Gallery-hop in Glasgow

So you're postgraduate student and your first big essay of the term is due tomorrow. What do you do? Well, you could re-re-re-revise your essay, or you could take a train to Glasgow and go gallery hopping! It's school-related after all, you know!

That was my story yesterday (and yes, that means my essay was due today, and it's been checked, double- triple- septuple-checked and submitted)... A small group of art history third-years (third year undergrads, but basically seniors) were being taken to Glasgow and the professor, who will be teaching one of my classes next term, invited any interest postgrads to attend as well. I just couldn't pass that up. I hadn't been to Glasgow, let alone any of the museums and galleries, and to have a tour guide who used to curate shows in them, well... you just don't get better than that.

It was a four-hour whirlwind trip through the Gallery of Modern Art where a fine collection of Ian Hamilton Finlay prints were on display.

Then it was back on the train promptly to head to Tramway, where we spent most of our time taking in Lucy Skaer's installations in her show, Exit, Voice and Loyalty. It was then back to Glasgow Central and we detoured around Charles Rennie Mackintosh's nouveau masterpiece of a building that is the Glasgow School of Art, taking a peek in the gallery's current exhibition, Interwoven Connections: The Stoddard Templeton Design Studio and Design Library, 1843-2005 but spent most of our time admiring Mackintosh's incredible eye for detail.

Then we hopped over to the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) where we took in Man of the Year, a joint show of Glasgow artists Henry Coombes and Carles Congost. I admit it was the first time I found not one, but two art films quite entrancing. They were meant to complement one another and were highly produced, even musical films... really interesting. This, coming from a girl who has always been extremely wary of video art, partly because it always seems so forced... perhaps it's just that 'forced' quality, whatever that means, that I have to come to terms with.

Anyway. All photos were taken with my phone. I admit I'm getting spoiled... it's just so much easier to pull my phone out of my pocket than lug around the camera... and the camera's not even that big! Like I said... spoiled.

It was such a brief trip to Glasgow, but I was able to get a feel for its downtown area and look forward to being able to get back there and check out more shows in the future. And by 'shows' I mean anything entertaining... we did happen to pass by a theatre where Hanson was playing! (Anyone else in their late twenties remember them? I felt suddenly extremely old when there were early-twenty-somethings who had no concept of "Mmmbop." DOES THAT HAPPEN?? Perhaps that is a topic for another time. Haha!) But aside from that clear trip down memory lane, Glasgow is largely the destination of choice in Scotland for edgier music and contemporary art. So it's a place I'm sure to get back to eventually.

Lucy Skaer and Tramway...



Walking around Glasgow...

  

...and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art:




Cheers!
Kate x

P.S. Hello from GoMA! (I had to put myself in the picture. It told me to, although perhaps they had the pencils-and-paper in mind, but I was in a hurry!)