Glasgow International: Whose space is it anyway?

In 2004 Scotland's second city made the front cover of the venerable Time magazine as its vibrant underground music scene, with local favourites Franz Ferdinand and Belle and Sebastian at the forefront, drew frothing comparisons to Detroit and Liverpool in the mid-1960s and Seattle during the grunge explosion of the early 90s.

And Glasgow's dazzling international reputation in the world of contemporary visual art has snowballed in recent years, with a tight-knit community of artists described recently as "its own kind of Silicon Valley on the Clyde".

A string of home-grown artists has thrust Glasgow into the global limelight but internationally-renowned names such as Douglas Gordon, Christine Borland, Simon Starling and Jim Lambie would probably provoke puzzled expressions and a silently-mouthed "Who?" on the streets of the city that nurtured them.

However, an art festival with a growing reputation – the Glasgow International – is about to change all that.

Started in 2005 as a cutting-edge spin-off from the city's Art Fair, the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art is making a major splash in 2008, its first year as a biennial event.

Festival curator Francis McKee explains: "Glasgow has got a very large art scene and the city is recognised internationally for the amount of contemporary art activity and the quality of the artists it is throwing up. So the festival is about celebrating that and showing those artists to people in Glasgow. It is often a better known fact outwith the city than in it."

Indeed, in recent times Glasgow artists have been cleaning up at Britain's most prestigious contemporary art prizes. The Beck's Future Prize, founded in 2000 to promote the most promising contemporary artists working in Britain, was won in three of the first four years by Glasgow artists – Roderick Buchanan, Toby Paterson and Rosalind Nashashibi.

And a hefty contingent of Glasgow artists have won or been nominated for the controversial Turner Prize, the UK's most publicised and debated art award, in the last decade. Douglas Gordon won in 1996, Simon Starling picked up the esteemed gong in 2005, while fellow Glaswegians Christine Borland, Jim Lambie and Nathan Coley have all been nominated.

These achievements have helped Glasgow cast off its post-industrial image and reinvent itself as a haven for all things creative and hip. The hard-man reputation lingers. But nowadays you're just as likely to find yourself jostling for position at a city-centre bar with a Turner Prize winner or a Scottish pop star fresh from headlining a major music festival.

Publicly-funded institutions such as the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), the Tramway and the highly-influential Transmission Gallery have helped put Glasgow on the map. A flurry of commercial galleries, showcasing radical contemporary art, like The Modern Institute, Sorcha Dallas Contemporary Art and Mary Mary, has followed in their wake.

These established art spaces will host major new shows during Glasgow International by the likes of Jim Lambie, Jonathan Monk and Catherine Yass but exhibitions by lesser known artist-run collectives will extend beyond these venues to inhabit derelict sites, private houses and even spill out on to the city streets.

While the Art Fair is hosted annually in a temporary pavilion in George Square, in 2008 Gi becomes a sort of cultural safari, spreading itself far and wide to encompass 30 venues and ‘found' or temporary locations throughout Glasgow.

"The Art Fair is more traditional, whereas this was about getting people to look at the live contemporary art happening in the city," McKee continues.

"The city gave us a lot of derelict venues around the Merchant City, empty shop units and the like. And we found that people really liked that because there was a sense of moving round the city, moving from one venue to another, discovering bits you hadn't really seen and the city is so full of character.

"There's a kind of funny excitement about seeing the spaces. Some of those spaces are absolutely beautiful. There are some beautiful old warehouse or factory spaces down around King Street for instance. People have been interested in the space sometimes as much as the art – it's a double interest."

Experimental art is represented for most of the general public by the Turner Prize. The prize is noted for causing furious debate over its winner's so-called artistic merit. The 2005 winner was Glasgow's Simon Starling, who transformed a shed into a boat, paddled it down the Rhine and then turned it back into a shed again.

But McKee, who is also director of the CCA, happily refutes the widespread notion that ‘experimental' equals difficult, that the work must therefore be a bewildering abstraction that the audience can't engage with or ‘get'.

"Experimental is always exciting," McKee says, "because you don't quite know what you're going to get. I think we try to reassure people that it's definitely accessible; even if it is experimental we try to explain it. There are volunteers at the venues to help people, to talk to people about the work. And because some of the places aren't contemporary art centres or galleries they're less intimidating. So I think people come along reasonably relaxed and willing to give it a go."

A perfect example of McKee's idea of inviting the public to view art in less daunting environments is the Caravan Gallery; a unique gallery carrying an exhibition of photographs of Glasgow and its residents. It will be wheeling its merry way around 12 sites in the city (including the Barras and the Gallery of Modern Art). The photos have been taken by artists Chris Teasdale and Jan Williams. During the last six years the Caravan Gallery has travelled all around the UK. According to the official Gi Festival Guide, the Caravan promises to engage with "the art cognoscenti, 92-year-olds, nuns, drunks, and dogs, to name a few" on its whistle-stop tour of Glasgow.

"Entering a traditional gallery can be daunting," says the producer of the Gi Festival, Jean Cameron. "We hope that by presenting art in different ways people will be taken by surprise."

An idiosyncratic Glasgow tradition is that of small, independent artist-run galleries staging exhibitions in their homes. A.Vermin and Mary Mary started off quite literally living in their very own cosy and familiar, yet weird and wonderful, gallery space. A throwback to this is Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed's first solo show in the UK at, of all places, Douglas Gordon's West End flat, up on Park Circus hill overlooking Kelvingrove Park. Despite being one of the world's most successful contemporary artists, Gordon, like many Glaswegian artists or musicians, didn't feel it necessary to leave the city when he become famous. McKee recognises and applauds the homage-with-a-modern-twist to the bringing it all back home ethos.

"The Do-It-Yourself spirit has always been part of the art scene in Glasgow," McKee says. " Artists have always had exhibitions in their flats here, and invited the rest of the artistic community – so there's a sense that the private has become public in the past and Douglas is updating that while also being conscious of his own reputation as well – the celebrity factor."

A.Vermin is still at it today, mounting exhibitions in founder Alhena Katsof's Glasgow flat. The Montreal-born collagist invites emerging artists to create a new work for one-off shows which she then curates and hosts throughout her home. Guests float in and out of the flat during the course of the short exhibition runs, some staying for twenty minutes and others for hours. Alhena serves them tea, biscuits and hot toddies. Now she's about to branch out of her domestic setting for the first time, stage an on-site installation and join the eclectic mix of punters for a pint in one of Glasgow's classic old pubs, The State Bar on Holland Street.

As she explains: "A.Vermin is based out of my flat, for the most part. Glasgow has an incredible tradition of this and it's the main source of inspiration for the project. It has a fantastic history of people not waiting around to be invited to do things but to make opportunities for themselves."

Abandoning, at least temporarily, her Glasgow flat for the very public environs of the State Bar, Alhena is excited by the new challenge.

"It's the first time we've put on a show outside the flat," she enthuses. "The whole issue of the public/private dynamic will still be present but it has been shifted because now we're in a public realm. It's a private space but people quite literally treat it as a public house, a place to go and be themselves. We want to play with the notion of the pub as a public venue. We hope that some people will come along to the pub for a pint and happen upon the show."

Alhena moved from Montreal to Glasgow to do an MFA at the city's famous Charles Rennie MacIntosh-designed Art School and loves the inclusive creative spirit among the local artistic community.

"It's a fantastic place to be a young artist. People are very open here and very willing to take new people into the community. People are interested and encouraging of your work regardless of their stature. In my experience the folks who go on to earn acclaim or international recognition really love coming back and collaborating with other artists in the city," she says.

Francis McKee agrees: "It's a very flat, very horizontal kind of scene. It's not the kind of city where you could get above yourself which I think is very useful. I think people enjoy that."

McKee chose "public/private" as the festival's theme – optional for the artists, but coincidentally apt for groups such as A.Vermin who have been engaged in exploring the issues surrounding Gi's zeitgeisty theme for some time. In the age of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, CCTV and mobile phones, the boundaries between public/private are becoming increasingly blurred.

New York-based artist Kalup Linzy, who will have his first UK exhibition at Gi, shows his videos on YouTube as well as in galleries, reflecting the festival's theme. He also stars in his own work, scripting soap-opera shorts in which he plays all the parts.

"Kalup Linzy's work is as much shown on You Tube as anywhere else," says McKee. "Everyone can have a platform now, everyone can exhibit. So there's a strange sense that these things are half-private, like You Tube, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, but at the same time they're also public and the boundary is shifting all the time."

Lowsalt, another artist-run organisation, confront the 2008 theme in three different shows at Gi. In collaboration with artist Iain Kettles they are taking inflatable sculptures, which will appear and disappear in random locations, like a kind of 3-D graffiti, out into the streets of Glasgow; UVP (Worldwide), a clever parody of the multifarious mechanisms of the art world featuring a spoof corporation inviting submissions for an art competition; and a fascinating promenade round Glasgow based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.

Krisdy Shindler co-founded Lowsalt with fellow-Glasgow School of Art students Rebecca Anson and Chloe Brown in early 2006 to provide struggling young artists with a place to exhibit their work in the absence of patronage from the established Glasgow galleries.

"We were approaching our graduate shows and looking to exhibit and experiment and try out ideas outwith the institutions but it was quite difficult to find spaces in places especially for students – places like Transmission aren't too interested in exhibiting students," Krisdy says. "So we acquired a space in the Saltmarket, we did a lot of flyering to attract submissions and it grew from there."

Of taking part in Gi, she says: "We were thinking about the festival's theme from the very beginning and really wanted to challenge it. We've always been interested in the spaces we end up working in. Participating in these public spaces is going to throw up some interesting questions and we're just going to have to see how it goes!"

Among McKee's festival picks are Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal's elegiac film inspired by the murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk; Jonathan Monk's nostalgia trip at the Tramway; Simon Yuill's film Given To The People telling the story of the Pollok Free State, a 1990s tree top protest against the building of the M77 motorway through Pollok Park; Simon Starling's new project for the Modern Institute; and a showcase of emerging Beijing-based artists at the Art School, which brings a large-scale exhibition of contemporary Chinese art to Scotland for the first time.

And let's not forget the big guns! An exhibition of new work by hip Glasgow-based artist Jim Lambie has been specially commissioned by Gi, utilising the extra money the festival was given for going biennial, thus allowing the artist the luxury to develop and create the work over two years. This will be Lambie's biggest exhibition in Glasgow to date and will include a version of his famous black-and-white-striped vinyl floor. The installation will be accompanied by a series of new sculptural works.

In the spirit of the flat, friendly, non-hierarchical artistic community that exists in the city Lambie is also involved in several smaller-scale collective productions at Gi, most notably Uncle Chop Chop, an outlandish so-called "medieval punk night", again hosted by the good old State Bar, featuring a motley 'crue' of contributors from David Shrigley to Lambie and beyond. Also Lambie has made furniture for the interior of The Local, a series of visual art and music events to be staged during Gi in the Studio Warehouse, a studio space for artists housed in the former Customs & Excise bonded warehouse near the River Clyde. Throughout Gi The Local will play host to club nights, a record fair, artist film screenings, experimental Dj sets, performances and talks. The idea is that audiences can come along and meet, socialise and enjoy contemporary art with a bunch of Gi artists.

Finally, one of the most intriguing shows at Gi is by filmmaker/video artist Catherine Yass. Her mesmeric multi-screen film and video installation, High Wire, premieres at the CCA and draws on Yass' filmed footage of Didier Pasquette's attempt to tightrope walk between the Red Road flats in Springburn in 2007.

McKee said at the time that the walk made him think of what he called Glasgow's current mood of confidence. "It is, I think, a beautiful, symbolic piece. There's a sense of risk-taking and ambition taking a look at a place that's off the beaten track for most people and finding something surprising there. Hopefully, down the line, it'll become some weird urban legend. People will just remember this man walking across the flats."

Inflatable sculptures on top of bus-stops; striped sticky-tape floors; exhibitions in people's homes, in pubs, disused shops, wherever; tightrope-walking Frenchmen. . . . Uncle Chop Chop?! What are you waiting for? Get yourself along to the Glasgow International Festival and, who knows, you might become part of some weird urban legend too.

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*Please note*: Some of the off-site spaces mentioned in the article are confirmed at the last minute so make sure to check the Festival Map and Daily Diary on the Glasgow International website below.