on the viewer to activate them. They're two people I would never have put together but they have so much in common."

Considering these moments of surprising connection and productive opposition, Dynowski is quick to give due credit to the alternative space of the abandoned Moabit railway depot: "There's things happening across the room, there are people that are diametrically opposed to each other ideologically, which you very rarely see in a large group show." In a very literal way, Dear Green is set at a distance from the formality and restrictions of the slick simplicity of the commercial white cubes of central Berlin.

With such an unconventional space, 37 artists and the logistics of arranging it all between Glasgow and Berlin, Canbaz admits that what she might be planning or expecting is hypothetical until it happens. But for both Dynowski and Canbaz, success will come in the unforeseen, unpredictable interactions between the work, artists and audience. Deliberately frustrating traditional curatorial conventions with so many risky elements, Dynowski proudly admits, "It's all a bit gallus."