As the year end approaches and as we head into 2026 when it will be the 30th anniversary of GoMA, it felt like a moment to look back on some of the recent acquisitions this year, especially as the most recent one is about to go on display in Still Glasgow .

Easels (2016) by Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan was gifted by the artists, with support from The Modern Institute, in summer and entered the collection store (GMRC)  briefly before coming to GoMA to be installed as part of Still Glasgow – opening this weekend. Easels is a conceptual work by Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan. They have been working in collaboration since 1995, after meeting during the MFA Fine Art programme at The Glasgow School of Art in 1993. It is a very generous gift from the artists to the collection, and was perfect fit for the show when it was first proposed earlier in the year, so we are delighted that it was able to be on public display in GoMA so quickly.

Easels includes fifteen framed black and white photographs of artists in their studios in Glasgow, taken by Joanne and Tom, and each framed in an idiosyncratic hand-made wooden frame. The fifteen framed works in Easels are accompanied by an illustration, showing a hand drawing of the title alongside a cartoon of a pencil and the Earth hugging each other. Easels was first made for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2016 and shown as part of a solo exhibition by the artists at The Modern Institute. On one level Easels functions as a seemingly anthropological gaze on Glasgow’s visual art community at a moment in time, but the formal and aesthetic decisions employed by the artists disrupt interpreting the work as a piece of documentary photography. Within an international visual festival that invites people to come and ‘experience’ and celebrate this community, Easels intends to remind its viewers that narratives may not always be reliable.

Still Glasgow also features the work What’s It To You?‘, 1975 by the artists Stansfield/Hooykaas and collected in 2016. Elsa Stansfield (b. Glasgow, 1945, d. Amsterdam, 2004) and Madelon Hooykaas (b. Maartensdijk, 1942) worked together for over 30 years. They started working together in the early years of video art, with the pair quick to realise the potential of video as an art form and as a communication tool. Shown at Glasgow’s The Third Eye Centre for a week in 1975, What’s It To You? was the first installation of its kind ever to be seen in Glasgow and it is exciting to be able to include this early work in the show. Discussions with Madelon in 2024 centred around Day for Night IV, 2001/2004 – the final work  that they made together before Elsa Stansfield’s death in 2004.

Day for Night IV is a circular projection screen which is suspended off the floor with a projected single channel film with audio that creates an immersive soundscape. At the heart of the film is an image of a tree which appears between short montages of sound and artist footage. The intention is that the viewer is immersed in the sound and the filmed segments repeat randomly playing with time, déjà vu and memory. The work developed from a commission for the artists in 2001 from La Centrale, Montreal and Le mois de la photo à Montreal for the Botanical Garden in the city. The commission was intended to celebrate 100 years of cinema and as Stansfield/Hooykaas’ work was influenced by the history of film and cinema they wanted to find a way to find a way to honour that through this work. The film is a collage of an image of a tree, footage from the artists’ archives of their work and excerpts from cinema films that have influenced the artists. The film loops with different configurations of the sound and visuals unsettling any familiarity we might gain on first glance at the work. Day for Night – is a film technique where scenes are filmed during the day but using lighting and other techniques appear to be at night-time. Through film you create a new reality which is not what was there in front of the camera, or a fictionalised version of memory.

In acquiring Day for Night IV – their final work – the collection will hold keys works from the beginning and end of their collaborative practice.

2025 is the centenary of Florence Jamieson (1925 – 2019) and we were delighted to announce earlier in the month a significant acquisition (including ceramics, paintings and ephemera for the collection. The acquisition was generously supported by a grant from the National Fund for Acquisitions, in addition to various works gifted by her daughter Becky Jamieson.

Jamieson had a fascinating life and career, linking to many artists, art movements and social history in our collection. As an artist she was a Glasgow Girl, one of four living artists to be represented in the 2014 ‘Glasgow Girls’ exhibition. Although not formally trained, Jamieson did night classes at GSA and went on to teach at GSA. She achieved professional recognition for her work, becoming a member of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) and Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW) and receiving the Royal Scottish Academy Award (1953) and the Royal Glasgow Institute Torrance Award. Her work can be found in collections including the Hunterian Art Gallery, Scottish Arts Council, Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries and the Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.

Jamieson was a leader in the artist community and close friends with many artists at the time including Joan Eardley. Eardley immortalised Jamieson in a figurative painting, Reclining Nude, 1949, Private Collection. She was not only a great painter, but also a potter. With her husband, Robert Sinclair Thomson (of whom we have two drawings and a print in the collection), she set up the first commercial ceramic studio in Glasgow – Clouston Street Pottery,  after the Second World War which occupied the downstairs of the family home at 33 Clouston Street in the West End.

In 2023 we acquired Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifites, 1963, by Alasdair Gray and now on display in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Earlier this year we were approached by Alan Wylie who offered us a gift of a framed photograph of Alasdair with the work in his Kersland Street flat..

Alan Wylie is a former press photographer who photographed arts and cultural figures in Scotland for over 40 years. He was the official photographer for Glasgow European Capital of Culture in 1990 and for Nelson Mandela’s visit to Glasgow when he came to collect the Freedom of City in 1993.

Wylie’s photograph of the author, artist and playwright Alasdair Gray (1934 – 2019) was taken after he was invited to take Gray’s portrait. It is known that Gray worked in studio spaces in flats where he lived. Wylie noted that when he met Gray, the artist immediately said he did not like posing for photographs. As there were other people there, he had shown Wylie to his bedroom/studio to wait for him while he spoke to the others. It took Gray a while to come through but when he came back, he sat down, and Wylie didn’t have much time to take the photograph but was very pleased with the results when he developed the negatives at home. The photograph went on to be used in articles about Gray’s life in the press.

In summer we continued to collect works as part of the Art Fund New Collecting Award 2018, with Mother Tongue. Bossy lady (fir gorma), 2025 and Let’s Get Lost Tonight You can be My Black Kate Moss Tonight, 2023 by Josie KO were presented to the Collection by Art Fund under the New Collecting Award, 2025 with support from Glasgow Life Museums. As part of New Collecting Award process we invited emerging practitioners of colour to meet, discuss and propose an artist for the collection. Josie KO was selected by Saoirse Amira Anis, Adam Benmakhlouf, Eden Bø Dower, Rana Noor Mohamed, Shalmali Shetty and Holly Takenzire in 2022, with the discussions with Josie leading to these two exciting acquisitions.

Josie KO is British Nigerian multi-disciplinary artist primarily working in sculptural practices. She graduated in Painting and Printmaking from The Glasgow School of Art in 2021 and continues to practice in Glasgow creating work which speaks towards Black histories and the Black presence in Britain. She has had both solo and group exhibitions in Scotland including work at Generator, Dundee; RSA, Edinburgh; Fruitmarket, Edinburgh; and Glasgow International 2025.

Let’s Get Lost Tonight You can be My Black Kate Moss Tonight, 2023 addresses the representation (or lack of) black women in the arts. This has been a concern of the artist since her graduation show in 2021 and she has created a number of large-scale paper mâché sculptures and installations addressing this. Here by putting the Black female figure on a high plinth to act as a pedestal KO shows her as something to be praised and looked up to, radically changing and challenging how the Black female has been (and continues to be) viewed in the Arts. Bossy Lady (fir gorma) was part of the Glasgow International exhibition titled Fir Gorma. Fir Gorma was a collaborative exhibition of new work by artists Josie KO and Kialy Tihngang that draws on KO’s research into Black British history. The Old Irish term ‘fir gorma’ translates as ‘blue men’. References to fir gorma in ancient Irish chronicles are thought by historians and folklorists to refer to North African people enslaved by Vikings in the 9th century and brought to Ireland and the Scottish Hebrides. In key texts such as Peter Fryer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain and Donald Mackenzie’s Scottish Folk Lore and Folk Life: Studies in Race, Culture and Tradition, writers have speculated on these figures’ presence on the islands and the mythologies connected to them.

The final acquisition for this post is portfolio of prints by 20 artists selected for the 20/20 artist residencies in 20 collecting institutions across the UK following a national call out for mid-career artists of colour. The 20/20 project has just culminated with a symposium in London and was led by the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute and supported by funding from Arts Council England, the Freelands Foundation, and University of the Arts London. The 20/20 project arose out of research into museum collections across the UK acknowledging the racial biases in collections to date and the inequity of representation of artists of colour and racialised minorities. It was also noted that race, gender and disabilities were all underrepresented in collections. Combining artist residencies with artistic commissioning at scale, 20/20 is brought together 20 emerging artists of colour and 20 UK public art collections, leading to 20 new permanent acquisitions for each of the institutions of their artist’s work, plus a print portfolio of all the artists widening their presence in collections across the UK.

Glasgow Life Museums through Kelvingrove Art gallery and Museum worked with the artist Aqsa Arif and acquired the work from her display at Kelvingrove in 2024.  As part of the agreement for taking part in the 20/20 project, Glasgow Life Museums also acquired a exquisite portfolio with a print from each of the artists – Adham Faramawy, Aqsa Arif , Billy Dosanjh, Bindi Vora, Christopher Samuel, Cora Sehgal Cuthbert, Curtis Holder, Gayle Chong Kwan, Habib Hajallie, Hannah Sabapathy, Holly Graham, Jamila Prowse, Jessica Ashman, Karen McLean, Madi Acharya-Baskerville, Sarah Maple, Shenece Oretha, Sonya Dyer, Yuen Fong Ling and Zoë Tumika.