The Origins and Motives of Transmission Gallery (1983 – 1991) and the Importance of Audience to an Artist-Run Initiative
This paper was originally submitted in August 2012 for the partial fulfilment of the requirements for a degree of MSc in Museum Theory and Practice at Glasgow University. The thesis was a study of the importance of audience to the artist-run initiative Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, and sought to find out who Transmission’s audience was, how valued they were to the gallery, and how the gallery engaged with them. It focussed on the influence on the gallery by particular individuals, the groups of artists who were involved, the significance of Variant Magazine on Scottish culture, and certain exhibitions.
The dissertation shows the levels of political engagement that those who were involved with Transmission held and that there was a shared belief that art should be accessible to everybody and strive to be beneficial to society. Transmission originated in the early 1980s against the background of social problems and a grim economic situation in Glasgow. There were two main motives behind Transmission’s creation. The first was to assist struggling artists and be part of a support network for them, and the second was to engage with the local community and improve the accessibility of art for the working-class population.
The dissertation focused on the influence on Transmission by particular individuals, the students from the Environmental Art Department at Glasgow School of Art, the significance of Variant Magazine on Scottish culture, certain exhibitions, particularly Windfall ’91 which firmly established Transmission as an international arts institution. All of these components were politically motivated and shared the belief that art should be a part of society, and that artists need to make art that a local community can have access to and engage with. Transmission’s principal audience that it had a relationship with was people working in the arts and culture scene, both locally and internationally. Although its membership was predominantly made up of artists, part of its founding constitution was to improve the accessibility to art for its local working- class community. 2
CONTENTS
List of Figures 4
Acknowledgements 5
Introduction 6
Literature Review 8
Methodology 19
Transmission: An Artist-Run Initiative 20 Establishment of Transmission 20 Public Opening 22 Poverty 23 The Third Eye Centre 25 Variant Magazine 26 Conclusion 28
The Environmental Art Department and Transmission 30 Environmental Art 30 Context is Half the Work 31 Public Art Project 33 Environmental Art Students and Transmission 34 Cultural-Workers in Transmission 37 Socialising and the Free University 38 Conclusion 40
New Venue for Transmission 41 King Street 41 The Festival of Plagiarism 42 Lawrence Weiner 45 European Capital of Culture 1990 46 Conclusion 48
Windfall ’91 49 Windfall 49 The Seaman’s Mission 50 Artistic Process 52 Context 54 Catalogue 55 Reception 58 Conclusion 59
The Glasgow Miracle 61
Conclusion 63
Bibliography 65
3
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Transmission advert, Variant Magazine back page 18 (Referenced in page 12)
Figure 2: Urban Life poster 22 (Referenced in page 23
Figure 3: Iconoclasm advert 29 (Referenced in page 27)
Figure 4: Fifth Festival of Plagiarism, detail 44 (Referenced in page 43)
Figure 5: Lawrence Weiner exhibition sticker 46 (Referenced in page 45)
Figure 6: Seaman’s Mission building 51 (Referenced in page 50)
Figure 7: Elsie Mitchell installation detail, Windfall ’91 53 (Referenced in page 52)
Figure 8: Windfall ’91 exhibition catalogue front cover 56 (Referenced in page 55)
4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Dr Ian Anderson for his guidance and help in bringing my research topic into focus. His enthusiasm for this topic was encouraging. My conversations with Professor Gill Scott about art are always enjoyable and enlightening so I thank her for being such a knowledgeable friend. Thank you to my parents and brother for their editing skills. I am so grateful to Ken Stott for the use of his computer and to my sister, Maribel Verdesoto and Katie Field for looking after me. And lastly I want to say thank you and well done to Maria
Simou.
5
INTRODUCTION
While many London-based artists in the late 1980s set up warehouse exhibitions with the hope of attracting private buyers and dealers, Glasgow based artists had less interest in the private art world and were far more politically motivated.
During a period of financial entrepreneurialship and booming art markets in
London post-industrial Glasgow flourished as a major centre of not-for-profit art centres.
This dissertation has investigated the importance of audience to an artist-run initiative. It has concentrated on Glasgow during the 1980s because it was a period in which internationally famous artists emerged from the city while it was suffering from economic deprivation. Transmission Gallery played a major role in giving these artists a platform to begin their careers whilst a strong support network for artists grew in the city. From humble beginnings, Transmission was to become one of the most significant arts venues in Scotland and many of the artists that Transmission has supported have become internationally successful.
Transmission’s constitution had two central objectives. The first was to support unestablished artists and give them the freedom to experiment and exhibit their own work and be involved with the gallery’s programme of events. The other central objective was to advance public education. The artists who were involved with Transmission were all socially conscious and believed that their art should serve the public. 6
Previous research into this topic has been concerned with either telling the history of Transmission, discussing particular artists or the social history of
Glasgow during the period. A lot of previous research into this recent history of
Glasgow has concentrated on different artists and different venues. Other commentators on Glasgow’s culture during the period are fascinated by the popular impact of Glasgow hosting the European Capital of Culture in 1990. A lot of discussion has already taken place into artist-led initiatives and today there is recognition of their historical significance and the legacy that they have played in Glasgow’s modern culture. However, there has been no prior research to solely investigate the importance of audience to Transmission during its early history.
This dissertation argues that the artists involved in Transmission believed in the relevance of audience and were politically motivated to create art for the good of society. This dissertation will present a chronological account of
Transmission’s history from its establishment in 1983 to the exhibition
Windfall ’91, hosted in 1991. In that year Transmission became firmly established as an internationally recognised arts centre and the neo-conceptual art that it was exhibiting earned critical acclaim. Many of the artists who worked at Transmission during this period believed in the context of their art, particularly in relation to society, politics, and location. In addition, neo- conceptual art demands audience to give it meaning and intrinsic value.
7
LITERATURE REVIEW
This dissertation has avoided being overly descriptive of particular artworks and the oeuvre of particular artists at the expense of the socio-political context.
Therefore the literature which has been read tends to concentrate on the historical background and the art theory and political philosophy discussed by the relevant artists. The main texts that informed this research were Variant
Magazine, particularly Malcolm Dickson’s editorials and Euan McArthur’s review of Windfall ‘91; essays by former head of Glasgow School of Art’s Environmental
Art Department David Harding; Sarah Lowndes’ in-depth survey of Glasgow’s modern cultural scene, Social Sculpture: Art Performance and Music in Glasgow:
A Social History of Independent Practice; Craig Richardson’s book, Scottish Art
Since 1960: Historical Reflections and Contemporary Overviews; and a series of essays and exhibition reviews by Ross Sinclair. Much of the literature discusses the social impact of Thatcherite Britain on Glasgow during the 1980s and the harsh realities of poverty on society and the arts.
Although there has been a much larger bibliography involved, these were the texts that were most enlightening and from these texts other areas of enquiry could be sought. That these writers all know each other and have been involved in the work going into or coming out of Transmission is symptomatic of the literature that exists concerning Scottish neo-conceptual art. Although many of the artists involved with Transmission gallery at the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s have become internationally successful, most recent literature reporting on contemporary Scottish art does not advance beyond the New Image 8 neo-expressive figurative painters of Stephen Campbell, Adrian Wiszniewski,
Peter Howson and Ken Currie. Therefore, most of the literature that has been read for the research of this dissertation has been written by people who were there. Additionally many of the writers covering the history of Transmission have interviewed relevant artists as part of their own research into the subject.
In Social Sculpture, which surveys Glasgow’s art scene against the backdrop of its social history, Sarah Lowndes highlights that there is an insubstantial amount of published literature that exists to have analyzed the emergence of the neo- conceptual artists in Glasgow. She contrasts this under-evaluation with the wide amount of attention that art critics and art historians have paid to the work of the New Image painters. She demonstrates this by referring to David McMillan’s book, Scottish Art in the 20th Century 1890-2001, mentioning that it has been described as ‘definitive1’ yet while it discusses the New Image painters in great detail, it covers the neo-conceptual artists in three pages which Lowndes reports as “simplistic and ill-informed2.”
Lowndes’ book title ‘Social Sculpture’ refers to Joseph Beuys who had worked and exhibited in Scotland during the 1970s and 80s and whose performance art and art theory made a significant impact on Scottish artists. The concept of
1 Marina Vaizey reviewed the book in The Sunday Times describing it as ‘definitive’. The book was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Saltire Society/Scotsman Prize for Book of the Year. Described in Sarah Lowndes, Social Sculpture: Art Performance and Music in Glasgow: A Social History of Independent Practice, Exhibitions and Events Since 1971, Stopstop and Tramway, Glasgow, 1997, p. 8
2 Sarah Lowndes, Social Sculpture: Art Performance and Music in Glasgow: A Social History of Independent Practice, Exhibitions and Events Since 1971, Stopstop and Tramway, Glasgow, 1997, p. 8 9 social sculpture was used by Beuys to describe meaning which is formed out of discourse. For Beuys, the creative process of making art was what was important, perhaps more so than the finished work. Beuys commented that “For me the formation of the thought is already sculpture3”. Many of the debates that were held in Transmission related to the work of Beuys.
Although Lowndes and many of the people involved in Transmission considered that their work was generally ignored by the national media, the art critic
Cordelia Oliver, who wrote for The Herald and The Guardian, recognised the important role that the artists working in Transmission were playing. In her essay ‘Resilient Glasgow’, written when Transmission was only five years old,
Oliver considers Transmission’s impact in the Trongate area of Glasgow as to have cultivated a cultural quarter in the city. Yet Ruth Wishart’s essay
‘Fashioning the Future: Glasgow’ is a contemporary essay about Glasgow’s cultural scene that has no mention of the neo-conceptual art being produced in
Glasgow at that time or of the artist-run initiatives that were being set up and operating at the time.
Craig Richardson was one of the young artists involved in what was going on at
Transmission so it is no surprise that his book, Scottish Art Since 1960: Historical
Reflections and Contemporary Overviews, gives a large amount of importance to what he and his peers were doing in the context of Scottish post-modern art and
Glasgow’s recent social history. Richardson details the history of Transmission
3 Joseph Beuys, quoted in Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years, Praeger, New York, 1973, p. xvii 10 and refers to the gallery’s constitution. The constitution states that
Transmission’s objective is to aid public education through the arts and provide a platform for unestablished artists to present their work.
Alistair Magee’s article ‘Transmission SOS’ in Variant’s second issue published in
1985 informs the reader of the function and purpose of Transmission and of the organization and hard work that was needed to set it up and keep it running. It then appeals to the readership for their support and hard work to ensure that
Transmission has a successful future. Magee explains that, because of
Transmission’s location in the working-class East End, the steering committee hoped the gallery would make a positive contribution to the area and the local community. However he recognizes that Transmission could have been perceived as being patronizing towards the local community.
In discussing the reception of Transmission’s opening exhibition, Urban Life,
Magee describes it as having been well attended and that the audience consisted of students and staff from the Art School, members from the Arts Council, and people from the local community. He comments that the majority of people present were supportive of the exhibition and the gallery. However, any negative reaction to the exhibition he disregards as is evident by his comments that “some were there merely to confirm the reservations they’d had since they were first aware of the venture, and some were there to criticize because they always criticize4.”
4 Alistair Magee, ‘Transmission SOS’ in Variant Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 2, Summer 1985, p. 23 11
The relationship between Variant and Transmission is demonstrated by the advert for Transmission (fig.1) which was published on the back page of Issue 7 of Variant in 1990. The full page, colourful advert is full of text that explains the history and objectives of Transmission and appeals for support and submissions from artists. This is symbolic of the common goals that the magazine and the gallery shared: many of the artists involved with Transmission also submitted essays for Variant and vice-versa (co-founder and editor of
Variant, Malcolm Dickson, was a Committee member at Transmission). Variant has been a crucial resource in understanding the goals of those involved at
Transmission and has acted as a written record for the discussions that the artists were having.
Malcolm Dickson’s essay ‘Hopes and Fears’ is the first piece in the very first issue of Variant setting the tone for the magazine. In this article Dickson argues that the intrinsic value of art suffers because of the art market, that too much importance is placed on commercial value. He goes on to express that this is true also in the world outside the art world because capital production is given greater gravitas than the needs and desires of people. Inevitably it is the working-class who suffer and the elite who gain.
Dickson’s editorial for Variant, issue 3, from Autumn 1987 is interesting because it was written when his term on the Transmission committee was coming to an
12 end. In it he criticizes New Image painting because its reception by professional and commercial art galleries further legitimized the authority and control art galleries and museums had over the art world. He argues that the control that such institutions have over art means that curators and critics become mediators of art and gain more power in determining the fate of art than artists. Dickson believes that the consequence of this is that the public become alienated from art.
In his paper ‘Is there Such a Thing as a Working Class Aesthetic?’ Stefan
Szczelkun argues that high culture disenfranchises working-class people who
are culturally oppressed. Szczelkun believes that cultural equality should
exist. In order for the working-class to become emancipated they must
become self-educated and involved in cultural discourse. Cultural equality
will be achieved when the working class have become liberated and there is
no longer intellectual elitism. For Szczelkun this is significant because some
culture is isolated from society and he considers all culture to be relevant and
therefore all culture ought to be part of our social human existence.
In Hopes and Fears Dickson explains that “new contemporary media forms re- emphasise the artist’s social responsibility” and reasons that “art must unsettle, must challenge, and must work towards creating positive communication between people5.” Ross Sinclair’s writing follows the same political tone as
Malcolm Dickson. In the exhibition catalogue for Windfall ’91, Sinclair’s essay
5 Malcolm Dickson, ‘Hopes and Fears’ in Variant, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1984, pp. 2 13
‘Bad Smells but No Signs of the Corpse’ insists on the social responsibility of an artist. He argues against art being made primarily for commercial reasons, and that if art is made for the market rather than for cultural reasons then it no longer serves a social function. Sinclair believes that working within artist-run initiatives allows an artist to make a conscious political choice against consumerism and for the enhancement of sharing information, skills and experience. The openness of artist-run initiatives allows the general public greater accessibility and understanding of art. Sinclair later developed this argument by stating that artists are a product of the culture in which they live and therefore cannot distance themselves from society because they are dependent on and part of it6. This follows an earlier editorial written by Dickson in which he stated that “Culture is the life of people, and art is but one effect of that7.”
Judith Findlay’s essay ‘Fuck the Police: New Art in Subculture’ adds to this argument by expressing the positive impact art has on people. She claims that art gives people “a sense of place, identity and community8.” Art enriches our lives because a viewer takes pleasure from making meaning out of an artwork and therefore becomes personally involved in the art. Ben Luke’s article ‘The
Rise and Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene’ covers an interview held with Nathan
Coley in which Coley described Sam Ainsley and David Harding’s concern with context in the teaching of the Environmental Art Department. He is quoted as
6 “Biting the hand that feeds you and always hurting the one you love”, Ross Sinclair, ‘Nietzsche, the Beastie Boys and Masturbating as an Art Form’ in Nicola White (Ed.), New Art In Scotland, Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow, 1994, p. 28
7 Malcolm Dickson, ‘Editorial’ in Variant, Issue 7, 1990, p. 7
8 Judith Findlay, ‘Fuck the Police: New Art in Subculture’ in Nicola White (Ed.), New Art In Scotland, Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow, 1994, p. 22 14 explaining that for Harding and Ainsley “The key thing was that their general attitude was a kind of social conceptualism — a notion of conceptualism but with a consciousness of audience and of place9”.
David Harding has recorded a series of essays and articles concerning public art on his website, www.davidharding.net. One resource used in this dissertation is the transcript of the talk, ‘The Scotia Nostra: Socialisation among Glasgow
Artists’, which Harding gave in the ZKM Gallery in Karlsruhe, Germany in March
2001. This transcript gives an insight into the sense of community that the
Glasgow art scene has and the importance of socialising amongst the artists. To describe the artist community he uses the German word ‘Gemeinschaft’ which he defines as an “organic community with a strong sense of tradition, mutual association and locality10.”
Euan McArthur’s review of Windfall ’91 in Variant is a valuable record of the
exhibition. It gives a good account of the history behind the exhibition, who
was involved and a description of the artworks as well as how the viewer may
experience it. McArthur reckons that art needs to have an authority to rally
against. Art needs to have a cause and purpose otherwise it becomes self-
important. McArthur considers Windfall ‘91 to be an example of the publics’
9 Ben Luke, ‘The Rise and Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene’, The Art Newspaper, Issue 234, April, 2012, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/The-rise-and-rise-of-the-Glasgow-art- scene/26132
10 Harding, ‘The Scotia Nostra: Socialisation Among Glasgow Artists’, Talk given at ZKM Gallery in Karlsruhe, Germany in March 2001 and published in the catalogue CIRCLES by ZKM, April 2001, http://www.davidharding.net/?page_id=11 15
preference for temporarily displayed artworks as opposed to permanent displays
of established art in established galleries. However, despite claiming that there
is a public desire for rejecting the establishment, he does state that although
the artists are working away from the gallery environment they are not
rejecting it, and indeed many of the exhibition spaces used in Windfall ’91 do in
fact refer back to a gallery environment.
In an unpublished essay, ‘Hit and North’ written in 1996, Dickson attacks institutional and commercial galleries stating that “voluntary spaces … are fundamentally different in kind from those based on a hierarchy of paid administrators ‘doing a job’. This approach is based upon trust and sympathy to other peoples’ points of view11.” Cordelia Oliver however, contends that what makes Glasgow’s culture so vibrant is the sum of the parts. Oliver highlights the importance of artist-run initiatives as a part of a whole in which Glasgow
Museums, Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum and venues such as
Transmission are all valuable parts of one large arts and culture scene.
In the transcript of Harding’s Karlsruhe lecture, he explains the importance of
the New Image painters in drawing international attention to Glasgow, and the
role their art played in the city’s reinvention as an international cultural city.
He explains that there was a belief held by local government that regeneration
could be sparked by having a strong cultural programme. Harding
acknowledges that the large national and international events of Glasgow
11 Malcolm Dickson, ‘Hit the North’, unpublished essay on Transmission, 1996 16
hosting the Garden Festival in 1988 and the European City of Culture in 1990
brought large programmes of visual arts to the city along with the attention of
international media, critics and curators. However, he points out that neither
of these large-scale events directly supported nor brought attention to the
young neo-conceptual artists. Richardson disagrees with this and claims that
Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture did in fact bring increased media
and public attention to places such as Transmission.
The texts read for this research have allowed an insight into the concerns, relationships and conversations that were taking place in Transmission during the 1980s. Many of the texts, particularly Variant articles are part of a literary dialogue in which authors are in open dialogue with each other. Ross Sinclair’s essays are enlightening, providing an insight into the motivation of the young artists and Sarah Lowndes book was a key tool in grasping who the different artists were and the relationships that they had with each other. The literature has given the artists a platform to express themselves and has also raised their profile. The literature will have provided extra publicity for Transmission, increasing the awareness of its activities amongst readers of newspapers, arts journals and art books and attracted a larger audience to the gallery. 17
(Fig. 1: Transmission advert, back page of Variant, Volume 1, Issue 7, 1990)
18
METHODOLOGY
The early stages of this dissertation started as an interest in Glasgow’s art scene and its success during the 1980s. After some background reading, attention turned towards politically motivated artist-run initiatives during the Thatcher years. After further investigation and reflection the focus was drawn to
Transmission gallery and the importance of audience. In researching this it was necessary to learn what the key exhibitions were and any important dates; to find out what the key texts were; who the significant contributors to the subject were; and to understand the views of relevant people who were involved in
Transmission at the time. Research was done predominantly through the study of literature.
One of the most important texts was Variant Magazine which offered access to the concerns of those working in Glasgow’s arts and culture scene. The other texts used were archival newspaper reviews of Transmission exhibitions and relevant artists which offered contemporary commentary on the subject; contemporary arts books which were helpful to discover how important the topic was considered at the time; retrospective books by artists who were involved; and impartial books that have been written by people who were not part of the scene. After collating the material it was then necessary to mediate on the findings. The findings have been presented as a chronological account of the importance given to audience during Transmission’s early history.
19
TRANSMISSION: AN ARTIST-RUN INITIATIVE
ESTABLISHMENT OF TRANSMISSION
The late 1970s and early 1980s was a time of crisis for independent galleries in
Scotland. With dwindling financial support, many spaces lost the struggle to remain open, limiting the opportunities for artists to showcase their work. The problem was particularly acute for young artists seeking their first exhibition.
In 1982, the Workshop and Artists Studio Provision Scotland12 (WASPS) established the ‘Committee for the Visual Arts’ (CVA) to address the widespread shortage of exhibition space for young artists in Glasgow. Following negotiations
Glasgow City Council offered the CVA a derelict unit – a former shop premises in
Chisholm Street in the city’s Trongate for a token rent. In addition, some financial support of £5000 came from Scottish Arts Council (SAC). The Trongate space had 800 square feet of potential exhibiting space across two rooms and a basement. It would take the WASPS team around 12 months to convert the derelict unit into the first incarnation of the Transmission Gallery13.
12 WASPS was established in 1977 with the support of the Scottish Arts Council to improve the support structure for artists in Scotland by taking on large industrial spaces and letting them out cheaply to artists. Clare Henry, ‘Glasgow: An Overview’, in Christopher Carrell (Ed.), The Visual Arts in Glasgow: Tradition and Transformation, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, 1985, p. 26
13 ‘Artist-Run Spaces in the UK in 1996’ commissioned by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris for the Anthology of Artist-Run Spaces published to coincide with the exhibition 'Life/Live: The Artistic Scene in the UK in 1996', http://www.shiftyparadigms.org/artist_run.htm 20
The strategic process to establish Transmission involved bringing a large group of young Glasgow-based artists together and agreeing upon a constitution and artistic policy for the gallery. They also elected a steering-committee14. The first responsibility they had was to secure funding for the gallery and organise its renovation. Transmission was run by young artists committed to exhibiting and supporting politicized contemporary art and making the art very much a part of the local community, focussing on its audiences when creating its programme of events. Members of the steering-committee were optimistic Transmission would make a positive contribution to the community because of its location in a working-class and run-down area east of the city centre15. The opening paragraph of the Transmission Gallery Constitution states the institutions objectives as:
“To advance the education of the public generally and in particular the
inhabitants of Glasgow and its environs by securing and maintaining the
premises for the purpose of presenting the arts in all their forms. In
particular the works (in the wildest meaning) of persons who under
normal circumstances would be denied a platform for expressing their
artistic ideas, so long as such ideas expressed through their work are not
subversive of religion and morality16.”
14 Transmission’s steering-committee has always had six elected members on it who serve in the position for two years. The first committee elected had had its members John Rogan, Lesley Raeside, Alistair Magee, Michael Baucke, Alistair Strachan and Richard Wright.
15 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 51
16 Craig Richardson, Scottish Art Since 1960: Historical Reflections and Contemporary Overviews, Ashgate, 2011, pp. 145 n. 81 21
PUBLIC OPENING
In December 1983, after almost a year of cleaning, renovating and preparing the site, Transmission opened to the public with its politicized exhibition, Urban Life.
The exhibition showed the work of 25 young artists, a move of support that no other gallery in Scotland was able to offer at the time. Urban Life displayed paintings, sculptures and photographs relating to the title of the exhibition. The opening of Urban Life was well attended and it was reported that there was an air of enthusiasm in the artistic community for what Transmission was setting out to do17. Transmission opened only a couple of months after the royal opening of the Burrell Collection, yet in his opening speech for Urban Life
Alexander Moffat said that Transmission was “far more important than the
Burrell Collection18”.
(Fig. 2: Urban Life poster, Transmission, 1983)
17 Magee, ‘Transmission SOS’, 1985, p. 23
18 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 63
22
Transmission produced a poster (fig. 2) and issued a press release which stated:
“Transmission is Glasgow’s first artist-run gallery organized by the Committee of the Visual Arts (CVA), a non-profit-making organization. A varied group of young artists dedicated to the exhibition and promotion of contemporary art and in the integration of art into community life19.”
The artists who exhibited their work were Tunde Cockshott, John Rogan, Ken
Currie, Douglas Thomson, Andrew Squire, Peter Howson, Lesley Raeside, Alistair
Magee, Michelle Baucke, Andy Walker, Arlene Stewart, Gordon Brennan, Alastair
Strachan, Dominic Snyder, Adrian Wisniewski, Matthew Inglis, Liz Martin, Jayne
Taylor, John Doherty and David Linley. In its early years Transmission regularly exhibited paintings by the New Image neo-expressionist painters Peter Howson,
Stephen Campbell, Adrian Wiszniewski and Ken Currie who were all heavily involved in the gallery from its inception and each went on to become hugely successful.
POVERTY
Unemployment was rife in Britain during the 1980s, with Glasgow suffering particularly badly because of the collapse of its heavy industries, particularly shipbuilding and locomotive construction. Poverty was a major issue for the young artists involved with Transmission, either because they themselves were struggling financially or came from a poor background. Most were on state-
19 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 62
23 benefits and worked in part-time jobs that were all too often a distraction and unrelated to their art. The art critic Moira Jeffrey highlighted the financial problems in Glasgow during this time. She recalls that “We forget how horrible the late 1980s were. It was the dwindling Tory era. In Glasgow, the situation was economically dire”. She adds that the artists were working “at a politically desperate moment”. However, she revealed that in Glasgow one could get by because “there was a good education system and student grants – and you could live cheaply20."
Despite the grim economic situation, the fact that these young artists were not making a living from their art was never a critical issue: few if any were motivated to be artists for financial gain. In fact, Ross Sinclair considered that making wealth out of one’s art was to the cost of one’s artistic integrity. In his essay ‘How to Deal with Dinosaur Culture’, Sinclair says:
“when salaries come in, the vitality and urgency inherent in artist-run
spaces usually sneaks out the back door. ... There is freedom to
experiment with different forms, different approaches - installation for
example. Fundamentally, though, a context is created where market
pressures need only intrude if desired21.”
20 Charlotte Higgins, Glasgow's Turner Connection’, The Guardian, 17th October 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/17/glasgow-turner-prize
21 Ross Sinclair, ‘How to Deal with Dinosaur Culture’, Art Monthly, November, 1992, No. 161 p. 2 24
But the lack of money meant Transmission could not even afford to be heated during winter. Craig Richardson described it as “an inhospitable space” and that visitors to exhibitions would experience “a frozen winter’s coal-strewn durational performance”22. Additionally, due to the difficulties of trying to manage the running of the gallery and meet the ambitions of the artistic policy, as well as make their own art, and being over reliant on volunteers, the committee members initially struggled to keep the gallery open regular hours.
This was overcome by the gradual increase in members who were able to support the gallery and were willing to commit to voluntary work which included invigilating exhibitions. This meant that the gallery could at least maintain regular opening hours to the benefit of its audience who could now rely on
Transmission being open23.
THE THIRD EYE CENTRE
During the 1980s Glasgow was a post-industrial city which was reinventing itself as a cultural capital and artist-run-initiatives played a significant factor in the flourishing art scene of the period. Transmission’s impact helped accelerate the growth of artist-run-exhibitions in the city and played a key role in the city’s art scene. After Transmission opened, young artists would work with the gallery refining their own art and ideas, and then often went on to exhibit at the Third
Eye Centre.
22 Richardson, Scottish Art Since 1960, 2011, p. 138
23 Magee, ‘Transmission SOS’, 1985, p. 23 25
The Third Eye Centre, which opened in 1975 on Sauchiehall Street in an
Alexander ‘Greek’ Thompson building near to the Glasgow School of Art on
Renfrew Street, provided an important link between art students and the public.
The centre had a profound influence on the city’s arts scene, and frequently hosted exhibitions by artists, talks and readings by writers and poets and performances by musicians. Often the Third Eye Centre would lead to further national and international success and form many acted as a stepping stone for artists whose works would subsequently appear in art centres across Europe and
New York.
VARIANT MAGAZINE
In 1984, Malcolm Dickson and a handful of other Glasgow School of Art graduates established Variant Magazine with the support of Transmission24. Variant and
Transmission shared the same cultural and political concerns and aspirations, believing in the social responsibilities of artists. The motivation behind the magazine was influenced by Hugh MacDiarmid’s notion of cross-culturalism, and reflected the cultural activity in Glasgow in which artists and writers and musicians co-existed in the same creative circles25. Visual arts venues such as the Third Eye Centre and Transmission were used for exhibiting artworks, but also hosted readings by writers and poets, discussions or lectures, and concerts.
24 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1971, p. 68
25 Neil Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution: Art in Britain in the Late Twentieth Century, Ashgate, 2003, p. 145
26
Variant was established as a left-wing magazine and from the first issue Dickson promoted the idea of the artist operating as a cultural-worker. In the first article of Issue 1, ‘Hopes and Fears’, Dickson discussed the responsibility artists have within society, stating that “Art must unsettle, must challenge, and must work towards creating positive communication between people26”. He described how the contemporary period of the mid-1980s was one in which the drive of capital markets and economic production was to the cost of the working-class community. He argued that artists had the means and social responsibility to address economic and social injustice and that they needed to be able to communicate with the public27.
Variant was frequently used for promoting exhibitions and events at
Transmission through newsletters, adverts, reviews and essays. In May 1985,
Transmission hosted the exhibition Iconoclasm, with both an advert (fig. 3) and an editorial by Malcolm Dickson appearing in the second edition of Variant.
Dickson, whose work was on show, explained what he and the other Iconoclasm artists hoped to achieve. Dickson positioned the exhibition against mass media which he believed to have adopted a domineering stance over people’s lives and lifestyle. In their argument against mass consumerism, the artists involved with
Iconoclasm looked to address problems of inequality and class.
“Iconoclasm; a brief note – We call iconoclasm the disinvestment of
images. Destruction then may be actual or symbolic. Iconoclasm has two
sides – the prohibition of the making of images and their
26 Dickson, ‘Hopes and Fears’, 1984, p. 2
27 Dickson, ‘Hopes and Fears’, 1984, p. 2 27
destruction…Destructive iconoclasm is the underside and popular reaction
to the representations of authority…In contemporary consumer society,
rather than the refusal of images, we find their proliferation and relay
through capitalism and the law of the capitalist code. Refusal, i.e.
iconoclasm, falls on the side of those against whom these images from
advertising, TV and movies are directed, Iconoclasm rests in a class war of
images28”.
CONCLUSION
Transmission was created out of the necessity for artists to exhibit their work.
Its creation was popular amongst people involved in the art scene acting as a support structure for young artists and a venue in which they could meet and work. The artists were all politically motivated with left-wing outlooks motivated not by money but to make society a better place through their art.
Acting as cultural-workers the artists wanted to appeal to the local community who were suffering from unemployment and poverty, and wanted to communicate with the public to address the economic inequalities of the time.
However, there is a sense of naivety in the power that the young artists believed their art had and it is likely that some local people would have perceived
Transmission as posturing and unhelpful in its grand ambitions.
28 Malcolm Dickson, ‘Iconoclasm: Art from the War of Ideas’, handout insert from Variant, Issue 2, Summer 1985
28
(Fig. 3: Advert for Iconoclasm in Variant, Issue 2, Summer 1985, p. 15)
29
ENVIRONMENTAL ART DEPARTMENT AND TRANSMISSION
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ART DEPARTMENT AT GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART
During the late 1980s and the early 1990s many young artists who were actively involved with Transmission Gallery were either students or graduates of the
Environmental Art programme at Glasgow School of Art. The Environmental Art
Department was informally set up in 1984 but without a departmental head or any departmental structure. Christine Borland and Douglas Gordon were amongst the first intake of students in its early, less organised stage29 and both would go on to work with Transmission. The Environmental Art Department became firmly established with the appointment of David Harding30 as its head in
1985 alongside Sam Ainsley who assisted Harding in the teaching, organisation and structure of the course31.
The Department was one of the first in the UK that did not concentrate on particular media or the production of art for a gallery or a museum environment.
Instead it focussed on artistic practices outside a gallery environment, concerning itself with public spaces, community artworks and site-specific art.
29 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 80
30 David Harding trained at Edinburgh College of Art, and then spent some time in Nigeria. He worked as the town artist in Glenrothes from 1968-1978. In Glenrothes he worked with Glenrothes Planning Department and developed a practical working knowledge of local people, building materials and techniques. In 1978 he became senior lecturer in Art and Design in Social Context programme at Darlington College of Arts in Devon where he worked until being appointed as Head of Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 1985.
31 Moira Roth, ‘Town Artist: An Interview with David Harding’ in Linda Burnham and Steven Durland (Ed.),The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena, Critical Press, New York, 1998, p. 185 30
The students gained a broad range of artistic skills working in a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional media and genres32. They were also encouraged to work together and collaborate and to engage in philosophical discourse with each other. Rather than having a regimental drilling from their teachers about what they should be doing stylistically they were given the artistic freedom to decide the nature and shape of their art.
The department was based in the Glasgow High School for Girls building which the Art School leased from the City. It had been unoccupied and there were many decaying parts of the school. The Environmental Art students had the free reign of the school which presented the students with ample opportunities to experiment with installations and performance art. David Harding described the building:
“It was a ruinous, old, stone-built Victorian school. We were only allowed
in the front half, but the students broke into the back half. It was full of
old school books and amazing different spaces, from roof spaces and
attics to basements: perfect for installation and performance33”.
CONTEXT IS HALF THE WORK
The philosophical content of the course was encouraged through a series of
Friday morning lectures from visiting speakers from around the world which was
32 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 81
33 Luke, ‘The Rise and Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene’, April, 2012, 31 attended by all the teachers and students. The lectures were not necessarily directly related to art but were aimed at being thought-provoking, inspiring and encouraging a varied range of discussion within the school34. One of the most important elements of the course was the maxim ‘the context is half the work’ which had originally been coined by John Latham in the early 1970s to represent the work of the Artist Placement Group (APG), which he co-founded with his wife and collaborator Barbara Steveni in 1965. The APG was an artist-run initiative that organised artists’ works outside a gallery environment. Latham was hugely influential in the development of concept art that developed in
Britain during the 1970s and 80s and Harding used many of his ideas in his teachings35.
In an interview with Malcolm Dickson, David Harding gave a description of what was meant by context and its importance, stating that artists:
“Have to take the context on board. That could be the physical context;
it could be the architectural context, the urban space in its physical sense,
it could be the political context of the work, it could be the cultural or
some other psychological context. It is not limiting in the sense of ‘art
and architecture’, it’s not simply for buildings, as monuments; it’s art
that can exist in a multitude of different spaces and places and if the
artist seriously takes on the context, seriously addresses the space or
place in which the artwork exists, then that contextual element is the
element which gives the broad public the ‘in’ to the work and begins to
34 Keith Hartley, ‘Cultural Rebirth’ in Correspondences: Twelve Artists from Berlin and Scotland, Berlinsche Galerie and Scottish National Galley of Modern Art Exhibition Catalogue, Ursula Prinz, Berlin, 1997, p.28
35 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 33 32
set up that communication of understanding that can come out of the
artwork. If you take the cultural context it could be the area where
community arts could function36”.
PUBLIC ART PROJECT
From the second year of the course students undertook an annual Public Art
Project which required the students to consider the context of the environment and community, amongst other things, of where their artwork could exist. The research for the projects would require determining equilibrium between artistic ambition and the needs of the local environment and community. Students had to find the urban space for their work themselves, and would perhaps need to negotiate with the owners of the site to gain permission to use it. They could also and have an open discourse with the community, possibly collaborating with local residents in how to appropriately and successfully install their work in the public domain37. By considering the contextual element of their work the artists could create better communication and understanding with their audience and improve public accessibility to their art38.
In creating public art community outreach was essential because public art is local and therefore must speak to the local audience. Unlike a gallery space, public art is unregulated and never closes so the public has access to it at all
36 Malcolm Dickson, ‘Interview with David Harding: Interview’ in Variant Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1990, p. 46
37 Richardson, Scottish Art Since 1960, 2011, p. 153
38 David Harding quoted in Dickson, ‘Interview with David Harding’, 1990, pp. 46 33 hours. The Public Art Project instilled in the students both an experimental attitude to monumental art but also the significant factor of wider accessibility and engagement of art. Sam Ainsley commented on how the young students
“successfully drew attention to the spaces and situations in their city on a number of levels: moral, social, economic, political or spiritual, giving neither answers not preaching, but rather grappling with art and ideas about its place in society39”. In the late 1980s and 90s the department included artists such as
Claire Barclay, Craig Richardson, Roderick Buchanan, Ross Sinclair, Louise
Scullion, Nathan Coley and Martin Boyce taking the lessons they had learned from art school and applying them to the running of exhibitions at Transmission
Gallery.
ENVIRONMENTAL ART STUDENTS AT TRANSMISSION
In the next couple of years organization of Transmission was gradually improved and in 1985 a new committee was in place made up of Gordon Muir, Malcolm
Dickson, Carol Rhodes, Peter Thompson, Graham Johnstone, Simon Brown and
Douglas Aubrey who sought to increase the size of the audience which at the time was not felt to be sufficient. Non-artists were now allowed to become members, and much of the new audience that was attracted joined the membership and would sit on future committees. The drive to improve visitor numbers happened by advertising exhibitions through leaflets and posters and, by continually visiting the art school, making staff and students know about what
39 Stuart W MacDonald, ‘The Trouble with Postmodernism’ in Art Education in a Postmodern World: Collected Essays, (ed.) Tom Hardy, Cromwell Press, 2006, p. 61 34 was going on at Transmission40. The Environmental Art Department was given particular attention by Transmission due to the influence of Variant editor and
Transmission Committee-member, Malcolm Dickson, as David Harding recalled:
“It was Malcolm’s interest in the kind of socio-political work that we
were interested in in the department that accidently built a nice bridge
between us so that we were the only department in the Art School who
had the Transmission Committee come every year to give a talk to the
students41”.
Malcolm Dickson’s recognition of what was going on in the Environmental Art
Department meant that the students would become involved with Transmission.
Some were getting their work exhibited in Transmission while still studying at the Art School. The common goals between the Environmental Art students and
Malcolm Dickson would shape the direction of Transmission. The gallery gradually moved away from displaying works in the figurative painting tradition, that were conceived with how the viewer might read the finished paintings’ narrative and how it might be presented in a gallery, towards non-media specific neo-conceptual art which was concerned with the artistic process of making art rather than the aesthetics and comprehension of the end result. This new art aimed to give viewers the freedom to determine and make meaning out of the work themselves and indeed the function and purpose of the art work is
40 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 86
41 David Harding, in C Stephenson, and H McLaughlan, Transmission, Glasgow: Transmission Gallery, Black Dog, 2001, p.27
35 completed once there is somebody present to respond to it. As a consequence the viewer is empowered as an important player in the artistic process.
By the time the first wave of graduates from the Environmental Art course were leaving the Glasgow School of Art many of the country’s galleries were being forced to close because of financial difficulties. Galleries such as the Third Eye
Centre42 in Glasgow, and the Fruitmarket, the 369 Gallery and the Richard
DeMarco gallery in Edinburgh had all temporarily closed leaving artists with less support coming from galleries forcing the artists to take charge of displaying and exhibiting their work themselves43.
Transmission’s own funding crisis came into light when in 1987 it was forced to delve into the world of the commercial art market and hold an arts auction.
The auction took place at the RAC building in Blytheswood Square and comprised of 70 pieces of work from Transmission members, art school staff such as Sam
Ainsley, and established artists such as George Wyllie, Alasdair Gray and New
Image painters Steven Campbell and Adrian Wizsniewski44. As well as raising much needed funds to rescue its programme of events it also attracted wider publicity and drew attention from a different type of arts enthusiast to what was going on at Transmission. It is likely that many surveyors of the work that was
42 Although The Third Eye Centre was forced to close due to financial difficulties it was reincarnated as the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in December 1992, which has been a successful and important part of Glasgow’s thriving arts scene for the past 20 years.
43 Matthew Slotover, ‘Northern Lights’ in Frieze, Issue 1 September-October 1991, Frieze Magazine online archive http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/northern_lights/
44 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 104 36 auctioned at the RAC were now attracted to visiting Transmission and would pay closer attention to its activities.
After graduating from the Art School many artists who were already members of
Transmission would then sit on the gallery’s steering committee directing the gallery’s programme and instigating a varied range of increasingly ambitious international projects. The artistic independence that the artist gained from working with an artist-run imitative like Transmission was one in which they did not have to satisfy the briefs or expectations of a gallery and its patrons. The political motivation of the gallery continued45 and with Malcolm Dickson on the committee much of Variant’s philosophies of the artist as a ‘cultural-workers’ were being practiced in Transmission.
CULTURAL-WORKERS IN TRANSMISSION
The idea of the cultural-worker not being restricted to particular media was evident in Transmission as it gradually moved away from the medium of painting and the art of the New Image painters as instead video46, installations, time- based art and performance art became ever more present in the gallery’s
45 Cathy Wilkes: “the early committees at Transmission moved very much as a group. I understood Transmission as an arts and politics group, more to do with the Free University and the Anarchist movement, and the Anti-Nazi League. I didn’t see Transmission as the same kind of gallery as Cyril Gerber or the Collins. (Cyril is a commercial gallery/Collins is part of Strathclyde uni). Most artists were making their work and not expecting to make any money out of it and probably, if they were involved in Transmission, had quite strong political motivations, for example people like Malcolm Dickson and Gordon Muir and Anne Vance.” Quoted in Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 102
46 During this period the work of artists working at the Glasgow Film and Video Workshop (GFVW), which formed in 1982 as a film and video resource hub, would feature ever more prominently. Video also gained support from the Scottish Arts Council and in 1987 the Visual Artist Video Bursary was created. Referenced from Chris Byrne and Malcolm Dickson, ‘Moving History’ in Variant Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 6, Autumn, 1998, p. 20 37 programme47. The environmental arts students came to Transmission with the aim of bringing art into everyday life and encouraging a closer relationship between art and society.
Throughout the 1980s Transmission would continue to exhibit work that was intended to engage with local community and was dependent on the cooperation and work of its volunteers. Malcolm Dickson reflected that “voluntary spaces … are fundamentally different in kind from those based on a hierarchy of paid administrators ‘doing a job’. This approach is based upon trust and sympathy to other peoples’ points of view48.” Additionally, Neil Mulholland considers that artist-run initiatives such as Transmission are publically perceived as
“democratic and philanthropic49”. This is because they are open to all, decision making is done though discussion and voting, and, significantly, the artists want to engage in an open dialogue about art, and are determined that the art and its discourse are accessible to everybody.
SOCIALISING AND THE FREE UNIVERSITY NETWORK
The cultural scene in Glasgow was, and still is, very social. Artist-run initiatives like Transmission are social spaces with regular alcohol induced viewing parties and lively events programmes for everybody. Socialising is key ingredient in the making of a successful art scene as artists and writers can bounce ideas off each other and inspire and are given the opportunity to collaborate with each other.
47 Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution, 2003, p. 145
48 Dickson, ‘Hit the North’, 1996
49 Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution, 2003, p. 146 38
The mood of friendship and solidarity amongst those working in the art scene created a supportive network in which artists would promote the work of other artists to curators and critics.
The demand for improving networking in Glasgow culminated in the creation of
The Free University Network 1987. It was founded by Peter Kravitz and followed the example of the Free International University that was founded by Joseph
Beuys. Joseph Beuys was concerned with social order and wanted humans to be more spiritual and ethical. Beuys thought that our world had been socially engineered by the systems and controls in place in society. Beuys notion of
‘social sculpture’ was directed at changing our social reality. Creativity plays a central role in social sculpturing and it is necessary for each individual to live creatively in order for our existence to improve. Beuys was hopeful that his own art would spark creativity in his audience50. The Free University in Glasgow was an informal network for all the different organisations, galleries, periodicals and people interested in culture, politics or learning. It brought people together from across the West of Scotland and Edinburgh to create a social environment for people to talk about a diverse range of issues, helping to expand the community of cultural-workers operating in Scotland51.
50 Charles Stephens, ‘‘I See the Land of Macbeth’, Joseph Beuys and Scotland (1970-1986)’ in Variant Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 6, 1988, p. 9
51 Malcolm Dickson, ‘The Free University Network’ in Variant Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1990, p. 24
39
CONCLUSION
The Establishment of the Environmental Art Department during the mid-1980s and its reciprocal relationship with Transmission determined the future success of the gallery. From a practical point of view the presence of the young artists boosted its membership numbers. The maxim ‘context is half the work’ meant that the artists had a primary concern for public space and community which was fundamental to the objectives of Transmission. As well as wanting to make art for the community, the Environmental Art Department and Transmission shared common goals such as encouraging collaboration, discourse and artistic freedom. The students gained crucial experience of how to appeal and satisfy the needs of a local community during their Public Art Projects which boosted
Transmission’s ability to communicate to its local audience. Transmission wanted to be a social enterprise and have an open conversation about politics and art that everybody could be part of. It was a support network itself but many of its members and audience were also part of the Free University Network which, like Transmission, was motivated by the sharing of education for everybody in society.
40
NEW VENUE FOR TRANSMISSION
KING STREET
By the end of the 1980s Transmission was given the opportunity to move to a new and more appropriate address in King Street just around the corner from
Chisholm Street. The new gallery space that Transmission was to occupy was on the ground floor of a neighbouring building to the Glasgow Print Studio52. The move was supported by the City Council which saw it as a further step in the redevelopment of the Merchant City which was then progress53. In order to raise further money for the renovation of the King Street property, Transmission held a jumble sale in Autumn 1988. This was very popular amongst the locals as large numbers of visitors came looking for a bargain. The popularity of the jumble sale also presented Transmission with the publicity and opportunity to inform the local community of its new home. The concluding exhibition of Transmission in Chisholm Street before moving was Land of Opportunity, a five year retrospective of the gallery’s history featuring some of the best work that it had exhibited over the years54.
After moving to King Street its Art Council grant increased from £5,000 to
£12,000 which allowed it to invest further in publicity and to advance the
52 Glasgow Print Studio was founded in 1972 and was located in Vincent Street from 1972-76. It was located in Ingram Street from 1976 until 1988 when it relocated to an upper level in King Street
53 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 108
54 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 112 41 ambitions of its programme. This new King Street gallery had adopted the white cube gallery aesthetic with white walls and grey flooring that would create a neutral backdrop which was more typical of a contemporary art exhibition space.
It had always had an international outlook but, with the significant increase in funding, it was able to step up its programme of large scale international events and improve its international exchange programme with artists from the rest of the UK, particularly Belfast and London, and the rest of Europe. International networking and further support from the Arts Council helped Transmission to increase its membership which was now in the hundreds. The size of the audience that Transmission now had justified the time, money and effort that had been invested in the gallery55.
THE FESTIVAL OF PLAGIARISM
The first show in the new Transmission space was the Fifth International
Festival of Plagiarism: Slogans of Reversal/Reversal of Slogans in August 1989.
The exhibition was organised by Stewart Home, who had previously organised
The Festival of Plagiarism that had taken place in London in 1988. The show was influenced by the German performance artist Joseph Beuys who had visited
Scotland on numerous occasions during the 1970s and early 1980s and was a huge influence on the neo-conceptual Scottish art scene. His conceptual art, in which he considered the process of making art to be of important artistic value, was
55 ‘Artist-Run Spaces in the UK in 1996’, 1996 42 similar to that of the Transmission artists. Additionally his use of low cost materials matched the financial needs of the young impoverished artists56.
The Fifth International Festival of Plagiarism consisted of works in a variety of different media (fig. 4) including around twenty videos, four of which contained violent content that some viewers may have found disturbing. The programme of events surrounding The Festival of Plagiarism included lectures and discussions relating to the exhibitions as well as performances by local bands and also the AC Acoustics and the Tape Beatles. Young artists who had been involved with Transmission during their studies were included in the exhibition, including Ross Sinclair who was in his last year of the Environmental Art course.
As well as exhibiting in the show Sinclair designed the exhibition poster which read ‘Now you can reach those with a disposable income BEFORE they dispose of their income57.’
In organising The Festival of Plagiarism Stewart Home believed that the audience had an important role to play in the exhibition. He believes that the production of art is a two-way process and the audience’s response to art is part of the process of giving it meaning and justifying art. A negative response is as welcome and valid as a positive response. An audience is not an abstract mass, rather it is made up of individual people so, in the creation of the artworks, consideration is given as to how a particular type of person might react rather than trying to appeal to a large general audience. As a consequence of this, an
56 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 105
57 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 114 43 artwork actually then becomes more interesting for everybody including people it has not been specifically aimed at. Home identifies his own audience as
“anarchists, punks and ex-punks and avant-garde types58”. Those audience members who have not been considered during the art work’s creation will likely find more of interest in such an artwork than an artwork that had merely had a general non-specific message. In this sense, art which is truly engaging and sparks people’s imagination is that which is not focussed on being popular and marketable59.
(Fig. 4: Festival of Plagiarism, Installation detail, 1989)
58 Stewart Home in interview with Karen Goaman, ‘Marx, Christ and Satan United in Struggle’, in Variant, Issue 7, 1990, p. 19
59 Goaman, ‘Marx, Christ and Satan United in Struggle’, in Variant, Issue 7, 1990, p. 19
44
LAWRENCE WEINER
The international exchange programme that Transmission had been able to build up with artists included attracting Lawrence Weiner to Transmission where he was given a solo exhibition in November 1991. For Weiner the audience was as much a part of the function and purpose of artwork as anything else and his art was created with the audience in mind. Weiner was a huge influence on the artist involved with Transmission and many of the artists followed his example of textually loaded art works. Weiner believed that language was central to culture and identity and needed for understanding art. He claimed that ''without language, there is no art60''.
Weiner’s exhibition consisted of bold green-coloured text at eye-height that stretched across the walls of the gallery which read ‘AN ARCH AFFORDED IN A
WALL OF SLATE WITH A KEYSTONE OF CHALK AND IMPOSTS OF SLATE’. The work was extended and promoted through the production of countless stickers with the same sentence written on them as the Transmission exhibit (fig. 5). The stickers were then distributed to Transmission members in the post who would then place them wherever they wanted, thus empowering the audience with the control over the exhibition can physically develop. Weiner argued that “The sticker operates in this context where, economically and culturally, most people are feeling really rather under attack. This economic situation encourages the general attempt to put art back in its place61”.
60 Caroline Ednie, ‘Of Hearts and Helicopters’ in The Herald, 28th August, 2000 http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/of-hearts-and-helicopters- 1.220844
61 Douglas Gordon, ‘Interview with Lawrence Weiner’ in Variant, Volume 1, Issue 10, Winter 1991, pp. 38 45
(Fig. 5: Lawrence Weiner, Sticker in conjunction with exhibition held at Transmission, November, 1991)
EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 1990
It was the hope of the city that a thriving cultural scene would have a positive impact on its regeneration. The reinvention of Glasgow during the 1980s culminated in Glasgow hosting the UK’s annual Garden Festival in 1988 and being awarded European Capital of Culture 1990. Both of these events had large visual arts programmes, although they were not directly supportive of initiatives such as Transmission. Some artists, such as Ross Sinclair, used their art to attack
Glasgow’s European Capital of Culture festivities, regarding the events as commercial ventures rather than creative. Whilst Glasgow was celebrating its
Capital of Culture status in 1990, Sinclair demonstrated his cynicism towards it though his poster campaign Capital of Culture/Culture of Capital in which he put up pairs of posters across the city, one reading ‘Capital of Culture’ and alongside it another reading ‘Culture of Capital62’ .
Despite the protest of Transmission artists against Glasgow’s year as the Capital of Culture, in 1990 Transmission’s annual grant from the Scottish Arts Council
62 Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution, 2003, pp. 145 46 increased in 1990 from £5,000 to £12, 00063 which allowed it to create a more ambitious programme which included putting on Lawrence Weiner’s first solo exhibition in the gallery. Glasgow that a year received a massive increase in international publicity gaining attention from international media, critics, artists, curators and the general public. As part of the city’s Capital of Culture plans,
Tramway was created in 1988 in the old tram depot in Albert Drive in the South
Side. It was to be a new international arts-space and was supported and financed by the City Council and the Arts Council.
Many venues across the city had an increase in funding and support which would have had a positive effect on other venues, which did not necessarily receive direct support but would have likely felt a treacle effect. The relationship that
Transmission artists had with the Third Eye Centre is important because it was given a lot of support during the Capital of Culture celebrations and was included in its programme of events. The Third Eye Centre had 43, 242 visitors in 1989 but in 1990 it received 101, 043, an increase of 134%64. A large proportion of these new visitors would have seen the work of the neo-conceptual artists at the centre, and their fame would have been greatly enhanced.
63 ‘Artist-Run Spaces in the UK in 1996’, 1996
64 Tessa Jackson and Andrew Guest (Ed.), The Visual Arts in Glasgow: Cultural Capital of Europe 1990: A Platform for Partnership), Glasgow, 1991 47
CONCLUSION
Transmission’s move to King Street at the end of the 1980s coincided with the large-scale regeneration of the city for the European Capital of Culture celebrations. Transmission adopted a new white-cube gallery role similar to other contemporary gallery spaces and with an increase in funding was able to improve its programme of events including more international shows like Festival of Plagiarism and Lawrence Weiner’s first solo-exhibition in Glasgow. Glasgow’s own ambitions were enhanced with the Capital of Culture status in which it was able to create new facilities and renovate old ones, to attract international attention to its arts and culture scene and organise a large visual arts programme in the city. Transmission and Glasgow were both able to increase their publicity, their funding and their audience numbers. However, some
Transmission members were cynical about the commercial reasoning behind
Glasgow’s Capital of Culture tag and believed that the year of cultural activities would be driven more by financial gain than the benefits to the local population.
48
WINDFALL ‘91
AN INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
Transmission acted as an agency through which Glasgow-based artists were increasingly exhibiting and curating sophisticated group shows outside its own gallery space. Windfall was a series of large-scale inter-European art projects which had previously been held in London’s Hyde Park in 1988 and Bremen’s docklands in 1989. Transmission brought Windfall to Glasgow and organised it as a large-scale event that was to take place in a large unused building or space.
Transmissions at this point included amongst its committee and membership the first group of students to have graduated from the Environmental Art course.
They had only recently finished Art School yet were already taking on key roles with Windfall and found themselves running a big European arts event.
Windfall ’91 took place in August 1991 as a collaborative effort between 26 artists from the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands.
The organisation of the project was largely led by Glasgow-based artist David
McMillan who had visited other European countries during 1990 looking for artists for the show whilst also raising its profile65. The 26 artists selected for the show were chosen for their suitability to the project, which included being able to collaborate and interact with everyone else involved, but also some artists were
65 Susannah Catherine Thompson, The Artist as Critic: Writing in Scotland 1960 to 1990, Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Glasgow, September 2010, p. 242 49 selected because of the benefit the project could bring to them66. This was symptomatic of the support structure in the city’s art scene. Artists who had been helped and given opportunities by others in the past, in turn wanted to help new artists gain experience67. The Environmental Art students who exhibited at Windfall ‘91 included Douglas Gordon, who had previously exhibited at the Bremen Windfall, Claire Barclay, Christine Borland, Martin Boyce, Nathan
Coley, Craig Richardson and Ross Sinclair. As well as supporting local artists the international nature of the exhibition matched the Glasgow-based artists’ ambition to be operating in the very heart of the European art world, rather than be seen to be working in the periphery of the continent making parochial art68.
THE SEAMAN’S MISSION
Windfall ‘91 was held in the disused Seamen’s Mission on the Broomielaw by the bank of the River Clyde (fig. 6) and was sponsored by the site’s property developers, Glasgow and Oriental69. The Seaman’s Mission consisted of two simple rectangular brick buildings, one small and one large, and was in a derelict site that was due for demolition70. Conveniently it was within walking distance of other spaces that were used by Glasgow-based artists including Transmission.
66 The artists who exhibited at Windfall ’91 included Boris Achour, David Allen, Claire Barclay, Achim Bertenburg, Christine Borland, Martin Boyce, Roderick Buchanan, Gerard Byrne, Nathan Coley, Josep Dardana, Anita Drachman, Douglas Gordon, Jim Hamlyn, Jens Heise, Edwin Janssen, Iain Kettles, Michael Lapuks, David McMillan, Emma McMullan, Elsie Mitchell, Norman Regler, Sylvie Reynaud, Craig Richardson, Julie Roberts, Blan Ryan and Niels Staal 67 Slotover, ‘Northern Lights’, 1991
68 Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution, 2003, p. 147
69 Euan McArthur, ‘Windfall’, Variant, Volume 1, Issue 9, Autumn 1991, p. 36
70 McArthur, ‘Windfall’, 1991, p. 36 50
The artists chose this site because it was a neutral and bland space which would allow the artists and viewers to focus on the artworks and not be distracted by the surroundings. The Seaman’s Mission’s architecture and location were characteristic of what artist-run initiatives had looked for in the UK at this time with disused, ex-industrial spaces often satisfying the aesthetic demands of the artists71.
(Fig. 6: Seaman’s Mission, Broomielaw, photograph)
71 Slotover, ‘Northern Lights’, 1991 51
ARTISTIC PROCESS
The artists spent July 1991 in the Seaman’s Mission using it as a workshop and a studio space creating installations, time-based and performance works specifically for the 30 exhibition spaces in the building72. There was no authoritative curatorial voice and the artists were free to make whatever they wanted and to choose where they worked and exhibited their art. The working process of the project was as important as the end result. That the artists had control over the organization of the whole project away from the management of museum and gallery professionals was one of the fundamental motivations behind Windfall ’9173.
However, although the artists were clearly working outside a formal galley space, many of the spaces in Windfall ’91 did in fact refer back to the use of galleries for exhibiting work. Elsie Mitchell’s installation consisted of framed paintings of property adverts and a picture of high-rise flats (fig. 7). The pictures looked like posters and contained words that informed the viewer of details about properties. The installation had the sense of being a bland property-agents but the simple display of paintings hung on white walls was reminiscent of a gallery exhibition.
The Glasgow-based artists were more interested in working with each other than exhibiting their works independently. Spaces such as Transmission Gallery
72 Thompson, The Artist as Critic, 2010, pp. 242-243
73 McArthur, ‘Windfall’, 1991, p. 38 52 existed so that artists could collaborate with each other and have an open dialogue about the cultural and social function of their art. Likewise, projects such as Windfall ’91 emphasised the co-dependent working relationship between the artists and the open conversation they wished to have with the public. The artists had to work together to create a cohesive curation of the project, displaying artworks indoors that were going to be publicly viewed. In contrast with the private and financially motivated art world of London with a prominent art market, the political, anti-Thatcherite Glasgow-based artists were largely motivated by art that had its place within society and were concerned with issues such as gender and class74.
(Fig. 7: Elsie Mitchell, Installation detail, Windfall ’91, 1991)
74 Thompson, The Artist as Critic, 2010, pp. 242- 255 53
CONTEXT
Context was central to the collective vision of the artists. They considered the desolate environment in which they were working with a view to produce one large scale unified art project. Although it was a group project, the artists working in Windfall ’91 were given the freedom to do their own thing and be their own curators and were allowed to choose their own space to work in.
Influenced by Lawrence Weiner many artworks in Windfall ’91 made use of words and language to express the artists’ relationships and concerns with society. Windfall ’91 was a project that aimed to be unauthoritative and encourage artistic freedom without the presence of an obtrusive higher body.
However, the artists had similar issues of concern and all worked together in the site with the aim of producing a collaborative body of work. That there were so many interconnecting themes and styles between the artworks contributed to the sense of Windfall ’91 as one overall installation.
Unlike Stewart Home’s approach to organizing The Festival of Plagiarism, in which he considered a particular audience, the organisers of Windfall ’91 did not employ a strategy for attracting a niche audience to the exhibition. The audience who came to view Windfall ’91 had not been given any prior information which may have influenced what they expected to see. Their expectations of the exhibition were their own and how they interpreted it was determined by their own understanding and the meanings that they created. In his review of Windfall ’91 Euan McArthur defended this approach stating that “If we have no right to believe we can define ‘a public’, or the capacity to identify 54 the myriad possible ‘publics,’ there is equally no use in trying to define a strategy to reach such elusive entities75.”
Due to the artistic freedom of Windfall ’91 the artworks were not curated to appeal to a particular niche market, and so the visitors to the Seaman’s Mission could view the works and interpret them in any which way they could that might have related to their own personal understanding of the world. The overall intention of how Windfall ’91 would be experienced was one in which viewers would spend time intellectually engaging with the artworks that were framed by the inconspicuous spaces of the Seaman’s Mission. Visitors would be free to walk amongst the works and would leave with an overall impression of the exhibition as one singular artistic entity consisting of many parts. The end result of
Windfall ’91 was one which mirrored the working process of its creation in which individual artists worked together for a multi-layered project. Upon reflection, a visitor would have the opportunity to experience a working model of artists in society at large76.
CATALOGUE
The ambition of Windfall ’91 was demonstrated by the impressive looking exhibition catalogue (fig. 8) which was produced by the art publication design company Arefin&Arefin which was run by Tony Arefin. Arefin’s expertise and importance in working with art publications in Scotland brought a professional
75 McArthur, ‘Windfall’, 1991, p. 38
76 McArthur, ‘Windfall’, Variant, 1991, p. 38 55 quality and high standard to the show’s literature77. It was a glossy and colourful, attention-seeking catalogue with colour photographs of the installation, artworks and the artists, and included essays by Ross Sinclair (who was still a postgraduate student at Glasgow School of Art) and the Italian artists
Gianni Piacentini and Cassiro Berdetti78. The organisers of the show were able to get the catalogue produced because of the private and public funding that the show received, and it brought greater publicity to the show and announced to the reader the quality and ambition of the art on display.
(Fig. 8: Windfall ’91 Exhibition Catalogue, front cover)
77 Thompson, The Artist as Critic, 2010, pp. 242- 243
78 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 1997, p. 142 56
Ross Sinclair’s essay, ‘Bad Smells but No Sign of the Corpse’, was one of the main essays in the catalogue. It was non-descriptive of the exhibition. Instead
Sinclair used it to argue against the threats of economics in art and the social role that artists ought to serve. He claims that artists have to take responsibility for their careers and that choosing to work within artist-run initiatives is a conscious political choice79. Sinclair is enlightened by Malcolm Dickson’s views, as expressed in Variant Magazine, of cutting out the middle men and for artists to determine themselves how to exhibit and display their work to the public. He argues that this improves communication and collaboration amongst artists, but also highlights the problem that many artists have in relating to the public.
Sinclair writes
“Artists initiatives are a valuable way of demystifying the business of art.
They promote a sharing of information, skills and experience while also
nurturing relationships between artists which can often become fertile
breeding grounds for a horizontal and organically developing
infrastructure of cultural activity. They often embrace a desire to
communicate with that great unfashionable and unknown quality, the
general public “80.
However, Sinclair does question the financial motivation behind artists working in artist-run initiatives, recognising that the group exhibitions present an
79 Thompson, The Artist as Critic, 2010, pp. 242-245
80Ross Sinclair, ‘Bad Smells but No Signs of the Corpse’, Windfall ’91 (exhibition catalogue), Arefin&Arefin, 1991 57 opportunity for artists to market their work. He warns against the context of art’s role in society being lost to financial motivation stating that if this happens to art
“It has relinquished much of its potential for social function. It loses an
important dimension and diminishes from a potentially rounded, holistic
art practice and becomes a two-dimensional veneer. Then its meaning
and location exist primarily for the market and the cultural activity. Art
ceases to have a wider social function other than in matters of
economics”81.
RECEPTION
Being an international show brought Windfall ’91 international attention. The media coverage that it received was generally positive and favourable towards the exhibition. As well as being reviewed in Variant by Euan McArthur, it was also well received in London arts publications, particularly in the first issue of
Frieze Magazine which gave it a lot of coverage, including an interview that
Frieze co-founder Matthew Slotover held with Douglas Gordon, Nathan Coley and
Martin Boyce.
The increase in international attention given to artists such as Gordon, Coley and
Boyce as well as other artists like Craig Richardson, Christine Borland and Kevin
Henderson brought wider recognition to artists’ initiatives such as Transmission
81 Visualising Glasgow in 2005, Commissioned by IDEA Magazine, Romania, 2005, http://www.shiftyparadigms.org/on_glasgow.htm 58 and the shows it was putting on82. Similarly, the success of a show such as
Windfall ’91 raised the profile of neo-conceptual artists83. Windfall ’91 was a pivotal moment in Glasgow’s neo-conceptual art history. However, after the success and attention that Windfall ’91 received, Nathan Coley commented that
Glasgow lacked a “kunsthalle” for contemporary artists to properly exhibit their work. Although, he did add that: “Maybe, perversely, that is a good thing for the practitioners, in that they need to find another way84.”
CONCLUSION
Bringing an established large-scale European project like Windfall to Glasgow matched Transmission’s ambitions of being part of the international art scene.
Transmission used Windfall to raise its international profile but also to give inexperienced artists a platform to work alongside established artists.
Windfall ’91 was a project that allowed artists to work with and support each other and the working process of the exhibition was considered as important as the end result. Context was important in relating to the desolate setting of the
Seaman’s Mission, but context of audience was not considered in great depth. It was not aimed at a particular audience and it was hoped that a non-specific audience would come to Windfall ’91 with no prior expectations. It was hoped by the artists involved in Windfall ’91 that a viewer, who was free to experience the exhibition in their own way, would get the overall impression of Windfall ’91 as one large scale installation instead of the sum of its parts. That a project
82 Slotover, ‘Northern Lights’, 1991
83 Kari J. Brandtzaeg, Glasgow: A Presentation of the Art Scene in the 90’s, Oslo, 1997, p. 8
84 Nathan Coley quoted by Luke, ‘The Rise and Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene’, April, 2012 59 such as this was able to get enough financial support to meet the ambitions of its organisers demonstrates a general feeling of enthusiasm for what the artists at Transmission were doing and that its projects were becoming increasingly popular with the local population.
60
THE GLASGOW MIRACLE
The establishment of the Trongate area as a cultural quarter was strengthened with Street Level, at the time Glasgow’s only specialist photography centre, moving in 1995 from the High Street to King Street, becoming a new neighbour to Transmission and Glasgow Print Studio85. In 2009 the relationship between these venues was strengthened with the creation of Trongate 103 by Glasgow
City Council. This saw the redeveloped of the building that Transmission, Street
Level and Glasgow Print Studio shared into a large multi-arts facility that is also shared with, Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, Glasgow Media Access Centre (GMAC),
Glasgow Independent Studio (GIS) and Project Room, Project Ability, and Gallery
Cossachok.
Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist invented the term ‘the Glasgow Miracle’ to describe
Glasgow’s internationally successful art scene that emerged in the 1980s and
1990s86. Although Obrist’s term suggests supernatural powers were at work in
Glasgow, his amplified description of it does capture how passionate people were towards artist-ruin initiatives like Transmission. It has been an invaluable institution for the emergence of a critically acclaimed group of artists. Douglas
Gordon, Martin Creed, Martin Boyce, Richard Wright and Simon Starling have all won the Turner Prize in recent years, and other Transmission artists have been
85 MacDonald, ‘The Trouble with Postmodernism’, 2006, p. 61
86 Brandtzaeg, Glasgow, 1997, p. 8 61 nominees, many of them originating from Glasgow School of Art’s Environmental
Art Department.
Currently a major research project is taking place into the city’s artistic renaissance that began in the late 1970s and early 80s. The research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is a joint project between CCA and the School of Art that is being led by director of the
CCA, Francis McKee, and Ross Sinclair87. The research will involve the study of material dating onwards from the creation of the Third Eye Centre in 1972. The materials consist of archives from the Third Eye Centre and CCC, archives of The
George and Cordelia Oliver Collection (Cordelia Oliver was making her archives of the history before she died), video recordings taken of events and performances, and interviews with artists and other people who were directly involved. The materials collected, organised and archived to create a public archive that will be accessible to academics, students and the general public88.
87 Keith Bruce, ‘Bringing Art to the Lives of the People’, The Herald, 25th January, 2012, http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/visual/bringing-art-to-the-lives-of-the- people.2012018385
88 The Glasgow Miracle: Materials for Alternative Histories’, glasgowmiracle.blogspot.com, http://glasgowmiracle.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-project.html
62
CONCLUSION
There has been much written about Transmission and its socially driven programme. Most of what has been reported has been written by artists who were working to accomplish their politically artistic aspirations. Unfortunately there is no commentary from the local audience that Transmission aimed to work for, so the documentation of the events is biased, arguing how successful the projects and exhibitions have been. Although the artists believed that there work was for the benefit of the working-class and that they were increasing the accessibility of art for the general public, their work was more widely reviewed and discussed by fellow artists than layed-off ship workers. There was a sense of naivety amongst the artists who believed in the power of their own art to make society better. It could also have come across as patronizing that these young artists thought they could help to improve the education of a person that probably just lost their job after a 20 year career in the docks.
However, that Transmission survived during such a difficult economic time
shows that it was well supported and that a lot of volunteers had put a lot of
hard work into keeping it running. Most of its audience and members were
artists and art students and other people involved in the cultural scene of the
city. The Environmental Art students brought practical experience gained from
their Public Art Projects of how to converse with a local population and give a
public what they wanted and needed. The notion of context meant that artists
working increasingly considered the local population and environment. The
neo-conceptual art that was produced at Transmission by its own admission 63
needed to be viewed to be given meaning and intrinsic value. In this sense it
was in the artists’ interests for their work to be viewed by an audience.
That Transmission received increased funding and financial support demonstrates that it was gaining greater attention and publicity both nationally and internationally. Its increased media attention would also have generated greater interest from the local populace as to what was going on in their part of town. Transmission used Variant to voice its opinions publically and to inform people about its exhibitions and events. Transmission also attracted non arts people through its doors by throwing parties for shows and having bands come in that created a buzz that appealed to people not related to the gallery. This was
Transmission’s great success: being a social environment in which various different types of people from across culture could come and learn or be inspired or meet like-minded people, or just have a good time.
64
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