The Glasgow School of Art’s Postgraduate Degree Show 2024 opens in Glasgow from tomorrow in what is one of Glasgow’s largest public exhibitions of work from some of the world’s leading creative graduates. The School of Fine Art exhibition opens on Friday 23 and runs until Thursday 29 August, presenting work from the MLitt Art Writing, MLitt Curatorial Practice and MLitt Fine Art Practice programmes. On Friday 30 August exhibitions then open encompassing the School of Design, School of Innovation & Technology and the Mackintosh School of Architecture.
Each of the individual departments across the School provide an impressive glimpse into the innovation, creativity and energy that this new generation of talented artists will bring to the wider cultural economy and arts community. The political, cultural and personal themes addressed in these graduating students’ works intersect with many of the main themes that run across the entire postgraduate degree show this year and are also available to a global audience in an accompanying digital showcase that launches at 10am on Friday 23 August on www.gsa.ac.uk/pgds24
“Every year our Masters’ students create inspiring and ground-breaking work” says Professor Penny Macbeth, Director of The Glasgow School of Art.
“We are delighted to be welcoming visitors from across industry and our creative community to the campus for Postgraduate Degree Show to experience in person the remarkable outputs produced by this talented group of students.”
This year’s MLitt Fine Art Practice cohort demonstrates a diverse set of student perspectives and experiences, with continuing students from the undergraduate degree, domestic and international students, as well as student from non-traditional routes who have come through widening participation’s portfolio preparation course.
Yang Liu’s kinetic work Clock addresses reality and perception, seeking a way to illustrate the fictional nature of what we experience as reality. Part of her exhibition Where Does True Authenticity Lie?, Clock is a large metal sculpture whose heavy arm moves like a time piece till the top of its sweep, when it swings dramatically down, borne by its own weight. Liu’s intention is to present the viewer with a visible tension between the laws of time and gravity, creating a simultaneous sense of unease, and wonder.
Mary Harker’s exhibition Chairs explores human presence, even when they no longer remain, through the spaces and objects individuals once inhabited, with imprints, fragments and veiling employed in her paintings to suggest the human form. Detailing her experiences of caring for her mother through dementia, Harker’s work reflects on transience and memory through representations of some of her mother’s possessions. In the use of those possessions, Harker adds her own marks to the memory of her mother contained in those objects.
Sunny Townsend brings her background in theoretical ecology to her postgraduate show Life and death surveys of a maerl bed ecosystem. Townsend weaves elements of maths, data & ecological research together with her experience as a dive master on the Great Barrier Reef, to explore the degradation of Scotland’s ‘maerl beds’ – purple-pink hard seaweed that forms spiky underwater ‘carpets’ on the seabed. The delicate and elegant installation uses fishing line to suspend layers of print detailing the brittle star-like merl forms, alongside dried gravel of the perished white merl arranged in lines, illustrating the precarious nature of this rapidly declining habitat.
Using painting and sculpture Ronghui Zhu explores the importance of cross-cultural affinities from her unique cultural perspective as a Chinese Mongolian now living in Glasgow. The Symphony of Balhu and Glasgow fuses experiences of Glasgow’s unique atmosphere with memories of the prairie spirit of her homeland. Contrasting Western Gothic tradition with the solemn beauty of Mongolian culture, Zhu’s juxtapositions imply a commonality of spirit and human experience across different cultures.
Luke Shand employs speculative fiction as a means to explore queer history, constructing ‘Frankenstein’ tales out of Queer, Scottish and personal history. Drifters is a physical manifestation of a fictional archive of a 1970s queer Scottish horror fan who attempted to make his own horror film portraying the ghosts of gay cruising in Glasgow. Washed up, the archive is drenched in a slick glossy sheen with scripts, posters and storyboards found alongside collections of acquired horror, sci-fi and queer ephemera of the era. Adopting the genre of horror as a lens, Shand critiques the ‘monstering’ of queer people in history and culture and the paucity in representation of the artefacts of queer existence in institutional collections.
Helen Chandler’s vibrant and dynamic paintings reflect on the intersection of individuality and group experience, exploring how societal influences impact self-perception and cultural expression. Working primarily with oil on canvas, her paintings focus on depicting real people as they blend into or stand out within society. Chandler’s work often captures moments of authentic expression, offering a glimpse into the interactions and dynamics that shape personal and collective identity.
Kefei Dong has invested years of practice in traditional Chinese painting, particularly landscape painting on paper and silk. In her work Has Man a Future? Dong combines these techniques with the triptych structure of religious art and the apocalyptic symbolism of Hieronymus Bosch. The left and right panels are intentionally asymmetrical and disjointed: the left side is lush and vibrant, evoking a futuristic utopia, while the right is desolate, depicting a post-war wasteland. The painting’s strong anti-war theme shows a paradise alongside images of destruction, re-writing biblical tales of judgement and placing them within contemporary events.
David Bridgeman builds dream-like models and structures which he uses to tell stories, evoke memories and offer a sense of place. Referencing nostalgic imagery from Carnivals and Fairgrounds, drawn in bright emotive colours and populated with antique faceless figures, Bridgeman weaves mischievous narratives that blur the lines of truth and fiction, and in the objects seeming chaotic senselessness, a playful and absurdist perspective through which to consider contemporary life.
June Barton’s work explores the concept of grief concerning the ever-changing landscape of our world today – with her current exhibition Where Olive Trees Weep focused on the devastating effects of the Gaza/Israel conflict. Utilising elements of film, sculpture, and collage, Barton’s pieces provide a poignant commentary on the human experience and the instability of our existence. Through the intricacy of her screen-printing technique, Barton captures the delicate balance between beauty and tragedy, inviting viewers to contemplate humanities’ fragility and the power of art to evoke introspection and empathy.
Garrett Ure is an artist, maker and educator in fine art practice, with a particular multidisciplinary material focus. Ure often uses reclaimed wood, metal, leather and cast mediums to create sculptural works which explore the ways that objects can be remade using both time tested techniques and new approaches to making. Ure uses traditional old hand tools, relishing the patina, antiquity and innate qualities that very well-used tools contain. He also utilises the byproduct from his practice; the sawdust, the shavings, the rags from hand sharpening, and feeds these back into the works through their inclusion in casts taken from his own sculptures, placing the bi-product as the product of practice.
Students on the MLitt Curatorial Practice course present the outcomes of a number of exhibitions, performances, publication launches, screenings and workshops. Artist and cultural practitioner Abie Bermuda Soroño’s work is informed by her multifaceted identity as a woman, part of Soron, the LGBTQIAP+ community, a person of colour from the global south, and a native of a formerly colonised country. This perspective strongly drives her focus on issues of technology and its impact on the creative industries. Soroño’s intends to reshape Al technologies as tools for liberation, ensuring they represent and serve a broader spectrum of humanity, and aims to create collaborative models that empower marginalised groups, shaping an equitable future for artificial intelligence in the creative industries.
Ella Williamson’s practice explores themes of Decoloniality, often through parody, utilising print mediums and publication formats. Her work dissects colonial paradigms, centring black experience whilst radically dreaming of alternatives. Through collaborative efforts with artists Fin Blue and Alby D’Rozario-Gray, and as a response to the constraints Williamson has experienced as a non-white, non-male artist, the publication ‘Boy Art’ aims to disrupt existing paradigms and inspire future generations to reevaluate the role of identity in art.
Sally Wills current research for her MLitt Curatorial Practice project Nothing to Write Home About reflects on what it means to belong amidst a housing crisis. A week-by-week series of creative writing workshops, delving into themes of ‘home’ and memory, hosted in The Tenement House Museum, offer a unique opportunity to interact with the museum’s collection and archive, retelling history through personal narratives. When ‘home’ is precarious and uncertain, Wills emphasises the importance of community engagement and use of local amenities in redefining what ‘home’ means beyond its physicality.
Samah Ayesha’s curatorial project called My Name, Not Yours (MNNY) is a one-of-a-kind art publication featuring the works of fourteen transnational Muslim artists, writers and a scholar from the UK, India, and Kashmir, looking into themes of activism, faith and creative practice. MNNY is the exploration of themes including identity, belonging, and cross-border solidarity, and a challenge to Western norms of identity and representation.
Vica Gábor’s Visceral Matter is a solo contemporary jewellery exhibition showcasing the work of Alejandro Ruiz. This experimental exhibition aims to engage the audience using non-typical curatorial tools in the cultural space; wearing the displayed pieces, using interaction cards to expand on the conceptual grounding of the work, and hosting a communal meal over which to encourage conversation and discussion, transforming visitors from passive viewers to active participants. The research work behind this exhibition focuses on tools that can surprise the audience, reduce the distance between the artwork and the viewer, creating a new experience and exploring how to provide information about the work in a more playful, experimental way.
Students from MLitt Art Writing study and practice expanded forms of critical and theoretical writing, examining the relationship between writing and artistic practice. Glaswegian artist and writer Hayley Jane Dawson’s work currently explores the histories and lives of the working-class in Scotland, particularly Glasgow. Recent projects have focused on Scots dialect as well as questioning whose voices are heard and referenced within academia and other public spaces. Working mainly in print and ceramics, they have produced a series of collage works and glazed stoneware pieces. Yuxin Wu is a writer and graphic designer, dedicated to exploring and reinventing the narrative techniques of fairy tales and folklore. Wu has produced two publications. When I Leave is a collection of folk and fairy tales based on rural legends and inspired by her grandmother’s oral stories about family history, and The Story of Quiet Prince which draws on elements common to traditional and classic fairy tale structures.
Amanda-Jane (A-J) Reynolds collection [synonym] holds the completed writings from the past half-a-dozen sessions facilitated through Reynold’s and Eliza Coulson’s collective Gallery Bagging. The collection has been edited and includes illustrations and graphics created by Reynolds during the sessions. As a writer, researcher and visual artist Leah Sinforiani is interested in exploring the intergalactic motorways that intersect class, gender, and wired histories in a time of inclining poverty in Glasgow. They have produced three works; The Big Red Cat Map, an interactive poetry map created as a spin-off of a publication called BIG RED CAT ZINE, How to Look After the Bugs in Your Bed; a poetry performance piece which debuted at Art Writings’ Soft Shell Event, and a novella, This is a Grand Space Tale, a burlesque of the sci-fi genre, set in Glasgow and told through the voice of a bitter, unnamed narrator.
The digital showcase containing works from all graduating students launches at 10am on Friday 23 August on www.gsa.ac.uk/pgds24
Postgraduate Degree Show 2024 | Friday 23 August – Sunday 8 September 2024
23 – 29 August
School of Fine Art
Stow Building – 43 Shamrock St, Glasgow G4 9LD
Weekdays 10.00—20.00
Weekends 10.00—18.00
30 August – 8 September 2024
Mackintosh School of Architecture
Bourdon Building – Scott St, Glasgow G3 6RQ
Weekdays 10.00—20.00
Weekends 10.00—18.00
School of Design
Reid Building – 164 Renfrew St, Glasgow G3 6RQ
Weekdays 10.00—20.00
Weekends 10.00—18.00
School of Innovation and Technology
Haldane Building – 30 Hill Street, Glasgow G3 6RN
Weekdays 10.00—20.00
Weekends 10.00—18.00
Notes For Editors
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, digital, fine art and innovation and technology in our campuses in Glasgow and Altyre (in the Scottish Highlands) along with a thriving Open Studio programme delivering non-degree provision to over 1500 students annually.
