The MFA Interim Show 2026 – titled 42 Degrees – brings together artworks by 42 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 28 March till 2 April, with a preview night on 27 March opening at 6pm.
The MFA is a two-year multi-disciplinary programme designed to support artists in deepening, and critically developing, their individual practice while situating it within wider contemporary cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts. A wide range of art forms and mixed media are on display, including painting, drawing, photography, multi-media, sculpture, video installation, performance and participatory elements. The artists approach their work from a range of perspectives, utilising and referencing a wide range of materiality and processes. The works explore personal narratives and broader cultural and philosophical thematics, touching on mortality and the ageing body, industrial waste, digital overload, histories of loss and displacement, interconnection with the natural world, queerness and butch gender presentation, censorship and concealment, sexual violence and the fragility of the humans and non-human world.
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 graduated from.
Neo Hanna’s work invites the viewer to reflect upon human relationships and experiences of interconnection with the natural world. Through a series of three sculptures, placed on a puddle of liquid silicon and a grid of steel, the silicon appears to ooze through the perforated steel, yet does not separate from the steel’s hold. Neo’s materials are anthropomorphic, yet also imply worldly or otherworldly creatures, like a worm, centipede, or snake. Neo considers their relationship to the work as a material, caretaker, creature, and the forms themselves relate to one another in a familial manner, mother, child and younger child.
Juniper James’ work ‘Dunce Cat’ vibrates with hunger and intense hues, bristling bright with need and colour, reflecting forever wars and the helplessness of a child tucked away in the crevasses. Juniper creates their collage paintings from personal drawings and found images. These collected fragments, removed from their original contexts, behave as recordings of a constantly mutating online and internal reality. Informed and exhausted by current events, internet culture, painful personal experiences of childhood abuse, and gun violence, Juniper’s practice is a calendar of emotional experience.
Jeff Frost, who has painted directly on the Glue Factory walls in acrylic house paint, invites the viewer to see the life, death, and intelligence of the nonhuman kin (trees in this case) while working with themes of speculative futures (sci-fi) and ecological re-wilding. Viewers will walk in, through, and on the painting itself through a fully functional ground-level hallway. The painting itself merges directly with the floorboards of the gallery, a subtle reminder that even in sterilised industrial settings, our entire world is built on trees and relies on reciprocity.
Carly Morrison’s work responds to the experiences and structures of sexual violence. Through materially forceful, and at times deliberately aggressive processes such as cutting, breaking, slamming and compressing, Carly creates a paradox: using gestures of violence to examine existing harm. The act of making the works becomes a kind of ironic violence, both mirroring and resisting the conditions it references— a physical place, made up of punctures, fusions, wounds, and stitches where violence and tender care coexist. The exposed interior carries something abject, driven by a curiosity about the innards of violence and what they might resemble once brought into view.
Xi Huang has developed a wall-based installation using small hand-painted paper figures arranged vertically on an existing column. Xi’s favoured mediums— watercolours, paper, and lightweight sculptural materials— are chosen for their temporary, vulnerable qualities. The figures appear upside down and suggest a slow downward movement, as if slipping, hanging, or attempting to remain attached to a structure not designed to hold them. Their repetition creates a rhythm between fragility and persistence, allowing the column to become both a support and a site of tension, yet they remain open, delicate, and responsive to the space they occupy.
Mike Hill presents a group show within a group show through an as-yet-untitled collection of text-based practices by artists from around the globe. A billboard, spanning 12 feet and the best part of a full week, will display each artist’s short text-based work for one hour before the letters are rearranged for the next. The 20 or so artists range from emerging to established, from students to academics, and from nine years old to… well… a little more than nine years old. It is the culmination of research becoming practice and inspiration becoming collaboration.
The title of Yunkyun Lee’s work Moyowamkia, derived from the scientific name of a dinosaur, means “the heart that comes after the tail”. It consists of two bodies stacked vertically; the upper form tilts towards the lower, trying to fall into it to become a single body. Both bodies are penetrated by nine needles, which bind the forms together, piercing them with an illusion of connection.
The texture and form recall fossils or the figures of lovers discovered embracing each other beneath volcanic ash in Pompeii, suggesting a question: did they face the final moment in terror, or in the exhilaration of being together forever? Yunkyun approaches sculptural practice as a meditative process, repeatedly returning to desires to observe, allowing them to emerge through the process. In this way, the sculpture becomes a vessel shaped through the process.
42 Degrees, the MFA Interim Show 2026, will open at the Glue Factory on Friday 27 March at 6pm and runs until Thursday 2 April.
For further information, please contact press@gsa.ac.uk
NOTES FOR EDITORS
A live performance and soundscape ‘Still, we move’ devised, created and performed by artist Tilly Johnson, will be presented as part of the MFA interim exhibition.
Performed by Tilly Johnson, Adriana Bergen, Juliet Moore, Emily Weaver, and Maya El Nahal, the live performances will take place on the following days:
Friday 27 March – 7pm at the MFA Preview.
Sunday 29 March – at 3pm.
Monday 1 April – at 3pm.
About The Glasgow School of Art
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 3,500 students and staff and 22,000 alumni across architecture, design, fine art and innovation and technology in our campuses in Glasgow and Altyre (in the Scottish Highlands). Consistently ranked as one of Scotland’s leading institutions for widening participation and access, 60% of graduates choose to remain in Glasgow after graduation, sustaining Glasgow’s position as one of the UK’s leading centres for the cultural and creative industries.
