- Outputs of research and practice published on the GSA’s Postgraduate Showcase
A group of international MLitt in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) students who extended their studies to January 2021 are presenting work on The Glasgow School of Art’s Postgraduate Showcase. Outputs of their research and practice include publications, online platforms and physical exhibitions
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Image: VIRUS WITH SHOES – Poster intervention by Dr. D, SWG3, Glasgow, (Part of Art of Defiance)Courtesy of Michael Cameron Hunter |
Running through autumn 2020, Marianne Vosloo’s Art of Defiance originated in Glasgow as a progression of creative responses centred on the ideas of connection, disruption, influence and change within the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. Curated by Marianne, it was developed through close collaborations with artists spanning a range of backgrounds, whose practices seek to create spaces of resistance and forms of disruption in the physical and digital public spheres in a time of crisis.
Art of Defiance took the form of a series of poster interventions in advertising sites situated on the walls of the railway arches in Glasgow’s Eastvale Place, web postings on social media and a customised website, developed collaboratively with each artist. The project connects a group of visual artists, street artists, aerosol artists and communication designers with overlapping subversive practices. Art of Defiance captures creative reactions to concealed, pre-existing and invisible issues further exposed by the pandemic, personal experiences, contemporary events and public discourse.
The development of Art of Defiance started in the street; directly engaging with the strong imagery of placards and protests seen in early 2020. Most memorable were the political graffiti slogans painted in protest onto the monument of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, and the discarded placards around the toppled Edward Colston statue in Bristol.
The placement of artwork into advertising sites such as billboards and bus stops in the urban environment was a disruption and repurposing of the commercial space. At the same time, the content of the artwork created specifically for Art of Defiance was in itself seeking to disrupt, defy and challenge the major social, economic and political manipulations of 2020.
A0D is the beginning of a community beyond the local, and which engages in the broader discussions around public art emerging during the pandemic. The major global events arising throughout 2020 alongside coronavirus fears, have motivated a surge in activist contemporaneous research across public sites as well as newly formed online artistic platforms, creating an ideal recipe for Art of Defiance: for artists to shout back, to escape the limitations of daily life, and to challenge authority. And possibly to signal the start of a major new cultural revolution?
Image: Shalmali Shetty: this cloud may burst.
Shalmali Shetty has previously worked as an editor, writer and researcher for various art magazines and platforms based in India and has recently curated exhibitions within Glasgow. She coalesces her background in art practice and theory in the production of the curatorial. Her recent curatorial projects as part of M.Litt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) A include the Hunterian Project 2020: In/Visibility: Presence in Performance co-curated with Carol Dunn, Claude Chan and Hannah Braithwaite in collaboration with the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow (March 2020, (ultimately cancelled due to Covid-19) and My Truth is Your Story co-curated with Hannah Benassi and Yihang Hu under the collective titled the_bricolage, Glasgow (November 2019).
For her degree project, Shetty has curated a publication – this cloud may burst (December 2020) with visual and textual contributions from Debi Banerjee, Jenny Brownrigg, Sean Patrick Campbell and Katri Heinämäki around the themes of archives, hauntology, material cultures and memories.
Alison O’Shea’s curatorial and artistic practices’ primary concerns include alternative methodologies of productivity, and creating sustainable practice models through speculative fiction. Her recent curatorial projects include; relaxation*, Siuán Ní Dhochartaigh, Glasgow, UK; Over or Under, Molly O’Leary and Dominique Rivard, co-curated with Joe Henry and Cecelia Graham, Glasgow, UK; and Burning Down the House, Cork, Ireland. Her latest project a passive house is a collaborative publication and event with her sibling Lily O’Shea.
a passive house takes the last months of lockdown as a satirical artist residency interrogating ideas surrounding creative pursuit, productivity and down-time. A passive house is a house which is truly energy efficient, a sustainable and comfortable structure. O’Shea’s publication comprises a series of archival material from within the house – a house which is striving to become a passive house – the goal of energy efficiency is still present but for the occupants rather than the structure. The occupants of the space return to share a room for an extended retreat into the house.
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Image: SLOW GLASS EDITION ONE: SOME TRIANGULAR THOUGHTS BY LAUREN GAULT
Cover design by Bianca Winberg |
In 2020 Cecelia Graham founded Slow Glass, a publication series named after the same material that appears in Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw’s science fiction story Light of Other Days. The publication aims to provide a space for artists and writers to explore shifting boundaries of time and place. In doing so Slow Glass acts as a lens through which to orientate memories and look at a place anew. The first iterations of the publication look towards Northern Ireland, beginning with “Some Triangular Thoughts” by Glasgow based artist Lauren Gault. Updates will be posted @slowglass_
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Artist and writer UK Kathryn Holford is Founding Art Director at Stillpoint Magazine(2018-ongoing), an international, digital publication that inhabits digital spaces to build public knowledge rooted in psychoanalysis. In December 2019 she co-organised the symposium Racism and Ecology in Berlin as part of Stillpoint Magazine’s Issue 003: FALLOW, and currently facilitates an Antiracism Reading Group for psychiatrists with Editor-in-Chief of Stillpoint Magazine Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon. She was curator of Imagine the Future, a performance event and exhibition of moving image installations by Jessica Holdengarde, Glasgow (2020). In Dear Lithium she interrogates the digital/non-digital divide through texts and analogue images (I Publication) and a website (II dear-lithium exposed)
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IMAGE: WORKS ON WORKS (ONGOING) – a platform for transdisciplinary collaboration,
discussion and knowledge exchange
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For Kat Zavada curation is a form of critical enquiry, knowledge creation and exchange. She uses speculation as a method to investigate fringe or radical topics – to question the present by constructing alternative realities. Her process bounces between academic rigour and humour, as she tackles academic themes in a sometimes non-academic manner.
Kat’s recent curatorial projects include Works On Work – a platform for transdisciplinary collaboration discussion and knowledge exchange a digital environment to look into work-related dilemmas in modern society. The project aims to examine the future of work, post-work, power relations between employees and employers, technological opportunities and threats, work performance and its aesthetics. Through essays, podcasts, interviews, and design & art projects, it seeks to explore, analyse and comment on the rhizome of work and its ethics. The project was founded by Kat Zavada, Tillman Kratzer and Jeremiasz Rzenno (ongoing). She also conducted research in support of the COP26 related programme during an internship at the CCA Glasgow (disrupted by COVID-19).
The Glasgow School of Art Postgraduate Showcase is a specially created content-rich platform that enables graduating students to show a wide range of work. The students can also link from the platform to their own websites and social media accounts making it possible to explore their practice in greater detail and depth. Uniquely, as graduates they will be able to develop their showcases on the digital platform for a further 12 months, allowing new work to be added as it is made. The GSA has also committed to supporting physical presentations of work when this becomes possible.
The MLitt in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) is jointly delivered by The Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University.
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For further information contact:
Lesley Booth
0779 041 4474
@GSofAMedia