Polygraphs is a group exhibition exploring truth, fiction and evidence in a complicated world. Centred around Abstract (2012), a two-channel video work by Berlin based filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl, gifted to Glasgow Museums’ collection last year, the exhibition is drawn entirely from Glasgow Museums’ collection.

Artists are often witness to a changing global environment and their role within that culture is to document, ask questions and create layers of meaning to engage audiences with current international discourses. Thus, Abstract provides a frame through which to encounter other artists interested in interrogating dominant historical narratives and our relationships to the arms trade, colonialism, the slave trade and feminism.

Polygraphs reflects GoMA’s long-standing interest in research and evidence based documentary artworks. The exhibition includes works from the last 100 years and poses questions about the relationship of museums to the histories, identities and politics that they represent. By re-displaying older works alongside more recent pieces the exhibition reactivates truths and fictions still relevant today.

The resource space and public programme for Polygraphs has been developed in conjunction with graphic designer Neil McGuire and Cyber-Crannog

Note: Abstract was presented by the Contemporary Art Society through the Collections Fund, 2015. It marks the first work by Hito Steyerl to enter a public collection in the UK

ARTISTS: Jane Evelyn Atwood, Muirhead Bone, Boyle Family, Gerard Byrne, Graham Fagen, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Beth Forde, Alasdair Gray, Ian Hamilton Finlay, David Hockney, Wyndham Lewis, Peter Kennard, kennardphillips, Barbara Kruger, Scott Myles, Anthony Schrag and Hito Steyerl