Monday 12 August 2013

Tessa Lynch - Gordon Foundation Bursary 2013

Tessa Lynch was awarded this year’s Gordon Foundation Bursary and will take up occupancy at Glasgow Sculpture Studios in November 2013 to work towards a solo exhibition in 2014.
Tessa lives and works in Glasgow. She works predominantly with sculpture and performance, mimicking objects and scenarios. Her connected research is concerned with the emotional impact and commanding power made by both the built environment and the miasma generated from neoliberalism.

The 2013 selection panel included Siobhan Carroll, Curator, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Michelle Cotton, Senior Curator, Firstsite, Colchester, Sarah McCrory, Director, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Kyla McDonald, Head of Programme, Glasgow Sculpture Studios and Mary Redmond, Artist and GSS Studio Holder.

Tessa Lynch received her MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 2013.  Recent exhibitions include Better Times, performance commission for Whitstable Biennale, Kent, Desperado GSA post-degree project at Flemming House Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art MFA Graduate Exhibition, The Glue Factory Glasgow.

The 2013 Fellowship is generously supported by the Gordon Foundation.

Image: Tessa Lynch 'Gob On' 2013

Sunday 11 August 2013

Shelly Nadashi at CCA Glasgow

Shelly Nadashi’s (MFA 2009) new body of work offers a glimpse into her recent history as an artist, sharing with us the new concerns and developments of her practice. Her show develops from some of her most recent commissioned works such as A Good Bowl of Soup, in which producing and sharing a simple meal of soup results in a mediating focal point that is able to bring social ambitions, supposed transparency and the artist’s position to the table.

This allegorical performative act stars a puppet manipulated by the artist in a live setting, where it is unclear who has the upper hand over an audience, if a performance is truly an open process and how uncertainty within disciplines can grow into something productive. Concentrated through various disciplines, her interest is in how objects can contrast their own status, revealing the irony of the conditions and flexibility of meaning we attribute to these objects. Her personal experience is mobilised to make sardonic, ambiguous comments on a wider universe.

Sat 3 August — Sat 14 September 2013

11am – 6pm, Tue – Sat, FREE
CCA2
Sauciehall Street
Glasgow

Hetherington, Kerray and Piper at CCA Glasgow

Coming together for a group show in CCA1 & CCA3, Iain Hetherington (MFA 2004), Jacob Kerray and Owen Piper (MFA 2003) share a series of concerns with the reality of making work and the subsequent meaning of the results. Working between the borders of obsessive production, social realities and cultural allusions, the artists undermine and celebrate who art is for and why it is made.
Iain Hetherington’s paintings represent a world where access to technology allows everyone to be a producer of their own imagery. The presence of the comic book character, (Where’s) ‘Wally’, is suggested within the new series of works, appearing in empty dramas, high-genre fight clouds and abstractions. Picturing the banal reality of everyone-is-an-artist, Hetherington contemplates the departure of the beholder at the very moment of art's highest visibility.
Jacob Kerray’s work draws from the visual culture surrounding his interests — football, pro wrestling and historical painting — engaging with the hierarchies of culture and social distraction. Incorporating the iconography of Baroque portraiture, his paintings illustrate redundant modern mythological fantasies, aiming not to reassert male heroism, but to express it with a form of exaggerated lameness.
Owen Piper’s practice focuses on a desire to produce, rather than to evaluate. Making several small paintings a day using printed internet imagery, found objects and pre-stretched canvas, Piper rarely pauses to reflect on this accumulation, instead, his process of working is governed by the practicalities and constraints of his studio, life and interests.

Image: Owen Piper 'Le Peripherique' 2010

Saturday 3 August — Saturday 14 September 2013

11am – 6pm, Tue – Sat, FREE
CCA1 & CCA3
Sauciehall Street
Glasgow

Stephen Murray MAstars 2013

Stephen Murray has been selected for MAstars 2013 by Andrea Kusel Curator of Art at Paisley Museum and Art Galleries.

As a strategy to get noticed - to stand out (literally) from your peers, Stephen Murray’s modus operandi was effective and very cheeky. GSofA’s 2013 MFA degree show was held in the striking post-industrial space of the Glue Factory. Murray claimed as his temporary territory an initially unprepossessing thoroughfare within the maze-like layout and, to emphasise the point, urinated all over it. (The artist’s urine, fortifed by Guinness, was an essential component in the patination of the bronze sculptures).
'Common Wealth Games (Fairtrade, 95% Pork, Century Eggs)', 2013, was a hand-built tiered stage on whose parquet floor (laboriously constructed from 2,500 pieces of discarded sheet material) were carved and cast sculptures made from a long list of materials: reclaimed timber and sheet material, re-used oil and gas industry fittings (bronze), urine, glue, fixtures, fittings, MDF, CLS and lights. This podium was an obstruction to the vistors' circulation around the exhibition; they were forced to make a choice by climbing over it and thereby interacting with the art work, or by finding a detour through adjacent rooms in order to bypass it.
Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and a high-profile nationwide celebration of 25 years of Scottish contemporary art, Generation, will provide a complement and antidote to all that sport. By entitling his installation 'Common Wealth', Murray is questioning who will really benefit from the much hyped games, preparations for which have seen controversial 'development' of the east end of the city. Murray is not conveniently jumping onto a topical bandwaggon, since as a member of artist collective GANGHUT he was invited to Melbourne in 2006 to participate in the cultural festivities around the Commonwealth Games. He remembers 'how every single bit of graffiti and posters and anything had been removed. What I regard as a lot of the edge or the visible traces of life and lifestyle had been covered in grey and magnolia paint.'
Murray's concern with authenticity and sustainablity is further shown in the bronze 'Century Eggs' which incorporate 'wise words' - DIRTY, TRUTH, AUSTERITY... together with a moral compass the wrong way round and a hand with a third eye in it. The reclaimed timber carvings - a banana, a sausage, an orb and a nut/onion - reference the ethical fairtrade produce he advocates.
Murray is currently working on an 'unofficial” sculptural performance project planned to coincide with the 2014 Games. (Andrea Kusel, 2013)

Qualifications and training

  • 2013 MFA, Glasgow School of Art
  • 2003 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design

Personal website

Thursday 1 August 2013

"Restart, Plug In"

"Restart, Plug In"
Part of the The Glasgow Masters Series 2013

A group show by
Steven Papadopoulos
Anthony Schrag
Ian Swanson
Cedric Tai
Lisa Ure

Preview:
Friday, 2nd of August 6-9 pm
After Party at the Variety Bar

Exhibition Runs 3rd-17th of August
Mon-Sat, 11am - 6pm

At the former mattress and furniture emporium,
134 Renfrew Street, Glasgow G3 6ST