The Glasgow School of Art

In a place like that

Reid Gallery 16-21 September 2014
(Public access during lunchtime talks only)

Drop in Friday 19 September 6-7pm. (This will coincide with the preview of Posters of the Cuban Revolution)

Doors Open Weekend 20 & 21 September, 10am-5pm

During Freshers Week, the Reid Gallery becomes a space to focus on themes around landscape and a number of projects that have been undertaken by the GSA community and invited practitioners. The gallery will be a studio, for the collaborative staff research project In a place like that: Between Orkney and Odda.

A complementary series of public lunchtime talks present different ways that a further four invited speakers have spent their time in the landscape. Bring your sandwiches. The gallery will be open to the public during these hours only.

Studio: In a place like that: Between Orkney and Odda

Susan Brind, Duncan Higgins, Shauna McMullan

How do we understand the concept of ‘place’? In summer 2014, three researchers from GSA and Bergen made a journey between Odda in Norway and Orkney in Scotland. By travelling between centres and margins, the group saw the journey as a form of artist residency, and as a method of researching the role of art in relation to landscape and place. The overall objective of the research is to open a space for dialogue between historical fact, rational thought, embodied knowledge, and the poetic space of language and imagining. This studio time sees the researchers re-meeting, to reflect on this journey and develop their ideas and discussions into next steps.

This is a collaborative research initiative between Glasgow School of Art (GSA), The Bergen National Academy of Art (KhIB).  Phase 1 supported by Creative Scotland.

Susan Brind is a Reader in Contemporary Art:  Practice & Events based in the Department of Sculpture & Environmental Art.  Her work, which takes the form of sculptural, textual and time-based installations, plays on the tensions between rational forms of knowledge and the body as a site of understanding. She has exhibited in Europe and the UK, including a permanent commission for the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her praxis has incorporated collaborative curatorial projects such The Reading Room (with Jane Rolo of Book Works, London, 1994), The State of the Real:  Aesthetics in the Digital Age (co-edited with Damian Sutton and Ray McKenzie, 2007) and Curious Arts – No. 6 (in collaboration with Jim Harold, 2013).

Duncan Higgins is a visual artist based in Sheffield, UK. He is Professor in Fine Art at Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway and Professor in Visual Art at Nottingham Trent University, UK.  His research is focused on exploring how the ‘image’ and the act of ‘making images’ combined with ‘where the image performs’ can offer ways to question and communicate moments of erasure or remembering in direct reference to particular narratives of violence, faith and place. This is explored through a research process involving the production of: paintings, photographs, moving image, texts, critical reflection and fieldwork. Most recently he has had solo exhibitions at Lithuanian National Museum of Art Kaunas, South Bank Centre and Royal Festival Hall, London; Czech Cultural Centre and Russian Centre for Art and Science, Prague; Solovki State Museum Reserve Russia, Academy of Arts in Warsaw, Poland.

Shauna McMullan is a lecturer in the Department of Sculpture and Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art. She studied Fine Art (Sculpture) in Cheltenham, England followed by a Masters Degree at Glasgow School of Art and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has received a number of awards including a Scottish Arts Council Scholarship at the British School at Rome and residencies at the NIFCA (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art) in the Faroe Islands and Triangle Artist Workshop in Karachi, Pakistan.  Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at major museums as well as through permanent public commissions.  Recent projects have focused on the practical realisation of large scale permanent Public Art Works that embrace a commitment to innovative means of engagement and collective involvement.  Travelling the Distance commissioned for the Scottish Parliament, Blue Spine Collection for Glasgow Women’s Library, Via shown in the Toyota Museum of Modern art, Japan and The Albert Drive Colour Chart commissioned by the Tramway, Glasgow are four such examples. 

Lunchtime Talks

Tuesday 16 September, 1pm: Lesley Punton

Wednesday 17 September, 2pm: Theresa Moerman Ib

Thursday 18 September, 1pm: Alan Grieve

Friday 19 September, 1pm: Michael Barr