Highlights from the next few months at CCA. You can visit our website for a full and up-to-date programme.
Pinkie Maclure — 17/06/23 - 12/08/23
Working with intricate stained glass, ambisonic voices and moving image, Lost Congregation transforms the gallery space into an eerie, abandoned chapel haunted by the echoes of its lost congregation.
Turn to page 5 for more…
Ditch Me
Rhona Mühlebach — Coming soon...
Rhona Mühlebach’s new work draws on the gradual evolution of the Scottish landscape, transposing historical aspects into a new fictional universe.
Check page 8 for more…
Eleni Wittbrodt — 12/05/23 - 03/06/23
Turn to page 14 for a look back…
Jack Cheetham — 16/08/23 - 02/09/23
Turn to page 10 for more…
Wei Zhou — 08/09/23 - 30/09/23
Turn to page 12 for more...
Sister Films
Alex Hetherington
Turn to page 18 for more...
Element
Body Remedy — Various dates 04/07/23 - 01/08/23
Embodiment workshops by and for black people and people of colour who identify as women and non-binary.
Turn to page 22 for more...
Glasgow Zine Fest
Glasgow Zine Library — 08/07/23 & 09/07/23
A weekend-long festival celebrating zines & DIY culture with workshops, talks and a 2 day zine fair.
Contact Improvisation Jam
The Glasgow Jam — 15/07/23, 12/08/23, 14/10/23
Improvised dance/movement based around contact improvisation, with facilitated warmup. All welcome.
Scottish International Short Film Festival
10/08/23 - 12/08/23
Scottish International Short Film Festival will showcase exceptional, Scottish and international short films.
INCLINATIONS Film Club
16/08/23 & 13/09/23
Volunteer-run film club aiming to show Scottish premieres with a tasty variety of genres and styles.
Radiophrenia
21/08/23 - 03/09/23
Radiophrenia is an artist-run FM radio station broadcasting in Glasgow and online.
Turn to page 24 for more...
The Skinny — 06/09/23 - 03/10/23
The Skinny’s film club is back! First up, Ira Sachs’s much-anticipated love triangle drama Passages.
Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival 2023
12/09/23 - 16/09/23
Scotland’s first festival of Eastern European and Central Asian cinema, now in its second edition.
ho.rr collective — 20/09/23
Workshop and artist moving image screening exploring work and labour.
Journey to the East
22/09/23 - 30/09/23
A visionary performance festival exploring radical art and culture – in a journey to the other side…
Turn to page 26 for more...
SQIFF 2023
26/09/23 - 30/09/23
Glasgow’s international festival for LGBTQ+ film and cinema.
Take Me Somewhere: A festival of contemporary performance
13/10/23 - 30/10/23
Programme announcements from summer 2023
Field Day
29/07/23
Join our small, social garden team and help take care of crops grown for Glasgow Seed Library.
17 June — 12 August 2023
11:00am — 6:00pm
Pinkie Maclure’s debut solo exhibition.
Working with intricate stained glass, ambisonic voices and moving image, Pinkie Maclure’s Lost Congregation transforms the gallery space into an eerie, abandoned chapel haunted by the echoes of its lost congregation.
Maclure uses a multitude of techniques, including engraving, painting and layering to create poignant, darkly humorous stained glass vignettes full of symbolism, which explore her personal demons as well as pressing issues such as climate change, insomnia and addiction.
Lost Congregation’s centrepiece installation “The Soil” is a collaboration with 3D sound scenographer John Wills. Made from 70% salvaged glass from a Victorian greenhouse which collapsed in a storm, the installation laments our disappearing countryside and its distracted, fragmented communities. Amidst this mourning, it also celebrates nature’s remarkable ability to breathe life into forgotten places, with the aid of grassroots activism.
“My whole life had been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first compost heap”.
Bette MidlerPerformances:
The space will host a series of performances throughout the show’s run. Like a member of a lost congregation, Pinkie will sing original songs, laments and chants, manipulated in 3D by sound scenographer John Wills, creating an atmosphere of windswept longing and hope.
Saturday 15 July | 5pm, Saturday 5 August | 5pm
The Antonine Wall stretched across Scotland from the Clyde to the Forth. It was the Roman Empire’s final border in Britain and its construction has left a still-visible scar across the country. Rhona Mühlebach’s new work – Ditch M e – draws on the gradual evolution of that landscape, transposing historical aspects into a new fictional universe. A variety of characters and stories populate her film: Roman and medieval soldiers, a barber, two lovers, lice, some slime mould, a thief, a humming violinist, and a latrine cleaner, among others. In the spirit of world-building, this tapestry of anecdotal events is linked through the ditch-world, suggesting a series of multi-dimensional slices of time. In this strange new realm, even slime mould can become an articulate character or an all-powerful being. For Mühlebach, this creation touches on questions of how a narrative is generated. For Ursula Le Guin, a vital world builder, finding new ways to tell stories was essential. In her essay, The Carrier-Bag Theory of Fiction she declares that:
“It sometimes seems that that story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished.”
And so she found herself writing in a non-heroic, inclusive style:
“when I came to write science-fiction novels, I came lugging this great heavy sack of stuff, my carrier bag full of wimps and klutzes, and tiny grains of things smaller than a mustard seed, and intricately woven nets which when laboriously unknotted are seen to contain one blue pebble, an imperturbably functioning chronometer telling the time on another world, and a mouse’s skull; full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand.”
This may offer a useful approach to Mühlebach’s consideration of narrative and storytelling. As Le Guin points out, ‘It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.’
Jack Cheetham
16 August — 2 September 2023
Opening event 18 August, 6pm - 9pm
Trapped in a coffin with nothing to do… is an installation by artist Jack Cheetham. With the help of community and puppetry, the exhibition speculates on visions of future hometowns, families, loves, demons, and pals.
The interactive installation is an imagining of a forgotten puppet show that takes place in and around ruined castle grounds, set in the year 2066, in the fictional town of Helldham, Angelshireland. The puppet show has been abandoned due to a mass puppeteer revolt. The show is full of knackered puppets (to be reanimated by the exhibition’s audience, becoming the puppeteer), in which several characters together try to break up with the main character, the Castle.
Some of Cheetham’s characters featured in the show include: Castle; Castle Babe; The Chimneys; The Hands of G’rem; and a cult made up of Freshly Baked Revolutionary Village Bread.
Puppets have a ‘life of their own’, and Cheetham is interested in how puppet play is used in theatrical and therapeutic contexts, and how it can be used as an alternative mode of communication through roleplay as a treatment for trauma.
The exhibition will examine the potential and ongoing failures of its creators through the imagining of a certain consumer-driven fantasied moment in time. It will be rooted in contemplations around consumer cultures, labours, and legacies. It will also incorporate expanded forms of caricature, cartooning & character design. All are realised as a mode of personifying, exhausting, and evaporating the effects that objects and materials can have on people and their communities over time.
Jack Cheetham is an artist and educator. He was raised in Derbyshire, England, and has lived in Glasgow since 2012. Since studying on the MFA programme at Glasgow School of Art, he has also focused on community arts work & teaching.
8 September — 30 September 2023
Opening 8 September, 6pm - 9pm
The Unspeakable In Pursuit Of The Uneatable is an immersive, visceral exhibition that intertwines Chinese Zhiguai tales (“tales of the strange”) and science fiction/speculative fiction. It features a 3-channel video installation accompanied by furry textiles and a scent that blends organic and non-organic elements. This exhibition seeks to address the structural oppression and systematic discrimination faced by monsterised and pathologised sexual minority bodies, specifically East Asian women. Instead of passive control and governance, the artist seeks alternative ways of self-alienation and bodily metamorphosis/modification to embody desires, thereby helping viewers process and relate to their personal and collective trauma of feeling uncategorized and being in-between.
This body of work uses frameworks of different versions of Huli jing’s stories, incorporating narratives around “hunting” and the history of fox hunting in the UK, bringing together the past, present, and future. Huli jing (Chinese: 狐狸精 ; ‘fox spirit’) is a Chinese mythological creature that is capable of shapeshifting, and may either be a benevolent or malevolent spirit, the nine-tailed fox, jiuweihu (Chinese: 九尾狐 ; ‘ninetailed fox’), being the most well-known.
This rewrite of a Huli jing’s story emphasises their interspecies transformation ability and control over their own sexuality, which is subversive and queered. This version of Huli jing’s story will be presented in a soft sci-fi visual style, featuring visually stimulating lighting and futuristic settings. The story aims to explore the meaning of ancient mythological narratives in modern times, human and non-human relationships, and our understanding of femininity, sexualities, and desires through a non-male-centric and non-human-centric gaze.
Wei Zhou (b.1993) is a Chinese filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in Glasgow, UK. Her art practice encompasses video, photography, sound, and writing.
We welcomed Eleni Wittbrodt to Intermedia for her show THINGISH that ran from 12 May - 3 June. THINGISH brought together photographic images in a temporary sculptural setting.
Eleni told us more about the works in the show:
“Pacemakers” is a series of impressions: defined areas of white, pink and orange enclosed in darker, grey and violet fields. The colours are the result of a chemical reaction. Silver gelatin paper is sensitive to light and normally used in photo laboratory settings to produce black and white prints. Exposure to the sun tints the surface, registering the light. I produced these images in a time of studying the works of other artists, learning by observation. In the spatial logic of the studio, it made sense to short-circuit from input to output directly.
During reading breaks, I placed open books on photographic paper and left them on the desk for the sun to wander across. The books are part of my personal library, consisting mostly of work by womxn artists and writers who explore image production in expansive ways. I thought about them when I titled the series “Pacemakers”. A pacemaker is a companion in endurance sports whose task it is to help another person maintain a steady pace – not only ensuring that a certain time is achieved, but also moderating speed to avoid early fatigue.
“Smaller world” is a construction of flatpack furniture fragments, pragmatically stacked and assembled to create miniature rooms. These creations are hybrids of play and composition, standing still for the duration of the exhibition but ready to shift shape and status again (by being returned to where they were purchased or reassembled into a useful piece of furniture). There is a certain invisibility surrounding the white particle board objects. Maybe that’s because we’ve become
accustomed to the ubiquitous material, we don’t actively see it anymore, our attention drawn instead to the images within.
Mounted onto the walls of the miniature rooms are six black and white photograms, with an additional one installed at the same height on the gallery wall. These photograms display a range of blurry keyhole shapes on pieces of paper small enough to fit into the palm of one’s hand. In response to restricted access to communal and public spaces, such as studios and facilitates throughout 2020/21, I produced these images to recalibrate my practice. I would carry pieces of photographic paper in my pockets, and whenever I encountered a large keyhole, I would briefly exposed it to the light leaking through. These 1:1 imprints fantasise about photography, envisioning it as a dataset or a survey of size and shape, and suggest that images are part of a metabolism shared between body and environment.
Eleni Wittbrodt is a visual artist based in Glasgow. Her practice encompasses photographic and spatial processes which interrogate the dynamics of production and presentation. She studied Fine Art at Kunsthochschule Mainz, Germany, and at The Glasgow School of Art, Scotland.
Pacemakers (2022) | Series of unique prints, sunlight exposures on silver gelatin paper. Installed with neodymium magnets on steel nails.
Smaller World (2021/2023) | Stacked furniture fragments, white coated particle board. Series of unique photograms, exposures on silver gelatin paper.
Following Hetherington’s 2022 exhibition with Scott Caruth, Seen and Not Seen, Sister Films was commissioned decidedly as an online-only project for CCA Annex in conjunction with Rectangle Design Studio.
The film was made with Catherine Street in collaboration with Luke Fowler, Wendy Kirkup and Scott Baxter. Sister Films raises questions about how we perceive the materiality of 16mm film, taking a deeper dive into the ideas introduced in Hetherington’s previous work.
Head to CCA Annex to experience the work, and read an illuminating textual response from Jessica Higgins, co-published with MAP Magazine.
As we take the next steps for CCA’s Courtyard, we warmly invite visitors to make the most of this laid-back civic-led space. Use our free wifi to engage in focused work, or simply meet up, unwind and hang out.
We’re delighted to announce that you can now grab coffee in the space! We welcome local independent pop-up vendor, Adam from Coffee Cart Culture. Adam will be serving a selection of hot beverages and snacks from his mobile coffee cart. The cart will be open from 11am to 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday, alongside our free drinking water stations.
The Courtyard will play host to a number of relaxed events and workshops throughout the summer months, keep an eye on our website and social media for details!
CCA’s open-source programming strand is a citizen-led process, and means that we share our building and resources with a range of artists, individuals and organisations.
We’re really open to new ideas, and invite anyone who has a suggestion for an event to get in touch. You can simply email us to start a conversation or simply pop in and ask.. You can find more information on our website.
Various dates 04/07/23 - 01/08/23
Who is Body Remedy, and what do you do?
Body Remedy is an incubator to practise and accumulate tools through embodiment practices. Our programme spans workshops, live listening sessions, residencies and artist development.
We create spaces for gathering, exchanges and learning which we hope facilitates pathways for individuals to shape their own self-directed practice. This (still)-forming ecology is tended to by both teachers and participants who share the learnings, skills and creative practices that ground us in our lives.
Can you talk a little about creating a space and “ecology”, what hopes do you have for the growing community of black people and people of colour who participate in and run workshops with you?
In this contemporary moment of heightened precarity, anti-blackness and limited access to holistic forms of support, it is increasingly crucial to develop tools and strategies for our endurance and perseverance. Body Remedy sits as a meeting place for our collective need and possibility.
Our programme is an acknowledgment that our physical, psychological, creative and collective realities are all interrelated, and so developing our knowledge through this process is crucial. Our hope is to foster self-value, self-love and creative development, allowing for continued growth and evolution, in whatever capacity.
Weather is interchangeable in its nature. It can be a form of nourishment and it can tell us parts of our story. The elements have the power to impact our mood and influence our mental and psychological state. We explore how the “weather” and “climate” are embodied and what we have to “acclimatise” to. The programme pays particular attention to sound the internal frequencies in our bodies. Body Remedy’s activity is inspired by the following quote by bell hooks in Sisters of the Yam: “ The way is one, and the paths are many. We all need to go somewhere to restore our souls. We need to be on that path to recovery and to wholeness. Healing body, mind, and spirit redeems us, no matter where we are in our life—lost or found. When we choose to heal, when we choose to love, we are choosing liberation. This is where all authentic activism begins. ”
21/08/23 - 03/09/23
What is Radiophrenia?
Radiophrenia is an artist-run radio station broadcasting temporarily from the CCA. It’s a two week exploration of sound and radio art. Radiophrenia aims to promote radio as an art form and encourage experimental approaches to the medium not catered for by mainstream stations. We have a series of live-to-air events programmed in the CCA theatre. Artists are invited to create performances that work for both the theatre audience and the unseen audience listening at home. We have a programme of local and international acts lined up for these shows.
How can people tune in?
Listeners in Glasgow can tune in on their radios at 87.9FM. Listeners around the world can stream the broadcast from our website Radiophrenia.scot. There will also be a listening space at CCA.
Are there any acts or performers you’re particularly excited about or would like to highlight?
We have planned for a few years to get multi-disciplinary polymath Nwando Ebizie to do a live performance, which has been cancelled twice due to Covid. Hopefully third time lucky. She’ll be performing a piece with Tom Richards, who designs and builds his own electronic instruments. She promises “A multisensory, psychedelic, polyrhythmic mythic feast of movement, light, poetry and sound unfolds and you are invited into this liminal space for a spiraling cyclic ritual”. But everyone in the line-up will bring a unique perspective to the possibilities of live radio.
The airwaves represent an invisible yet accessible domain largely neglected by the contemporary art world. Radio as an art form has an ability to create a sense of community amongst a disparate and geographically isolated set of listeners, whilst generating the excitement and energy implicit in a live broadcast. We believe radio to be an egalitarian medium that can be used to disseminate challenging and thought provoking ideas to a wide audience of listeners whilst also giving people the opportunity and skills they need to make radio themselves, their own way.
22/09/23 - 30/09/23
CCA are thrilled to host Journey to the East Festival, a visionary performance festival exploring radical art and culture. We spoke to the festival’s director Jian Yi about what to expect from this year’s festival.
Could you tell us a little about Journey to the East Festival?
Journey to the East is an artist-led performance art and contemporary culture festival. It was first launched in 2021 with a focus on working with PoC, queer artists, and allies, and exploring live art-based contemporary practices inspired by Eastern mysticism. The festival brings local, national and international artists to Glasgow audiences, including multiple Scottish premieres.
The name of the festival is based on Herman Hesse’s novel of the same title, turning a renewed interest around creative practices inspired by Eastern arts and spirituality. It represents a metaphorical (or metaphysical) journey that explores different territories of the human psyche and society.
We are interested in exploring different models of cultural curation that stem from artists’ lived experiences and reflect current experimental practices. As the first in-person festival since the pandemic lockdowns, JTTE 2021 sought to reinvigorate and renew the Glasgow live arts ecology with a focus on amplifying the voices of artists of colour, and as an artist-led grassroots project – create a space for diverse audiences in Scotland to engage in collective experiences of ritual and community.
While the first edition of JTTE explored the journey to the “other side” of the self thematically, the upcoming edition delves into the journey to the “other side” of one another – in terms of our social relations, breaking down taboos and exploring the complex dynamics of how we relate to one another in society. Positioned between social protest and a meditation on performance art and life, the 2023 festival will explore community in a deeper sense of the word, outside of normative relations and institutionalised hierarchy.
Our priority is programming immersive, experiential and dialogical performance, forward-thinking discourse and artworks that bring new experiences to Glasgow audiences. This year’s works and artist talks will engage with topics of relationality – particularly how we can better come to understand one another and find new territories of social relations. We will explore ways of how to un-bottle ourselves – from talking about grief and the things we don’t communicate, to how we could transform our relations...
Is there anything you’re particularly excited about in this year’s programme?
This year’s JTTE 2023 programme will include masterclass creative practice workshops, live performances, artist talks, panel discussions and film screenings that explore the topics we’re interested in. There will be a renewed focus on participatory engagement with our audiences, including events featuring music and collective dance-floor experiences. We’re really interested this year in the notion of collective dialogue and artist engagement – bringing in a sense of conversation, consideration and opening up to each other. The guest speakers this year address contemporary topics that impact us as artists making work today. We will also be organising a workshop series in July at CCA for local artists and the community. This series aims to build a sense of trajectory for this year’s festival and find new platforms for local artists to explore creative practices together! I’ll be really excited to lead these workshops at CCA, which will directly contribute to the formation of the September festival, alongside collaborating artist-associate Clarinda Tse.
You’ll find all event details on our website’s “What’s On” page or pop in to chat to our friendly reception staff, who can also be reached on 0141 352 4900.
Stay informed of every event and exhibition on our social media:
Twitter: CCA_Glasgow
Instagram: CCA_Glasgow
Facebook: CCA Glasgow
Centre for Contemporary Arts
350 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3JD
