The MFA Interim Show 2025 brings together artworks by 51 international artists studying in the first year of The Glasgow School of Art’s acclaimed MFA programme to present new work at The Glue Factory, in an exhibition which runs from the 29th March till 3rd April, with a preview night of performances & happenings on 28th March between 7-8pm.
A wide range of art forms and mixed media are on display, including sound, video, sculpture, performance, printmaking, field recordings, painting and sculpture, as well as a programme of live performances and radio broadcasts. The artists approach their work from a range of perspectives, utilising and referencing a range of materiality and processes. The works explore personal narratives and broader cultural and philosophical thematics including issues around identity and sexuality, feminism and queerness, memory and mortality, self-hood and the body, spirituality, place and geological time.
This exhibition of interdisciplinary artworks creates a moment to reflect at this midway point in the MFA programme, offering an opportunity to see artists works both on display individually and in dialogue with each other within the gallery space. The MFA interim show presents a unique moment to see this latest emerging generation of artistic talent on the programme that no fewer than five Turner Prize winners have followed.
Fae L. Borodiansky’s Hauntings explores trauma survivors’ misunderstood experiences, drawing from psychological research and personal trauma. Through the figure of the Draugr, a hostile undead figure from Norse mythology, Borodiansky reflects how rage often masks deeper emotions. The Draugr, rendered as a shadow with marker strokes, symbolises the subconscious inner child, revealing a figure trapped and surrounded by chaotic brushstrokes, illustrating how fear can manifest as aggression: “when terrified, I must terrify.” Bonae Yi’s Plastic Story explores the paradox and tension between material engagement and digital aesthetics. While digital imagery is deeply immersive, it also creates a sense of emotional detachment—an intriguing contradiction of feeling hyper-real yet strangely artificial. By layering textures and patterns and emphasising the physicality of the making process, Yi’s work seeks to reintroduce material engagement and a sense of presence, counteracting the numbing effect of uniform digital screens.
In Field Recordings: Beinn Narnain, Frank Waterton takes soil samples collected on walks in the Arrochar Alps and compresses them into abstract forms resembling books, exploring and evoking natural diversity. The work evokes a specific sense of place while reflecting on geological time, human movement, and architectural form. Presented as a library, the work symbolises transition and acts as a dialogue between land, time, and our need to record and save information. The objects are intentionally temporary, intended to return to their original environment, symbolising entropy as they dissolve back into the land once exhibited and experienced.
Finn Robinson creates figurative paintings depicting intricate scenes layered with visual references. Drawing from art history, social media, and personal experiences, Finn filters his sources through a muddled imagination before unifying them in paint. The collaging of often disparate sources into a singular composition parodies the contexts they would ordinarily exist within while contemplating conceptual understandings of self-construction. Suspending his subjects, marks, and references between thin washes of paint, Finn gradually develops a complex surface into which the viewer’s eye can sink. Overall, Finn’s work is a process of deciphering memories, daydreams, and experiences to weave together stories and reveal fantasies.
Angelia (Jiajun) Li is a multidisciplinary artist working with film, performance, installation, and sculpture. Her practice explores the interplay between humanity, spirituality, death, and love, using de-familiarisation to reframe familiar rituals and emotions. She examines how individuals navigate grief and redemption, shifting between being lost and finding guidance. Inspired by the Christian symbolism of the sheep and shepherd, Li’s A Peculiar Funeral explores the fluidity between mourner and guide, the lost and the leader. Death is visualised as transparent, colourful marbles, each holding a departed soul within the cycle of life. The film does not simply present a funeral as a ritual but questions how love pierces through the shadow of death, transforming sorrow into solace.
Tobias Allen’s The Lonely Songs are compositions built out of the music of others, songs murmuring towards queer loneliness, bent into his own meaning, through looping, layering, repetition, feedback and bodily amplification. Loneliness as something a queer experiences in difference and does to themselves in community. Aggressive, outward and also inward. In the isolating role of the performer, Allen is “myself as me”; one who performs their body for others to view, makes it mean towards something, and uses it to destroy back onto the ‘me’ concurrently. The outward flow of meaning and its reflexive flow as simultaneous, polluted within each other.
In Love Remembers, Yuchen Liu revisits a past video work originally inspired by her grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. Initially exploring temporal disorientation, the work gains deeper meaning after her grandmother’s passing. Through fragmented visuals and handwritten vignettes, Yuchen reflects on memory, love, and loss. The installation highlights her grandmother’s enduring love, even as Alzheimer’s erased family recognition. Yuchen’s work poignantly illustrates that while memories fade, love remains constant, transforming absence into remembrance.
Rho McGuire is a Scottish artist whose practice and process is focused on deep mapping through running, walking, and cycling in local landscapes. Their work involves writing, drawing, dancing, and field recordings to create spaces for gathering and collaboration. Central to her practice are community, everyday life, and non-human ecology. McGuire aims to create temporary, slow, growing works that dismantle human centred ecology, and hosting encounters with the ‘more than human’. In her MFA performance it doesn’t have to be a joke, McGuire explores integration into a landscape through dance, spoken word, and drawing, reflecting on community as an interconnected ecosystem.
COMMA: MFA Interim Show 2025 runs 29 March – 3 April at The Glue Factory, 22 Farnell St, Glasgow G4 9SE. A floor plan of the entire exhibition space, including the schedule of performances and radio broadcast throughout the duration of the show, can be downloaded as a PDF.
For further information please contact press@gsa.ac.uk
NOTES FOR EDITOR
Artist performances
Friday 28th March:-
19:00 Rho McGuire Happening — 20-30mins.
20:00 Siyuan Chen Performance — 15mins.
31st of March, 1st and 2nd of April:-
“Lonely Songs: Excerpts 1, 2 and 4” – One hour performances by Tobias Allen.
5000w Speakers, 40w LED Lights, Midi Controller, Condenser Microphone, Omnidirectional Microphone, Contact Microphone, Leather Jacket, Rubber Cock Ring.
COMMA Radio, in conjunction with the group show COMMA, brings together a selection of sound artists to activate the exhibition space through live broad-cast. How can sound change a space? How can it create new narratives? How can it shift the context and interaction with the works?
Broadcast live from within the exhibition via HALLOradio.net, curated by Eliza Wagener & Colm Moore.
Broadcast Schedule:-
10:30 – Frederikke Hanne
11:00 – Dusty Contact Sheet Music
12:00 – Colm Moore
13:00 – Eliza W & Speakin.Tongues
14:00 – Rhiannon Sian Clucas
14:30 – Hour
15:30 – Magnus Westwell
Full list of students exhibiting in this years MFA iInterim exhibition :-
Harin Park, Yingru Feng, Hannah Miller, Yanfei Wang, Keith Malone, Eimhear Atkinson, Ziyi Qiu, Romy Zaman, Coire Simpson, Pien Overing, Bongae Yi, Sophie Cooke, Yuchen Liu, Calypso Keane, Colm Moore, Finn Robinson, Eliza Wagener, Yuhui Huang, Shannen Muhl, Jiajun Li, Yalu Xiong, Torin Baguley, Jaeyoun Lee, Janet Beesley, George Belmonte, Shanglin Li, Noru Innes, Jingfe Ge, Fae L. Borodiansky, Grace Ren, Yu Wang, Kate Glenn, Choin Lee, Yafei Liu, Nina Murphy, Freya Patterson, Yujin Lee, Rho Mcguire, Siyuan Chen, Charles Turner, Leyan Gao, Joanne Ning, Yimeng Chen, Tobias Allen, John Perangie, Haneen Hadiy, Sidney Smith, Pu Zhao, Frank Waterton, Qiongshang Lin, Sebastian Ledenmann.
