This year has been busy for the GoMA public programme with 3 shows in Gallery 1, including the blockbuster by Banksy and the immersive installations by Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price and Glasgow-based duo Beagles and Ramsay – currently on show. Our COMMONSpace programme was busy with shows by the GoMA Youth Group, Our Shared Cultural Heritage and Mammas Write and the Oasis Women’s Group. Gallery 3 has seen work by Helen de Main and Mandy McIntosh and now open Sam Ainsley: Wednesday is Cobalt blue, Friday is Cadmium red in Gallery 3. Domestic Bliss also had a rotation to include two new acquisitions by Donald Locke and a collaboration by Najma Hussein Abukar and Ruth Impey.

These two acquisitions are part of the ongoing work in the background to acquire work for Glasgow Museums’ collection. Works acquired reflect an ambition to collect works made by Glasgow based artists, but also those artists from further afield whose work connects and is a prism to stories already present in the collection, or expands themes and ideas or relationships to artists, works or mediums.

This post looks at some of the incredible modern and contemporary artworks that have been purchased, supported by grants or gifted to Glasgow Museums this year.

Echo from the Middle Passage #4 (2008), Donald Locke
S.497

Donald Locke studied in Scotland at Edinburgh College of Art 1959 – 1964 and returned for further funded residencies in Scotland post studies. Born in Guyana he later lived in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. In Locke’s early work, with the political events taking place as Guyana moved from colonial administration into an independent state, explored colonial violence and recalled the Middle Passage. The term Middle Passage is heavy with historical significance for Caribbean and Black emigrants as it was the leg of the transatlantic slave trade where the enforced crossing over the Atlantic Ocean between the African continent and the ‘New World’ led to enslavement for millions of men, women and children.

By the time this work Echo from the Middle Passage #4 was made Donald Locke had been working as an artist for 50 years and his use of materials had returned to involving ceramics.

Gifted by the Donald Locke Estate, 2023

Sorry, Your Search For Palestine Produced No Results, 2012
Bisan Abu Eisheh
ICE.2023.1

In Sorry, Your Search For Palestine Produced No Results, Bisan Abu Eisheh explores perceptions and understandings around the geography or territory of Palestine. This work was created after Abu Eisheh undertook a year-long residency at the Delfina Foundation in London and the ArtSchool Palestine in Ramallah, in collaboration with the British Council for the Points of Departure project. It was first shown in the exhibition Points of Departure at ICA, London.

Taking as starting point the complexities around the existence and recognition of Palestine and its fluid borders subject to claims from both Palestinians and Israel, Abu Eisheh’s installation looks at memories, personal experiences, and a collective approach through the interaction of visitors with the work to inform a future territory of Palestine. It is centred on the 2012 Eyewitness Travel guide: Jerusalem, Israel, Petra and Sinai that makes no reference to Palestinian life in Jerusalem or other areas of Palestine. Pages from this book were first exhibited by the artist in Ramallah as interactive artwork, inviting the Palestinian public to interject their own stories, sites of importance and history.

Sorry, Your Search For Palestine Produced No Results expands on this initial guidebook research by showing pages from it describing certain places of interest foregrounding Jewish history alongside films by the artist showing the reality of the area and highlighting visible Palestinian daily lives and Arabic histories absent from the book.
Gifted by Bisan Abu Eisheh, 2023

The Return of the Crows. No 1, 2022 & The Return of the Crows. No 10, 2022
Zory Shahrokhi
PR.2023.3.1 & PR.2023.3.2

The Return of the Crows. No 10 and The Return of the Crows. No 1 are by Zory Shahrokhi – a British-Iranian visual artist based in London, UK. In 2022 she undertook a residency at Edinburgh Printmakers as part of their project – In From the Margins. During her residency Zory developed several etching works, working closely with printmaker Florence Eckersley. The central motif in the works in Glasgow Museums’ collection are everyday birds, crows, and ravens – which were seen flying away leaving a faint silhouette of themselves traced on someone’s scarf, returning to pick through the rubble, or collapsing exhausted in great numbers as if to form a pile of autumn foliage. These birds recall one of Zory’s earliest works, made in response to the 2003 Iraq invasion, an enduring conflict whose violence and devastation are echoed in many of today’s wars around the world.

The series these two prints are from is named The Return of the Crows which the artist began in 2006. Depicting the recent destruction in the Middle East by imperialism and its call for a restructuring of power. In this work two etchings are shown one above the other. The etching shows three birds and a street curving round with piles of either rubble, rubbish, or piles of bird feathers either side and apartment buildings in various states of ruin in the background. The two birds on the bottom right of the work appear to be defending territory as a third bird arrives from the top left of the etching. The ruined buildings we see in the background and the piles of feathers on the floor are reminiscent of the thousands of children who have been killed or made homeless through war.
Gifted by the artist, 2023

Home and Hospitality – A City Community Crockery Set, 2019
Najma Hussein Abukar and Ruth Impey
PP.2023.9.1–32

Inspired by artist photographer Najma Abukar’s Somali pottery heritage and artist potter Ruth Impey’s research Scotland’s rich industrial ceramics heritage, this set connects local and global histories. Commissioned by Küche, a social enterprise promoting integration through food-led initiatives, it celebrates people with immigrant experiences who call this city their home.

On 57 plates and beakers Glasgow people from different countries and cultures shared entangled stories of food, hospitality, and home. Participants were encouraged to wear traditional dress or bring a personal item to the photography session. Their words reflect on attachment and belonging. The selection here represents voices from Glasgow’s Algerian, British Caribbean, Chinese, Indonesian, Iranian, Italian, Nigerian, Pakistani, Palestinian, Somali, Syrian, Turkish, and Yemeni communities.

Commissioned by Küche and given to Glasgow Museums, 2023

Sewing Spelling Sewing, 2018 and Starting Rates, 2018
Tony Swain
PR.2023.1.1 and PR.2023.1.2

Tony Swain works mainly with sheets of newspaper as the starting point for his paintings and collages, using the newspaper as both the surface upon which the painting occurs and as the conceptual backdrop to each piece. Working on both large and intimate scale, Swain reconstructs the imagery and textual content to create complex other-worldly representations.

Both these works are beautiful and intricate works of art and align with Glasgow Life Museums -GoMA’s collecting criteria around Social Justice. These works were selected for the collection as we feel they will resonate with other works and topics – such as the climate crisis, the cost of living and political upheaval – and have the potential to invite new contexts depending on where, how, and when they are shown.

Gifted, 2023

12 Works made between 2013 – 2022 by Rachel Mimiec

“ Making a pot is akin to the shaping of a landscape. It is built up over time, its structure and strength is affected by external elements. The surface of the land, like that of the pot records a history of marks made by now invisible tools. Cores reveal deeper processes and extractions leave behind a negative space.
A landscape, like clay, has memory. The tools we have made allow us to cut, plough, drill and extract from our landscapes. But our civilisation has become vulnerable. Today we walk on the precipice of the cliff, the lip of the pot.”

Rachel Mimiec 2022

Mimiec’s work with ceramics and treatment of glazes and painting is intuitive and invites an emotional response to the landscape we experience around us through colour, texture and geology. Some of the work in this capsule collection have holes extracted from the side of the pot, others have ‘plugs’ inserted. These plugs a reminiscent of core samples – cylindrical samples drilled from either rock or the ground to use for testing properties, mineral presence or pollution. Although the sculptures are individual pieces, Mimiec has requested that a minimum of two sculptures can be shown together at any one time. She sees these works in dialogue with each other, the space they inhabit and the visual questions they raise in relation to each other; how they are displayed – whether on a chair or plant stand; plays between the sublime in landscape and domestic spaces; and their relationship to the viewer.

9 ceramic works were acquired alongside 3 prints – MUD (2013), Pots (2022) and Ode to Robert (2022). By working over glossy, carefully composed and often dramatic images of landscape with oil paint, which in the case of MUD is a sludgy brown colour painted then scraped back to reveal fragments of a landscape, Mimiec leaves ghost traces of real landscapes within her work. By rotating the orientation of the original image and enlarging the digital scan of the painted work we lose sense of where we are in the landscape or read the spaces differently.

Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties, 1964
Alasdair Gray

Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties, 1964 (1215 x 2240 mm) by Alasdair Gray is a large oil painting on board and is one of his best-known works. Gray himself noted it as ‘my best big oil painting’. The work is based on sketches and ideas for the Monkland Canal picture Gray had given up trying to paint as a third-year art student. The scale, the composition, the city references and the artist’s physical hand in the work (his fingerprints were noted in the conservation check in some areas of the canvas) all make this a highly significant work for Glasgow Museums and the city. Admirers of his work will be enthusiastic that it is in a public collection and our visitors will love to be able to see it both for the significance of the work as an Alasdair Gray work, but also from a social history perspective of views of Glasgow with some buildings no longer there. Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties powerfully captures life in an area of Glasgow where the landscape and community would alter radically as a result of the post-war Comprehensive Development Area programme. It conveys the look, rhythm and feel of daily life in Cowcaddens as well as a sense of change. It is a powerful way of engaging with Glasgow’s past and how buildings, streets and people give place its character.

It was a key loan secured for his retrospective From The Personal To The Universal – which was curated by Sorcha Dallas Gray at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in 2014 as part of the wider Alasdair Gray Season she devised. It will be on display again in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum from 1 December 2023.

Purchased with a grant from the National Fund for Acquisitions, 2023

Glasgow Print Studio 50th Anniversary Here & Now Legacy Project – 50 prints commissioned from 50 artists who are members of GPS to mark their 50th anniversary.
PR.2023.2.1-50

Artists:
Alan Campbell , Alasdair Wallace, Alice McMurrough, Alice Strange  Allan Richardson, Andrea Cardow, Ashley Cook, Bobby Johnston, Bronwen Sleig, Calum McClure, Damien Henry, David Palmer, Diane Dawson, Fiona Watson, Fiona Wilson, Fionnuala McGowan, Fouzia Zafar, TWO-STEP: Beth Shapeero and Fraser Taylor, Glen Coutts, Gregor Smith, Gregory Moore, Hanne Saetra, Harry Magee, Russell McCauley, Heather Nevay, Helen Wilson, James McDonald, Jane Gardiner, Jane Lee, Janie Nicoll, Jila Peacock, John Fitzpatrick, Joy Bain, Joyce Leitch, June Carey, Kate Downie, Lin Chau, Linda Kosciewicz, Liz Muir, Marion MacPhee, Mary Land, Michael McVeigh, Selcuk Colacoglu, Rachel Duckhouse, Richard Marsden, Roger Farnham, Sandi Anderson, Sara Alonso, Shipei Wang, Zoe Kean

This portfolio of 50 prints were made for Glasgow Print Studio’s (GPS) 50th anniversary show at Kelvingrove Art gallery and Museum. An edition was purchased for Glasgow Museums’ collection.

Acquisition supported by the Glasgow Print Studio a part of its 50th anniversary, 2023

We are also working with Elizabeth Price to acquire FELT TIP from the trilogy SLOW DANS shown in Gallery 1 earlier this year and an acquisition of 13 framed black and white ink prints (a mix of collagraph and relief prints) from the series Made on the Table, produced collaboratively in 2022 by the Rhona Warwick Paterson and Tessa Lynch while Warwick Paterson was Associate Artist at GoMA (2019 – 2022).