The Glasgow School of Art’s prestigious Master of Fine Art (MFA) programme unveils its end-of-year exhibition today, 29th May 2025, which runs from 29th May to 8th June at The Glue Factory.
This year’s exhibition of MFA graduates take over both gallery one and two on the first floor, the ground-floor Tank Room, Warehouse, and Machine Room to mount an extraordinary exhibition of new works by 30 international graduating artists.
Across the Glue Factory spaces, the exhibition presents a diverse range of mediums and materials, juxtaposing crafted objects, painting and performance, text and writing, video works and audio, photography and sculpture. The artists innovate and experiment with multiple themes across memory, sexual encounters, modern work practices and capitalism, gender politics, ecology, deaf identity, colonial history and cultural belonging.
Nana Miyagi creates abstract paintings that focus on lines and marks, influenced by her Japanese background. In Nana’s previous practice, she layered traditional Japanese black ink and shell-based white pigment on wooden panels, then scratched the surface with a needle to create intricate line-based compositions. Living abroad has shaped Nana’s reflections on identity, cultural belonging, and the shifting nature of existence over time, which are central themes in her work’s emotional expression. Lilian Evans‘ trans-disciplinary practice explores painting through sensual engagement. Through physically manipulating waste materials, she creates large-scale draped formations that interrogate/penetrate the medium. Her work embodies the tension between desire and possession, reflecting an obsessive longing, ultimately making desire a tangible experience.
Michael James McCormack makes playful paintings in celebration of important moments or figures or movements from history. This series looks to memorialise the life and achievements of Sir Roger Casement an Irish-born human rights activist who was helped bring about the end of exploitative colonial rubber harvesting in both the Congo free state and Peru. Katie Grenville’s practice is an ever-expanding celebration of making that acknowledges creating and crafting as a source of empowerment, joy and agency. Their work often explores themes of labour, sexuality and heritage, as well as the politics of gender, the body, and humour. Katie examines these themes and more from a distinctly playful and queer radical-feminist viewpoint.
Hwa Jin Seo’s artistic practice explores the interplay between verbal and visual language, merging writing and painting. Recent works, including the Five-White series, incorporate figuration and surrealism, uses words as a medium, transforming into visuals or becoming part of the creative process of painting. Anderson Asteclines’ work presents archetypal human and ghostly figures as memories from public parks in Catford and Lewisham while gay cruising. Through encounters shaped by sex and voyeurism, apparitions emerge; solitary, in pairs, sometimes in groups, and in conjuring these figures Anderson explores the complex emotions of anxiety and pleasure. His paintings serve as a gestural release, capturing fleeting moments and blurring the lines between the physical and spectral in a hauntingly seductive manner. Anderson is currently part of the T.E.A.R. programme (The Tracey Emin Artist Residence).
Reed Hexamer is an artist and researcher whose work wanders and perforates the intersections of ecological, archival, and somatic frameworks through sculpture, writing, and sound. Their practice challenges dominant knowledge systems, employing immersive fieldwork and speculative inquiry to investigate how memory and material shape understanding, while creating porous narratives that resist imperial interpretation. Jessica Matilda is a sculptor exploring the intersection of identity, control, and social pressure through personal and historical references. Their recent work reimagines the Scold’s Bridle – a historical instrument of punishment and silencing – using fragile paper, highlighting the tension between medium and subject. These sculptures provoke discomfort and reflection, inviting critical engagement with the psychological and cultural forces shaping our experiences.
Nayeon Kim’s Under the Persimmon Tree is a site-specific installation that explores the fluidity of memory and perception, inspired by the artist’s grandmother’s house in Gangneung, Korea. Viewing “home” as an emotional space shaped by time and memory, the artist reconstructs this remembered place through elements like faded wallpaper, expressing memory as something unstable and incomplete, and a persimmon tree, which signifies family reunions. The installation includes a partially wallpapered wall and sculptural fragments mimicking domestic forms, illustrating memory as a dynamic process influenced by emotional states and context. The work encourages viewers to engage in an open dialogue, reflecting on the ever-evolving nature of memory.
Brace Yourself! is an installation and performance by Lucia Vera Rosa that focuses on navigating the intersection of the deaf community and the hearing world. Through castings of her body and personal medical devices, she questions identity, grapples with pain, and navigates inaccessibility. This space becomes both a site of creation and confinement, reflecting her struggle for expression and understanding within an unsympathetic environment where her desire to fight thrives amidst misunderstanding. Sophie Stewart is a Scottish multidisciplinary artist examining the constraints of modern work. Her recent works address burnout, emotional fatigue, and economic instability, highlighting the disparity between enforced optimism and the reality of exhaustion. By integrating workplace slogans and everyday fragments, Sophie critiques corporate language and consumer culture, creating sculptural interventions that confront the illusions of hope and the weight of entrapment. Subtly critiquing the pervasive influence of consumer culture while offering a pointed commentary on the fantasy of financial escape.
The MFA 2025 exhibition will run from the 29th May till the 8th June at The Glue Factory, 22 Farnell St, Glasgow G4 9SE. The exhibition is available to explore digitally at the GSA’s digital showcase from 30 May at www.gsa.ac.uk/degreeshow25
For further information contact press@gsa.ac.uk.
Notes For Editors
Full list of artists exhibiting at the MFA 2025.
Jen Aldred / Sophia Archontis / William Armstrong
Nidhi Bodana / Richard Domenico Ehlert / Lilian Evans
Katie Grenville / Julita Hanlon / Xinyi He
Jess Hewitt / Hwa-Jin Seo / Reed Hexamer
Yi Hong / Nayeon Kim / Matthew Kriske
Lucia Vera Rosa / Junhao Li / Han-Chen Liu
Nana Miyagi / Nana Miyagi / Michael James McCormack
Renata Ottati / Sarah Palmer / Douglas Rogerson
Sophie Stewart / Anderson Asteclines / Albertina Tevajarvi
Isaac Willis / Jingwen Xie / Keir Richardson
Roanna Holmes-Frodsham
About The Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) is internationally recognised as one of Europe’s leading independent university-level institutions for education and research in the visual creative disciplines. Our studio-based, specialist, practice-led teaching, learning and research draw talented individuals with a shared passion for visual culture and creative production from all over the world.
Originally founded in 1845 as one of the first Government Schools of Design, the School’s history can be traced back to 1753 and the establishment of the Foulis Academy delivering a European-style art education. Today, the GSA is an international community of over 3500 students and staff across architecture, design, fine art, innovation and technology in our campuses in Glasgow and Altyre (in the Scottish Highlands) and a thriving Open Studio programme delivering non-degree provision to over 1500 students annually.
