Grin and Bear it: Grit and Glamour

I watched a documentary about the Glasgow art scene the other day, called Glasgow: The Grit and The Glamour which was really inspiring. So inspiring in fact, that I've booked a holiday to Scotland! It was really interesting to hear about art in Glasgow and how the city has become a breeding ground for ideas and creativity. There seems to be a real sense of possibility, as Jeremy Deller says: "This is a city where you can get things done as an artist." I think it's sad sometimes that we think of London as the centre of the art world, as the only place you can make it. Whilst London is a good place to be an artist, and I love being there, it can be expensive (though not always) and sometimes I worry about the anonymity and alienation of big city life. Of being engulfed.

Although when I was at Goldsmiths (briefly) I lived a 2 minute walk from the college. It was last September when there seemed to be a heatwave and I'd be out all day, or in college and I'd stroll back to halls on balmy evenings and bump into newfound friends and it felt like a village, this bubble of familiarity in the vastness of London.

Glasgow: The Grit and The Glamour featured many brilliant artists, such as Deller, Christine Borland (I LOVE HER) and Simon Starling, along with about a bajillion Turner Prize winners and nominees. One thing that really captured my imagination was when they were talking about Glasgow School of Art, particularly the sculpture and environmental art degree course in the 1980s. There was footage of this small clan of students experimenting and pushing the boundaries, and generally just hanging around and doing what they pleased. I really loved that, because hopefully I will be going to art school in another year and the practicalites often play on my mind, usually concerning money and getting a job and a flat and thinking about how I can learn some practical skills that would support my art. All of that is just bullshit. Sometimes I look back on the nineties or the sixties/seventies and it seemed like it was so much easier to just loaf around and think about art and not have to worry about the real world. Sometimes it feels like todays students/young people are weighed down by thoughts of careers/jobs/money. Though maybe it was always like that and the distance of time gives things a rosy glow.

What a bummer. On a lighter note, Glasgow: The Grit and The Glamour introduced me to Karla Black, who I'd never heard of before. Here sculptures are just beautiful. I love how she makes pieces that seem to hang in space, suspended and weightless, yet sculptural. In the documentary she spoke about how when she went to Glasgow School of Art, one of the first things they told her was that a sculpture is something that stands up on its own, and how she has been challenging and subverting that notion ever since.

I was also drawn to that minimalist sense of reveling in materials. She often uses make-up, cosmetics and pastel bath bombs, not for their connotations, but in the tradition of cavemen who put pigment in their mouths and spat their art onto rock. A quality I admire in Black is her strength, and her outspoken defense of her art. She talks about how her work is described as ephemeral, impermenent, delicate and feminine. As if instability and ephemerality are somehow female qualities. But that's a whole new post...

I think I'll go to bed now, and so, lovely reader, here are some images and interesting videos to peruse at your leisure xxx