THE MODERN INSTITUTE Glasgow   www.themoderninstitute.com

BILL JACKLIN, Marlborough Gallery New York,  www.marlboroughgallery.com,

The Modern Institute Glasgow

Founded by Will Bradley, Toby Webster and Charles Esche in 1998, The Modern Institute - such a brilliant name - has gone from strength to strength & is now a gallery of international standing. Housed in a former bath house in the centre of Glasgow, the contemporary space could be in New York or Germany. Last year it took on a second useful space nearby, a sure sign it is doing well.      Toby Webster

Hard to find, (I was lucky. My taxi driver knew exactly where Airds Lane was, moreover informed me that the next lane up was Goosedubs!)- but when u get there, a great open space currently showing American artist, Kim Fisher's Dirty Kitchen exh of 17 panels - some oil on dyed black linen, others aluminium. Inspired by fragments of magazines or newspapers which have weathered California's oppressive heat, she collages and airbrushes her abstracts. Here LA's Rexall drugstores replace the UK's ubiquitous Boots chemists.  

Toby Paterson, Glasgow born & trained, now like Fisher, aged 40, is an integral part of their stable of 38 artists, which includes 7 Turner Prize nominees. 

Paterson's focus is urban space, especially marginalised or derelict locations, and the effects of post-war Modernism in architecture. In Soft Boundary he uses galvanised steel fencing to divide the space, while paintings of blocks of buildings, seen from various viewpoints, provide interpretations of some notorious city landmarks.

          BBC 

Paterson also undertakes major public commissions like BBC Scotalnd's ebullient Poised Array, which tames the geometric austerity of David Chipperfield's post-post-Modernist  BBC HQ with multi-coloured abstractions.  

The Institute will be in NY soon for THE INDEPENDENT Art Fair. Co-founded by gallerists Elizabeth Dee & Darren Flook  in 2010, it takes place in the Chelsea building formerly occupied by the Dia Art Foundation.  Its fifth edition, running March 6-9, with a lineup of 56 exhibitors — up from 40 last year, is concurrent with Armory week. 

Meanwhile BILL JACKLIN, a Brit who relocated from London to NYC in 1985, has his 23rd show with Marborough. Jacklin is also interested in urban spaces, like Washington Square, Grabd Central, Central Park, the Wollman Ice Rink & Coney Island - which is after all as he says, the edge of the city. 

 Unlike Paterson, Jacklin's focus is people and their movement, the shadows they make against ice, concrete, grass or sand. But like Paterson, the fleeting moment, a glimpse, the primacy of observation & experience, is central.  www.bjacklin.com

Jacklin, now RA,  is also a great printmaker & while these 20 oils of NY are captured in seductive palette, prints allow for a greater dance of light & dark, black & white, fast track silhouettes and time ever-changing. He should make some prints at GPS!

ABSTRACTION, GLASGOW PRINT STUDIO, Scotland UK www.gpsart.co.uk

More abstracts at Glasgow Print Studio where 3 share the big beautiful upstairs gallery space. Toby Paterson is on the GPS exh committee & voted for young  Aimée Henderson, recent Dundee graduate, currently at the Slade. Her too tiny paintings, pinned up in a row, play with shape and colour. I loved Hetty Haxworth's looping joyful images, while the line drawing/mark making in pastel & pencil on Rosalind Lawless's big block prints, (surely influenced by Paterson) play a very important part. And thank god the show is NOT called Three Women Artists - as in the 1980! Ever heard of a show called 3 Men Artists? I think not! hetty haxworth 

 

Phillip Reeves, founder member GPS

GLASGOW DIVERSITY: Glasgow Group at the Lillie Art Gallery & LIVING PROOF at Glasgow Print Studio

"When the Glasgow Group first met in 1957 Scottish art was in a bad way."  So says Alasdair Gray of New Lanark fame. He was there so he should know, & he is present again in the Glasgow Group's latest exhibition at The Lillie Gallery, Milngavie, 55 years later. Ten members plus 3 founders make for a diverse array. .

                                                                   Jim Spence's Picador.

The Glasgow Group, which in 1958 had an average age of 22, went on to become a cutting edge affair with founders James Spence & Anda Paterson (also exhibiting large scale pictures at the Lillie) instrumental in keeping things both alive & lively, & international, alongside John Bellany, George Wyllie, Sandy Moffat, Richard Demarco et al. All a true cooperative with members volunteering time & effort. 

Shona Dougall, the current chair, shows a colourful Cliff Face; Claire Paterson's oil nudes are especially ambitious; Gregor Smith's atmospheric watercolours of Mull & Lewis, just lovely. Anda's diptych Pilgrims, is a wonderful example of her powerful drawings of time-worn people, their swollen feet, wrinkles & arthritic hands a testament to hard work and endurance.  
Sunday. I have just found, in among my archive papers for GSA, a piece dated August 1990 for the Herald: "I was very touched and honoured to be asked to launch the Glasgow Group's inauguration of the city's brand new Tramway www.tramway.org, exhibition space in June 1989. Since then Tramway has seen many exciting shows, both international and Scottish, but with the exception of the Compass 21st B-day, none as important in terms of local involvement. In European City of Culture Year it's worth remembering that, without the longterm spadework put in by local organisations such as the GG, Glasgow 1990 would never have happened. It was entirely in character that the GG should take on the awesome challenge of inaugurating such a large. difficult space as Tramway on an almost non-existent budget. Lack of basics: no proper lighting; no moveable screens, no wall cladding, much less rails to hang pictures. So far more than 400 guest artists, from David Donaldson & Sir Robin Phlipson to Peter Howson, Tracy Mackenna www.mackenna-and-janssen.net & Louise Scullion www.dalzielscullion.com (plus Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Norway & Wales) have participated."
www.glasgowgroup.org Till February 20th. Tues-Sat 10-5pm.  Prices £75 to £7000. The Lillie, a purpose built gallery, dates from 1962.

Shona Dougall & CliffFace. 

Alasdair Grey's Nude

When Glasgow Print Studio was founded in 1972 Scottish printmakers had nowhere to print (except Edinburgh), so again young artists, (average age 28) got busy & made it happen in a basement & ground floor of an old electrician's shop at 43 St Vincent Crescent. Over the last 42 years GPS has received big Lottery & Arts Council etc funding, & now has a world class gallery & workshop on 3 floors of Glasgow's art hub at 103 Trongate.

The current good & also diverse GPS exhibition, Living Proof, alludes to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, but also the printmaking term artist's proof. Really it's a way of gathering images of creatures, a current fascination of many GPS artists like Elizabeth Blackadder or Helen Fay. 

Watson's Goats in Tree                                       Cook's Survival of the Fittest. 
Ashley Cook & Fiona Watson both did tackle the subject of evolution to great effect, but most prints - like John Byrne's Boy+ Lion or Ray Richardson's dogs are familiar images. I especially liked Marion MacPhee's Whales and Murray Robertson's detailed sea creatures. Ironically Gray is in BOTH shows, at the Lillie with an outrageous nude, On a Very Striped Coverlet" and at GPS  with  his Scots Hippo! Terrific!

As Watson says, "The medium of print has historically been important in the dissemination of natural history information (and misinformation)!"  Till Feb 2nd. http://www.gpsart.co.uk