GSA Supplement 2023

Degree Show

Welcome to this preview of The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2023. The GSA Degree Show – the annual exhibition of graduating undergraduate and postgraduate work – is one of the highlights of the Scottish arts calendar, and as ever our graduating students have put on a show that represents the ingenuity and bold, inquisitive spirit of our creative community.

The features in this special supplement explore some of the works on show at the Degree Show across our five specialist schools: the Mackintosh School of Architecture, the School of Fine Art, the School of Design, the Innovation School and the School of Simulation and Visualisation. Our writers are all students in their third year of study who have a better insight than most on the materials, concerns and approaches that underpin the GSA creative community.

As ever there are works in this show that are reflective, as well as works that are provocative; works that respond to some of the most urgent concerns of the modern world, and works that ask us to connect with deeply personal and intimate worlds. Our graduates continue to present work that illustrates their commitment to shaping perspectives, problem solving and foregrounding ethical approaches to material, art and design. The features explore these commitments in more detail, and expand on some of the methods and materials that underpin them. Each offers an informed and interesting starting point for exploring the Degree Show.

Once again, the launch of the physical Degree Show will coincide with an online showcase. The digital platform offers

Welcomevisitors to the exhibition, as well as audiences across the world, the opportunity to delve deeper into the work of this year’s graduating cohort. It contains pages curated by GSA graduates, which offer insights into their work and practice, often beyond their degree show presentation. It also offers students the chance to group their work and practice by theme, meaning that digital visitors can explore works that respond to particular concerns, ideas or approaches.

This year we have expanded our range of themes, and hope that these additions offer more opportunities to engage easily with different kinds of work, offering the possibility of fresh perspectives on the traditional degree show exhibition. The Showcase for this year will launch on 1 June at 4.30pm and will continue to be developed by our graduates for the next year to help support their professional practice.

If you are interested in finding out more about The Glasgow School of Art, check out the Heads Up section at the back of the supplement, which highlights some of the things we’re looking forward to in the months ahead.

Finally, we hope you enjoy this exclusive look at this year’s Degree Show. A huge thank you to our student writers who have worked hard to bring the supplement together, and congratulations to The Glasgow School of Art Class of 2023.

The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2023 runs from 2-11 Jun IG: @glasgowschoolart | T: @GSofA | gsashowcase.net

Dusty Watts, Communication Design

Features

4 Students at the Mackintosh School of Architecture focus on the challenges of climate change, biodiversity, engaging communities and breathing new life into forgotten infrastructures.

6 From sustainable solutions to rebellious approaches to fashion, a closer look at some of the students’ work from the six main programmes which make up the School of Design.

8 Students from the School of Fine Art have been experimental in their approach to material enquiry, producing works of art that are critical yet romantic, dystopian yet hopeful.

10 Students from the School of Simulation and Visualisation have created fully formed, imaginative immersive spaces, with shared interests in sustainability and audience engagement.

11 With topics ranging from contraception to new ways of creating a cultural connection, students from the Innovation School demonstrate a fiery commitment to solving realworld problems with design.

13 Pushing the material potential of mediums, research, investigation and theoretical thought, the graduating Master of Fine Art students share an interest in the personal and experiential.

14 For a Heads Up on many of the goings on at the GSA this summer and beyond, a twopage guide to special cultural events, parties, exhibitions, courses and more.

Image Credits: (Top to bottom, left to right) Olivia Bissell; Vytautas Bikauskas; Haneen Hadiy; Alexandra Bell; Mio Nevin; Phyllis McGowan; courtesy of GSASA

High Fashion Flyers Katie Smith,

Dolmen, Billy Paterson, Communication Design

Architecture

Words: Lewis Hall

This academic year has seen the Mackintosh School of Architecture, in its home at the Bourdon Building, operating at full capacity once more. The graduating student cohort have addressed the challenges of climate change and biodiversity in their responses, exploring how design can provide solutions to pressing societal issues and focusing on the benefit of the people who inhabit the spaces, both in the communities of Glasgow and Europe.

Students have also had the pleasure of being able to attend a Friday lecture series, organised by Stage 4 students, that explored ‘Re-establishing Identities’. The series highlighted ways practitioners are engaging, collaborating, and co-creating architecture through alternative creative processes. MASS, the School of Architecture's Student Society, also championed student engagement. Throughout the year the team, comprised primarily of Stage 2 and 3 students, organised several successful social events, some of which focused on developing the relationships between students and staff.

Stage 3 students imagined new ways of cohabitation and engaging communities in the form of an Urban Food Exchange (UFEx), the low-energy home of food growth, production, and education. Through re-establishing a function for the Forth and Clyde Canal, an arterial remnant of Glasgow’s industrial past, Stage 3 looked to breathe new life into forgotten infrastructure that celebrates our city’s rich urban fabric and vibrant history.

Rachel Houston’s Vertical Factory emerged from a synthesis of context and community where place meets people. Within a glazed circulatory atrium at the building’s core, Rachel’s vertical assembly line is inspired by the need for food education and transparent food production that promotes individual wellbeing and the building of community. The building itself acts as a beacon of light within the landscape, has a locally sourced and low carbon material palette and is a physical representation of circular economy.

Donnie Reid draws on the history of a place and how industrial vernacular may inform future urban development. His response seeks to provide flexible and interconnected spaces through the freedom of open plans. Terraces create horizontal connection between spaces despite the steeply sloping site and reinterpret the existing landscaping enhancing the link between canal and community. The result is a building that, embedded in its landscape, enhances the relationship between people as well as the urban and rural realms.

Kirsten McCall seeks to connect food with architecture. Her project Slate Six Ways refers to an experience in a Michelin Star restaurant and explores how architecture can be interpreted and experienced. On her ‘material menu’ she gives us slate chips, tiles, slabs, walling, clay, and gabion baskets, all sourced from pre-existing stocks, reusing slate commonly found in Scotland on roofs and as country boundary walls. The food in focus within this dark building is produce that favours shady corners, all grown, prepped, sold, cooked, and eaten on site. Kirsten’s response creates an immersive experience that educates communities about food and architecture.

Anthony Di Gaetano intends to connect the public to food, the arts, and horticultural education in his Urban Sanctuary of Horticulture and Conviviality. An interplay of masonry and timber expresses sacred typologies through ornament and form which create architecture with atmosphere. Sacred spaces are intended to evoke a sense of tranquillity and transcendence in the user that create a sense of connection and meaning between user and their context.

Calum Paterson sought to reimagine the potential of the Forth and Clyde Canal as a means for better and healthier living. His UFEx acts as a multifunctional building typology that aims to revive

the canal as a biodiverse, low carbon hub for the transportation of food to the wider city. He explores community exchange and believes the right to a healthy lifestyle should be universal. His building seeks to transform its local context creating a landmark that will foster the re-emergence of the canal as a place to serve your community.

Stage 4 have had a focus on reinvigorating culture, education, and the arts within the community. By focusing on deprived areas of Glasgow the cohort explored how developing a sense of place and bringing people together can be a catalyst for local change and progression.

Nirali Bhatts-Roberts looks to develop multiculturalism in Dennistoun in Glasgow’s East End by creating a multi-faith place of worship. By uniting people of all faiths under one roof the building celebrates people’s similarities whilst still allowing for individual worship in smaller rooms that cater for the needs of each faith. The natural material palette and ventilation create a sense that the building is born of the earth, deepening the spiritual connection people experience within its walls.

Beatrice Rogojan’s housing development seeks to attract young families to Dennistoun in a bid to transform it into a vibrant and thriving community. She does so through various housing

Students at the Mackintosh School of Architecture focus on the challenges of climate change, biodiversity, engaging communities and breathing new life into forgotten infrastructures

Beatrice Rogojan, Stage 4, Architecture

typologies that are interconnected by a winter garden, and which display vernacular design elements. The Earth Housing project focuses on ecological and economical design aspects through circular materials in the hope that their use is reflected in how occupants live their lives.

The final year students in Stage 5 undertook their own interpretations of ‘The Ethical City’, and after a trip to Brussels have produced some breathtaking work. This work, as well as Stage 3 and 4, will be available to view at gsashowcase.net from 4.30pm on 1 June.

Rachel Crooks’ project, Quarrying the Ruinscape to Bring the Palais to Justice, draws on Kengo Kuma’s essay on the Anti-Object alongside the concept of ‘Ruin-lust’ as captured in the etchings of Piranesi. Her thesis has the intent of reinvestigating the potential to reignite a global circular economy, by setting up a framework to identify redundant buildings as pre-emptive ruins to be quarried and recirculated. With a focus on the Palais de Justice in Brussels, its spolia would be harnessed to initially construct a network of material workshops to aid material flow, reworking a realignment to circular practices.

Olivia Bissell’s project explores the themes of cultural protection both conceptually and physically in the form of an archive for the city of

Brussels. The theme of protection is symbolized in the heavy floating structures encapsulated within a light ethereal skin. Her concept aims to allow for public engagement with the archive, whilst protecting and celebrating the objects and information within. The building itself sits as a beacon within the city of Brussels, nestled in the diverse and rich districts of Molenbeek and Anderlecht, aiming to engage and connect a diverse population through the landscape it creates as well as the space within.

Adam Cowan’s project responds to the slightly claustrophobic density of Brussels’ historic territory, Marollen. Themes of repair, connection and collective resource were identified and used as the architectural thesis, leading to the

design of a climate campus – an international hub for institutions and activists, drawing on Brussels’ political significance in Europe. Unpicking the patterns of Marollen – from the urban scale to the city block, down to the block interiors – reveals intimate, organic spaces of surprisingly varied use. He aims to create new civic spaces while maintaining the intrigue of the historic blocks’ streets, thresholds and interiors.

Myia Robinson’s thesis presents itself as a holistic and multicultural masterplan proposal for an underutilised site beside the canal’s edge in an area of Brussels between Molenbeek, Anderlecht and The City of Brussels. Led by a strong interest in organic architecture and from the recognition that there is a general lack of accessible, green, public spaces around Brussels, her thesis proposes an expanse of new urban landscaping and natural pools which reshape the existing canal’s edge and utilises its water source.

For any reader interested in design, architecture, model making, illustration or indeed the development of Glasgow, please do take the time to visit this year’s Degree Show. Having the opportunity to see this amazing body of work in person is not to be missed!

The Mackintosh School of Architecture Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun at Fleming House, 134 Renfrew Street, and the Grace and Clark Fyfe Gallery, Bourdon Building, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Rachel Houston, Stage 3, Architecture

Olivia Bissell, Stage 5, Architecture

Design

We take a closer look at some of the students’ work from the six main programmes which make up the School of Design

Words: Zina Russanova, Militsa Milenkova, Lindsay Mahood and Claudia Langley-Mills

The Glasgow School of Art has generated another exciting cohort in this year’s School of Design, most of whom began in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. Graduating in 2023, they join the world of upcoming designers, following in the footsteps of world-renowned alumni.

Communication Design

This year, Communication Design took a playful route to exploring popular cultures from around the world. The theme opens up a variety of perspectives and technical approaches, and allows students to experiment with any medium. They are a group confident in expressing their strong concepts and proficient making skills. This year, many fourth-year students take advantage of the opportunity to explore and expertly tailor the moving image format.

Nancy Heley, a designer for Glasgow University Magazine, demonstrates her capacity to master skills in numerous fields by showing her short film How To Drink Irn Bru, which depicts Scots’ passionate and humorous relationship with the iconic drink. Dusty Watts explores the potential of humour by creating a light-hearted story in a mockumentary-style film about Brad ‘The Butcher’ Benson, a fictional character who unravels the mysterious theatricality of World Wrestling Entertainment through an analysis of the wrestling culture’s everchanging aesthetics. Sport, being an important component of culture in general, remains a major focus of the students.

Eliza Hart, who is interested in cultural identity and contrasts past with contemporary, juxtaposes English football with the Church of England, both ritualistic English groups, and evaluates both through the prism of the increasing tendency towards secularisation. Eliza's project resulted in a variety of outcomes, including a Conservatoire singer participating and chanting in his chorister’s garments and a football scarf, which she considers a highlight of the process.

Culture is also studied from the standpoint of social issues. Chloe Dalziel’s charcoal animation, To Fuel The Fire, draws on the experience of being a domestic abuse victim and focuses on rage fueled by the Scottish courts’ failure to provide support. This project exposes the hopeless state of the court system through the hideous bodily transformations of the animation’s main character and attempts to provide a sense of relatability to anyone living a similar situation.

Malcolm Allan, who grew up in North Lanarkshire, also reflects on his experiences in his

research series titled Along The Periphery in which he provides a glimpse into a world that many, including some Glaswegians, are unaware of. He collects stories about the city shedding its working-class identity and becoming touristic by documenting Glasgow’s outer ‘overspill’ housing structures with his digital camera.

In conversations with MDes Communication Design students, they expressed their highly hopeful and enthusiastic attitude about their time at the GSA, where the tutors’ persistent support allowed them to fall in love with their exploration process.

Shawna Li, for example, learned the value of visualisation through her work with abstract graphics and geometric shapes. Food culture was a connecting point for others. Megan Park creates T-shirt print designs as a celebration of Italian cuisine, while Yucheng Chen’s illustrations discuss the presentation of Chinese diaspora culture mixed with her childhood memories.

Interior Design

As students asked larger-scale cultural questions, they were also thinking with care about a place they love, particularly about the sustainable solutions in their hands, and Interior Design students are no exception. Aino Larvala, in her studio practice, is interested in creating easily accessible spaces that strive to prolong the life cycle of household objects by repairing and upcycling them in one convenient spot. Her Glasgow City Workshop project rethinks the purpose of department stores and replaces the notion of purchases with repair and remaking by proposing a community space where people can come together in a non-consuming and creative way to demonstrate that an inner city sustainable lifestyle can be affordable, easy and fun.

Product Design Engineering

Product Design graduate India Hay’s work takes an intriguing approach towards the enhancement of user experience. TacTILE is a haptic floor tiling system, designed to be used in theme parks. It uses low-frequency vibration to provide a unique sensation and helps create a memorable experience for theme park visitors. Its modular tile system is fully scalable and the vibrotactile sensation of each individual tile can be customised. Making a positive impact on people’s lives is at the centre of Katherine Hancock’s work. Her Universal Stretcher Wheel Unit is designed to aid Mountain Rescue teams by reducing the time

Scarlett David-Gray, Fashion

Aino Larvala, Interior Design

Megan Park, Communication Design

needed to attach and detach their stretchers onto it. Its lightweight aluminium structure and wide bike tyre provide easy, quick and efficient transportation and descent over any terrain.

Michael Gartside’s main goal is to develop a machine to ease small-scale waste management. In order to ensure it can be applied anywhere in the world, the manual compaction mechanism is designed to be simple and economical. The box structure is created by welding the steel sheet components, and the key mechanism involves steel gears, which multiply the force applied by the user through the crank handle by four times on the compaction plate.

Silversmithing and Jewellery

Inspired by brutalist architecture and her admiration for contrasting materials, Lucy Johnson’s final collection, titled For the Love of Concrete, includes both wearable and sculptural objects. She uses techniques such as scoring and folding, texturing and oxidising metal which she combines with cast concrete objects to create sharp, geometric shapes that deceive viewer perception. The pieces consist of multiple, modular components resembling the external structure of buildings.

Alice Biolo’s collection, Under the skin, is comprised of nine hollow, silver brooches, each incorporating a hidden compartment of spiky steel pins. The work focuses on pain and trauma and aims to start a conversation about mental health. This is achieved by hiding the pins and allowing them to be visible only from the back, giving the wearer the choice to share this detail with an audience.

Niamh Wright delves deep into her thoughts and emotions and takes inspiration by needlework and handweaving which help her to self-soothe when overwhelmed. She utilises laser cut acrylics and mother of pearl, and combines them with neon threads, silver details and handwoven wire to create evocative, complex structures. The collection identifies the positive effect the process of needlework has had for women throughout history and celebrates free-thinking and the ability to understand oneself.

Interaction Design

Vytautas Bikauskas’s work is a response to the daily notebooks his aunt Dalia kept for the past 20 years and acts as an homage to her life of transition. The work is a growing multimedia collection of responses to Dalia’s labour including prints, calendars, photographs, interviews, audiovisual and interactive media, sculpture and performance.

Collaboration is of fundamental importance to Vytautas and the performative elements included are interpretations of students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Inese Verebe creates a sound installation inspired by the limitations people were faced with due to strict censorship within the Soviet Union. This resulted in illegal recordings populating the black market and even pirate radio stations appearing. By limiting sounds able to be produced at the installation, creating simple, fun interactions, such as a pirate broadcast to a Soviet radio, Inese is hoping that users will reinvent themselves.

James Robinson’s work seeks to give users an opportunity to utilise cybernetic systems as a creative space by embracing the advantages of the digital world. Inspired by the process-oriented approach of the New Brutalism movement, the simple structure of the welded steel frame encasing a shuttered concrete block accentuates the work itself. Participants are urged to interact with the installation using the touch-plates to establish a feedback loop that is informed by light and sound, increasing the system’s entropy and producing individual experiences.

Fashion

Lydia Budler’s work celebrates lesbian artefacts, and their research centres around the Glasgow Women’s Library’s Lesbian Archives. They place a high value on the message conveyed through textiles. The use of elaborate beading and hand embroidery provides a personal flavour to the work, almost like handwriting alongside whichever tale they convey. They regard their work as art to educate and challenge conformity. Their art expresses a strong narrative and creates a story throughout this endeavour.

The Kallipyga collection showcases Scarlett David-Gray’s rebellious approach to fashion, inspired by Hans Bellmer’s Les Jeux de la Poupée series. This delicate and bold collection explores the sensuality of the human body by revealing what is typically concealed. The designs feature distorted sharp suiting lines and a thick, hand-stitched drape emphasising the waist of dresses and skirts while paying attention to the stomach and back. The focus is on revealing what is often hidden.

The School of Design Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun in the Reid Building, 164 Renfrew Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Inese Verebe, Interaction Design

Alice Biolo, Silversmithing and Jewellery

Katherine Hancock, Product Design Engineering

Fine Art

Experimental in their approach to material enquiry, while also revisiting traditional methods of making, this year’s final year Fine Art students have produced works of art that are critical yet romantic, dystopian yet hopeful.

Sculpture & Environmental Art

Sculpture & Environmental Art sees a lot of thematic overlap, with this year’s students producing work which sits at the intersection of art, science and faith. Much of the work feels primordial and ritualistic, harkening to the past whilst looking forward to oftentimes dystopian-seeming futures. Perhaps this fixation on the past, both real and imagined, is the result of navigating the collective trauma of an uncertain future, which makes this body of sculptural works all the more mysterious and romantic.

Rich in quasi-religious symbology, Ditte Krøyer’s bold, monochromatic linoprints explore the parallels between the unknown of the afterlife and the crippling anxieties of our climate crisis. Installed in a sea of sheer blackness, Ditte rejects the notion of binaries, exploring liminal spaces and in-betweens which, for her, mimic the unknown of the subconscious mind.

This liminality is explored further by Lizzie Munro who presents us with work intrinsically linked with the natural world. Investigating wilderness within the city, Lizzie uses locally foraged willow and teasels to create objects which aid the crossing of thresholds. Collected from miniature ecosystems nestled off motorways and tennis courts, the materials Lizzie uses come from grey areas in terms of ownership. These in-between spaces are a politically charged no man’s land which she seeks to reclaim. Woven masks and a burial chamber consider ritual, mortality and deep time, with a focus on the rhythmic embodiment of traditional methods of making.

Similarly examining space and ownership, Yolanda Sneddon’s moving image work presents us with an object reminiscent of the cityscape and the rigidity of public life in such a metropolis. Yolanda juxtaposes this coded, autonomous object of urban architecture with the stillness of the countryside, giving the work an absurdist yet eerie, post-apocalyptic feel.

Further dichotomies are explored with Nadia Zhaya’s sculpture Explosion from within, an object that simultaneously looks like an unearthed ancient artefact as well as a hyper-futuristic interplanetary tool. Nadia has created a ‘timeless capsule’ in everlasting plastics, exploring the universal and elemental through an encased explosion, eternally frozen within the plastic.

Sadie Downing’s body of work, Dreams Do Come True, laments her past experiences as a ballerina, and explores mental health through this lens. Merging kitschy aesthetics with clinical materials, Sadie comments on the precarious nature of ballet dancers’ health and safety when pushed to the limits of perfection, and the homemade finish of her saccharine display possesses an insidiousness underneath the frills and fringing of pageantry.

Words: Claudia Langley-Mills, Holly Allan and Connie Woods Gundry

Centred around an imagined space voyage, Max Longhurst’s work acts as a dialogue stretching through time, presenting a critical evaluation of the past and aiming to articulate a proposal for the future. Restaging a 19th Century photograph of Danish-Norwegian astronomer Sophus Tromholt,

Across its three disciplines, the School of Fine Art has produced a dynamic body of work reflective of the turbulent landscape ahead

Misra Balkan, Painting & Printmaking

Max has preserved the theatricality of the original image, fashioning clothing and objects which appear both medieval and otherworldly.

Probing visceral and bodily reactions is the sculptural work of Breagh Reilly. Birthed from a stranger’s retainer found on the street, Breagh’s work is evocative of a nightmarish dental visit complete with oversized ceramic teeth. Interested in tangible, knee-jerk reactions, Breagh investigates the somatic and abject through universal experience.

Fine Art Photography

This year’s Fine Art Photography cohort have produced an impressive body of work spanning familial ties, 24/7 surveillance culture and the natural world. Collectively, they produce the feeling of examining the role of documentation in a time of crisis.

Incorporating photography, moving image and performance, Alan Bell’s work documents restriction and surveillance in contemporary culture. Capturing the textures of the cityscape in 35mm, Alan’s images spotlight the grainy shadows of the metropolis, commanding the image and manifesting as the narrators of this critique of public space. Documenting signs and semiotics, Alan explores the control we relinquish in the public domain compared to the data we surrender in cyberspace.

Documenting a landscape in flux, Nikoline Hoeberg Sonasson’s work Falljökull poignantly captures glacial melt in Iceland. Juxtaposing a charged freeze frame of slick, glossy ice with an image of a yellowing, arid environment, Nikoline creates a harrowing dialogue between the two landscapes, leaving us to think about the human impact on the space between the two.

In a similar fashion, Haneen Hadiy’s intimate project The Mother of The Motherland explores the non-human through an anthropomorphic lens, spotlighting the Iraqi date palm and its rich symbolism. Haneen’s interdisciplinary practice explores her own cultural heritage and familial history, whilst commenting on the concept of time, inviting us to ruminate Iraq’s history and status as the Cradle of Civilisation.

Fine Art Photography also sees an immersive, installation-based approach to the discipline. The antithesis of a white cube space, Heather S Robert’s dark, khaki-toned walls speak to the dominant nature of her work. Experimenting with

alternative method photography, Heather’s images are liquid emulsion darkroom prints on steel. Through these as well as moving image, sound and sculptural works, her self-portraiture explores the duality of femininity.

Aura East’s project, AFT3RF0RM, archives Glasgow’s alternative tattoo scene with a series of intimate darkroom prints. Exhibited alongside floral sculptures which correlate with each subject, the sculptures act as an extension of each image, forming a kind of cohesive human/non-human portrait. Rejecting the singular authority of the photographer, Aura champions image-making as a collaborative process, and an accompanying phonebook showcases both the tattoo artists and the glitchy yet ornate style they are pioneering.

Shot both digitally and on Super 8 camera, Hannah Turner’s moving image work utilises archive footage from the closure of a factory where her grandfather had worked for 25 years. Weaving together family history with a wider community narrative, Hannah explores both public and private memory. Projected onto a suspended dual screen set-up, Hannah establishes a conversation through time, as the floating films mirror one another, and the past is recontextualised.

Painting & Printmaking

Finally, this year’s Painting & Printmaking class have spawned a luscious and varied body of work. Through expressive mark-making and textured, dimensional work, the paintings explore acts of decadence, the impact of repetition, and humankind’s entanglement with technology.

Katherine Scheibli’s work is concerned with the impact of technological influences on humanity, utilising abstract, expressive marks to argue and converse with her references to Teletext and technical error. Life is a constant battle between the analogue and digital over which serves us more.

The daring painter Teodora-Silvia Modoi approaches a large canvas destined for detail and depth with enviable confidence. Teodora-Silvia depicts scenes of a dark, laborious nature and describes them with dulcet palette tones and application. Narratives of obstruction, construction and entrapment are fed to us via dark, looming skies and objects capable of causing scathing harm.

Ted Tinkler explores notions of care and sentiment in their practice, which is centred around traditional methods of craft – quilting, spinning and knitting. The integration of their work with the landscape su ests a notion of comfort in transience and personification of soft, homely, handmade material. You can imagine the material as part of a river running through rich, fertile hills and contemplate the connection humans have with land.

Poppy Pearce works paint into variable surfaces to create luscious textures which illicit velvety, illusive sentiments. These stories envelop the viewer like warm ocean waters, with figures that question your role in their scene via subtle, interrogating glances which invite without intimidation.

Misra Balkan creates confident, inventive work in the expansive field of painting, permeating the notion of a two-dimensional landscape. This artist’s work leads you to believe that further debauchery lies beyond the scene in the foreground, and the wonderlands in the deep of the forest call out for our imagination to feed their existence.

Liv Fox is dedicated to handling repetition of motif and format in their work. Symbolic of versatility and material awareness, the transcription of her work in different contexts develops a language which concerns the simplicity of shape and colour, and morphs to their environment.

Cat Tams is a sensitive and vigilant observer of her environment and is gifted in her ability to apply painterly techniques – the layering of pastels and oil paint with sophisticated motion creates a lush quality. With particular attention to light, colour and form she creates an interplay between volume and surface. Capturing the influence of her environment, Cat translates it into figurative works with intellectual response.

Dora Padfield’s canvas invites a conversation with us, speaking an instinctive language through soft, felt-like marks and messages bleeding through the canvas. The paint journeys purposefully on the surface of the canvas, despite melting and dissolving within the fabric.

The School of Fine Art Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun in the Stow Building, 64 Shamrock Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Sadie Downing, Sculpture & Environmental Art

Aura East, Fine Art Photography

Simulation and Visualisation

Students graduating from the School of Simulation and Visualisation have a shared interest in sustainability, and approach to audience engagement

Words: Claudia Langley-Mills and Connie Woods Gundry

The School of Simulation and Visualisation’s studios are based at Pacific Quay, a media hub for Glasgow, and students graduating from BDes Sound for Moving Image and BSc Immersive Systems will be exhibiting work in the Haldane building. The practices of graduating SimVis students illustrate a shared interest in sustainability, in their choice of materials and approach to audience engagement. A range of digital media, sound, and programming has been utilised to create fully formed, imaginative spaces for an audience to be immersed in. Reflected in the work are the concerns of an emerging generation of artists and designers. Ecological and political issues are discussed confidently, alongside creative narratives that address complex topics.

Michiel Turner’s experimental, painterly animation Seaweed incorporates 3D collage materials which may have been found washed up on a beach, or in a scrap box. The disjointed nature of stop-motion animation marries with glossy and untroubled sound. Reminiscent of King Krule’s deep vocals paired with Shlohmo’s Bad Vibes; unphased guitar compositions and reverb add a depth synonymous with echoes of an ocean landscape. The narrative is ambiguous and possibly untrue, though any watchers of Attenborough’s Blue Planet will understand that its idea is undoubtedly plausible. Investigating the probability of finding ecological equilibrium between materials and organisms, Michiel uses hallucinatory visuals and proposed reality to incite a world of utopian balance.

In Owen Burn’s practice, famous paintings are recreated in 3D images and animation, translating the historical into a reimagined accessible form, relevant to the contemporary. Kandinsky’s Joyous Ascent is animated to music by Ezra Collective, cyclically returning to the original artist’s intent to marry shape and sound. The animation is energetic, and intricately deconstructs the painting into shapes that communicate with one another. Owen is graduating from Immersive Systems, and they will also exhibit an educational reconstruction of the 16th century Tantallon Castle, situated in East Lothian. The interactive environment was made using Autodesk Maya and Unity, and allows the viewer unrestricted access to a heritage site.

Comparatively, there is a cyclical thread running through Eve King’s work, as they explore the feedback loop that consumer, mineral resource, and waste are trapped within in the electronics industry. Eve describes using data as material in their audiovisual installation, Obsolete

Components, which aims to “create meaning amongst chaos”. It employs the use of ten analogue televisions and a six-channel speaker system, alongside images referencing planned obsolescence in consumer technology. Symbolically, stark cobalt blue emanates from the television screens, and dually, this same mineral is implicated in the industry under critique. Eve’s practice is both introspective, and aware of the interdependence of human behaviour on nature and consumer capitalist society.

Andy Speirs recreates accurate renditions of architectural spaces and urban environments, which are 3D modelled and textured in Blender and 3Ds Max. Andy’s dissertation investigates the question: Do immersive systems enhance spatial awareness in architectural visualisation? It references The Pond House, an award-winning design by Technique Studio. In the artist’s studio project, they explore humans’ connection to artificial, built-up or urban environments. Andy chose to create a detailed virtual copy of a street from the route he took to work, whilst living in Hong Kong. In turn, Andy reflects his own attachment to the landscape, through the intricacy of the recreation.

Keira Mccombie’s sonic sculpture, Echo’s Reflection, readdresses the audience’s role as participant. We can become immersed in our own sound, in turn formed by our interaction with an instrument. Keira dissects the term ‘generative music’, coined by Brian Eno, to su est that sound can occur in response to a person’s touch, rather than generated by a system, therefore asserting power to the listener. The instrument, fabricated sustainably from scrap metal, is suspended with speakers on either side, to reflect the sound back into the space. Within this self-reflective environment, a participant can use utensils, or their hands, to physically engage with the sculpture, using sound as a therapeutic tool.

Similarly, Alexandra Bell explores sound as a medium for respite and escapism. In The Wave is not the Water, an immersive sound and light installation, Alexandra has generated imagery in response to vibrations from composed sound. The viewer is invited to leave behind any anger and politics associated with their perception of society, momentarily. The space is transformed into a visually and aurally meditative environment, separating the reality of everyday stresses and tribulations through the use of solfe io frequencies. Graduating from Sound for the Moving Image, Alexandra describes this as “the primordial cosmic tones of mental and physical healing”.

The School of Simulation and Visualisation Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun in the Haldane Building, 24 Hill Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Michiel Turner Keira Mccombie

Innovation

With topics ranging from contraception to designing new ways of creating a cultural connection, the fourth-year exhibition from GSA’s Product Design students provides a glimpse into the future of design

Words: Cate Crutcher

immune systems. This led to designing Liang Fang, a medical restaurant that incorporates parasites into its menu. The speculative restaurant hopes to allow customers to use parasites to regulate their health in the long-term by providing them with exclusive wellness recipes.

The fourth-year Product Design Degree Show is an outstanding display of the best and brightest in product design. These graduates demonstrate a fiery commitment to solving real-world problems with design, using their practices to rebel against the myriad challenges to our freedom in the past few years and the obstacles facing us in the future.

Whether for Scottish independence or against the coronation, many people (maybe even you) have involved themselves in protests this year, often facing resistance from police forces in the process. Doug Kennedy responds to the needs of protesters with Design for Disobedience

A spiked black wearable, the project aims to increase participation in acts of civil disobedience. Through his work, Doug hopes to draw attention to the ongoing suppression of citizens’ rights and freedoms and emphasize the need for as many people as possible to take part in activism, protest and democracy.

The number of people living with chronic illnesses is expected to be more than one in five by 2030, so Nilanjana Mannarprayil has created a speculative experience for dealing with uncertainty and enhancing methods of giving care. By observing people’s home environments and conducting interviews, Nilanjana discovered that support systems dwindle with age. Nilanjana sees it as time for society to leave the Get Well Soon! card behind and learn how to provide proper care, so the product Looped In helps people communicate how they would feel cared for, whether that’s by picking up a prescription or grocery shopping. Less-clinical packaging for prescriptions and customisable care stickers enhance this concept by making care personal. By changing these rituals around providing care, people can begin to care for their chronically ill friends and loved ones in a truly helpful way.

Rebecca Lee’s project, ComeAround5, is a shared Chinese cultural sampling experience which aims to build stronger relationships with food through multi-sensory experimentation. The dining experience pushes for authenticity and does this through the sensorial connection of individual ingredients to final assembled meals. In this experience, a chef cooks a traditional Chinese meal for the diners but doesn’t reveal what he’s cooking. Instead, he presents the main herbs, spices and sauces as experimental samples that look nothing like their original form, leaving diners to use their senses to deduce what the meal is before it even arrives.

As social globalisation increases, linguistic barriers will become more common across social, economic, political and technological sectors. Focused on resolving these barriers, Mio Nevin has created a social design project that uses a game-like format to teach English-speaking people about Japanese culture. The strategy Mio took with this project is inspired by the ability of children to communicate and connect through play before the use of verbal language. So, learning about another nation’s culture can help people overcome language barriers.

Patrick Sheffield’s project helps people focus and concentrate in the workplace. He has designed a focus aid box containing various tools to keep people working. The focus aid kit includes hydration sachets, caffeine drops, oil rollers, glasses with coloured lenses, fidget spinners, a die timer, to-do lists, earplugs, chew stims, focus flashcards and sleep masks, all with the sole purpose of improving focus and productivity in the workplace.

Guo Xintong’s project deals with the significant increase in human allergies due to food contamination. Guo imagines a future where humans cooperate with parasites to boost their

Lexi Wieck’s project, Soundshells, is a sensory extension instrument that can enhance, explore, create and enrich an individual’s sonic environment. Acting as acoustic headphones, the Soundshells can create a new and distinct soundscape from the existing one. Unlike traditional headphones, Soundshells can create a unique spatial experience that invites users to engage in a recreational auditory activity rooted in a particular time and place. This creates an aural experience that immerses the listener in the surrounding soundscape. By finding a middle ground between awareness and enjoyment, Soundshells enable users to enjoy a more immersive auditory experience.

Margarida Sabino’s project, The Plan.o Experience, focuses on creating a space that allows for easier access to contraception, using a playful brand identity to reduce the stigma around it. Margarida sees contraception as taking care of yourself and your future, so it’s something to be happy about. The project involves a colourful bus that provides high-quality contraception products in public areas in the city to make contraception a non-threatening, joyful topic.

All of these projects are testament to the creativity, innovation, and hard work the students have put into their years at the GSA. We’re excited to see where their careers take them, and we know they’ll continue to push the boundaries of product design in exciting and unexpected ways.

The Innovation School Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun in the Haldane Building, 24 Hill Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Lexi Wieck

Doug Kennedy

Master of Fine Art

The graduating MFA class share an interest in the personal and experiential, and the wider cultural intersections of the two

Words: Connie Woods Gundry

Pushing the material potential of mediums (whether organic, found, analogue or digital), research, investigation and theoretical thought form an integral part of the MFA graduates’ practices. The old school building on the south bank of the Clyde which hosts the MFA Degree Show offers varied spaces for graduating students to exhibit work, including in the retired science laboratory, or suspended in the central stairwell.

Hayden Judd has stitched together a tenmetre sail by hand, using techniques learned from specialists. It repurposes discarded fabrics collected from sailmakers in South Queensferry and Ardrossan. Through researching historical industry based around the Clyde, notably shipbuilding in Partick, Hayden has learnt about his own family’s connection to nautical activity. A hierarchy of labour is mapped out, as a symbolic family tree, with ancestors’ names listed alongside their role – “first mate”, “fisherman”, “diver”, and lastly, Hayden establishes himself as “unskilled worker”. The making process imperfections reflect Hayden’s distance from a simultaneously individual and wider local history.

Historical investigation is also central to Chih-Kang Hsu’s practice. Chih-Kang has constructed a monument from cast bricks, fixing a white board where a plaque would ordinarily sit. Viewers are invited to write on the board, naming the monument. In turn, the spectator is dually involved as a narrator, questioning the established notions of memory and truth – who gets to write history? The subtle agitation in Chih-Kang’s work is reflected in the physical processes of his photography, in which the past is tampered with; photographs are cut into and scratched away.

Ritu Arya’s tangential making process reflects the transitional nature of her practice; working with photography previously, and now

primarily using clay, she explores material reacting to tension. Ritu crafts bodily clay forms that deal with the physicality of “untended trauma” observed personally, and in everyday life. Ritu’s writing describes an ache that is “more destructive with each tri er” and asks, “What does it taste like?” The internal and sensory are portrayed in the clay’s varied states; some raw, and others fired, or glazed in Jesmonite. Ritu materialises disruption, in the use of ferrofluid and magnets that respond to a room’s movement.

Nanjoo Lee uses painting as a vehicle for translation, embracing the imperfections that are inevitable to recreating an image. In Translating Practice, Nanjoo makes sense of the disorder and beauty involved in understanding a relationship. A photograph of Nanjoo’s mother is split into 60 numbered squares, and ordered in rows to create a cinematic, unreliable chronology. In Nanjoo’s video work, soap is a metaphor, used to critique stereotypes surrounding women in domestic settings. The imagery is intimate and evocative, whilst asking wider questions about labour, allowing us to consider our own close relationships.

Phyllis Mcgowan’s work with film, narration and writing similarly explores the complexity of communication. The spoken text piece, Dear Christina, is self-referential, and speaks on what the audience can and cannot know, as Phyllis reads an email aloud written to an unknown receiver. The sea is a recurring backdrop in Phyllis’ work; using found footage of women on the beach, or as projection, from the perspective of a swimmer. Thinking in Shapes narrates Phyllis’ relationship to her mother, presenting non-linear autobiography as thoughts that must be externalised in surreal, poetic, rhythmic form.

A viewer first begins to understand James Epps’ installation by stepping into it. They must

navigate the large letter forms physically, and choose at which angle to approach. You begin to pick out familiar words, and others slot in as illegible visual code. This slippage is integral to the literal, and conceptual, reading of James’s work. The letters are multilayered, as paper is torn and then screen-printed, and torn again. James utilises found and bought material, playing on collage’s ability to remind us of things in the world we associate with, whilst appealing to the viewer’s imagination with abstract form.

In Mutual Work, Jiyoon Lee reflects on the bond with her sister. The disconnect felt in digital communication is performed through movement, evoking the pace and distance of a phone call. Jiyoon’s work is influenced by ideas of telepresence and the “non-place”, as well as the impact of technology on Jiyoon’s generation in South Korea. The technology under critique is also the primary medium, demonstrating its infiltration into human life and behaviour.

Christian Bronstein’s animation and audio pieces (Jump, Squeeze and Whipping BoyDrowning) are the culmination of two years autoethnographic research, and explore the individual and generational shame felt growing up as a gay man. The video-based work, made using 3D programming such as Blender, captures the private bodily perspective, and allows the viewer to enter temporarily, understanding the weight of the narrator’s existence. Christian has described the role of the videos as “social agents”, with a historical significance as digital artefact. Abjection, as a physical and emotional experience, becomes material and medium, in which to analyse the cultural and psychological drivers behind gay shame.

Nanjoo Lee

The Master of Fine Art Degree Show runs 1-10 Jun at 5 Florence Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net

Heads Up

Race, Rights Sovereignty Glasgow and online, throughout the year

Open Studio Summer Courses

The Glasgow School of Art, throughout Jun and Jul

The GSA’s Open Studio team are running courses for anyone interested in developing their skills in practices across art and design disciplines. From expressionist portraiture and life drawing to introductory courses in jewellery design and painting, Open Studio offers a range of opportunities to people interested in developing their art, design and craft skills at all levels. Please visit the Open Studio pages on the GSA website for a full programme of activities.

Open Studio Summer Exhibition

Fleming House, Glasgow, 2-11 Jun

Running as part of the summer Degree Show, this exhibition showcases work made by young people across several different access and communityfocused projects at the GSA. This includes work by High School pupils in Widening Participation portfolio courses, the GSA’s Community Engagement creative residency at Garnetbank Primary School, and Castlehead School of Creativity and Articulation from Further Education colleges in Scotland.

Portfolio Preparation Course

The Glasgow School of Art, Aug 2023-Feb 2024

Are you thinking of applying to art school? The GSA’s Portfolio Preparation Course gives you the time and space to develop your portfolio in a collaborative, dynamic studio environment. The course is structured to help you choose a specialist area to study, and has a track record of getting students places at top art schools across the UK. Please see the course pages on the GSA website for more information. Taster courses for those interested in the Portfolio Preparation Course are also available from the GSA Open Studio; find more info about that on the GSA website.

The Students’ Association and the GSA exhibition curate this public event series, exploring the relationship between race, place and creative practice. Since 2022, Race, Rights and Sovereignty has been programmed by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona. Events in the last year have included public lectures and discussions with Furmaan Ahmed, Claricia Parinussa and Hussein Mitha, as well as workshops with Martha Adonai Williams and Clarinda Tse.

Graduate Degree Show 2023

Glasgow and online, 1-10 Sep

Hot on the heels of the summer Degree Show, the Graduate Degree Show showcases the work of students on Postgraduate programmes across the school. From fashion collections to innovative service design, medical visualisation to painting and sculpture, the Graduate Degree Show explores the rich work of our students on many of our Postgraduate programes. To view the Graduate Degree Show online, visit gsapostgradshowcase.net

GSA OPEN

Glasgow and online, throughout the year

Whether you’re just starting to consider coming to art school, or you’re almost ready to hit ‘send’ on your application, GSA OPEN offers events to support you at whatever stage you’re at on your application journey. Our year-long programme encompasses campus open days, online open house events, student-led campus tours, portfolio advice sessions and one-to-one sessions with staff.

GSA Open House

The Glasgow School of Art, 27-28 Oct

At Open House, our studios and workshops are open for prospective students interested in studying at The Glasgow School of Art at Undergraduate or Postgraduate level. Programmes across each of our five schools, as well as our support departments, put on programmes of activity to help you find out more about life and study here, from visiting our Student Halls to exploring different parts of our campus and facilities. Attending Open House gives you a great insight into the GSA’s unique studio culture as well as the specialist facilities which support student learning.

From summer courses to graduation celebrations, here’s a look at what’s in store across the GSA in the months ahead...

Open Studio Summer Exhibition

Graduate Degree Show 2023

GSA Open House

Portfolio Preparation Course

Open Studio Summer Courses

Image: Evie Bryden, S5 Portfolio Course

Image: Anita Sarkezi,

Textile Design

Image: Belle Breslin, 2022

The GSASA and GSA Teaching Awards The Glasgow School of Art, 7 Jun

This June sees the return of our Teaching Awards, a joint partnership between the GSA and our Students’ Association. Every year students nominate staff and their peers who have contributed to the GSA community. The awards are student-led and celebrate the staff and students who contribute and enrich our creative learning communities at the GSA.

GSA Exhibitions

Reid Gallery, year round programme

The Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions Department curates an innovative yearround public programme that links into the GSA staff research, teaching and learning, student experience, creative network, our communities, contemporary practice and heritage. Our crossdisciplinary programme of exhibitions, performance, seminars, talks, off-site projects, publishing initiatives and outreach aims to explore the creative, social and educational nature of contemporary practice. Follow the GSA on Eventbrite, Instagram and Twitter to keep up-to-date with our programmes and events.

GSASA Degree Show After Party GSA Students’ Association, Glasgow, 1 Jun

The GSASA Degree Show Afterparty comes home to The Vic Bar, celebrating the graduating student cohort. This year they’ve teamed up with PONYBOY for a night of music, art and performance that will transport you to a night of make-believe.

The Vic Reopening in 2023 GSA Students’ Association, Glasgow, TBC

The GSASA have been working hard on their plans to reopen The Vic Bar over the summer months in time for Freshers’ Week in September. Much loved by students, staff and the wider communities around the school, the GSASA look forward to welcoming you all in for drinks and food again soon.

London Design Biennale and Eureka 2023

Somerset House, London,

1-25 Jun

The Glasgow School of Art Pavilion at the London Design Biennale presents Undercurrents: Art and Ocean in Africa and the Pacific, an interdisciplinary and international research project showcasing the creative outputs of eight community-based art projects that surface cultural and emotional connections with the ocean in Ghana, South Africa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. This is a DEEP Fund project, led by the School of Simulation and Visualisation’s Professor Stuart Jeffrey and Dr Lisa McDonald for UKRI-funded One Ocean Hub.

On Not Knowing: How Artists Teach Conference

The Glasgow School of Art, 9-10 Jun

Hosted jointly by The Glasgow School of Art and UniArts Helsinki, this conference will take place in person at The Glasgow School of Art, featuring an international cohort of artist educators. Within art schools, academies, departments of art and across the range of environments in which artists teach or facilitate learning, there has been a sustained questioning of the values and assumptions that have underpinned various aspects of teaching in the arts. This conference sets out to determine what is special about the way artists teach.

European Academy of Design Conference: Extreme Making

The Glasgow School of Art, 16-20 Oct

This conference hub explores the present and future possibilities of doctoral research and education in design through creative practice research, located in making and materials, critical theory and history, and by identifying ways in which new knowledge emerges in studio-based inquiry. We use the term ‘extreme making’ to su est the breadth of practices in design, from established craft skills and techniques, through to smart technologies and materials, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and systems design.

The Vic Reopening in 2023

Undercurrents - Art and Ocean in Africa and the Pacific, Reid Gallery, April 2023. Part of London Design Biennale

European Academy of Design Conference: Extreme Making