Page 2 GSA GALLERY SOCIETY - MOMENTUM – The Alchemy Experiment

Glasgow School of Art’s gallery society is a facilitator, organiser, and developer of art and culture inside and outside the walls of GSA. Our aim is to promote aspiring young artists and their art to a wide audience across Glasgow.

We will assist in the advancement of all forms of art and media, as well as giving thought provoking creatives a platform in which to explore their ideas and creations. This is why we wanted to start the first of many exhibitions under the ‘gallery society’ monicker with ‘Momentum’.

In this show you will see artworks that acknowledge a pivotal point in the artists’ education within the art school. The exhibition showcases the refining of artist’s styles, the experimentation of a new media, and the magnum opus of students’ academic timelines.

Screenprint

Poppy Fraser is a Bristol-born artist currently studying Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking, in her final year at the Glasgow School of Art.

Her intentions, through her creative practice, are to make the viewer look more closely at figures occupying space.

Poppy is a multidisciplinary artist. Photographs are the main starting point to her work, whether in the form of found images, family photo albums or photographs she’s taken on her 35mm camera to capture a moment in time.

These then inform her output in a variety of different mediums including printmaking, drawing and painting. Using these mediums, she explores themes of feminism, family, memory, time, roots and nostalgia.

As an artist who has an interest in human nature and the human condition his preference is to use inanimate objects in order to make a series of portraits rather than humans themselves.

However, with this work, Indecipherable, a human sitter has been utilised as a reaction to a previous critique where his work was described as unreadable.

Ellis Bairstow is a Glasgow based photographer that looks at the world around him and the people that live in it.

Ellis usually focuses on portraiture and documentary photography with people at the centre of his art practice.

‘The building’ is a change from the artist’s norm where he chose to look at residential buildings that dominate our environment and have built communities around them, it presents the questions of how you view these focal points of our towns and cities.

Lino print

Esther is a painter and printmaker studying at Glasgow School of Art.

Her figurative drawings and paintings seek to communicate a narrative through observation and celebration of the everyday. She is drawn to depictions of faces and figures as ways to tell stories through her art.

Key themes in her work include explorations of shared human experience and noticing beauty in the mundane.

This reduction lino print of 'The Sower' attempts to prompt thinking about the value and beauty that exists in the everyday

Abbey Coats (b.2001) is a Glasgow based artist currently in her second year at Glasgow School of Art on the Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking course.

She works predominantly within the medium of painting, trying to deconstruct and explore it through experimentation.

Most recently Abbey has been working on creating impressions and trying to capture marks through interesting and unconventional means.

This is what has been showcased in this recent work “stuck” which was created by throwing paint soaked rags at the unprimed canvas. In this work the rag impressions seem to be frozen in their shapes that they take in flight while thrown.

Michael Dudgeon is a Glasgow-based artist who works across printmaking, drawing, and painting. He creates darkly humorous works that often have a political focus. He sees gallows humour as a vital tool when attacking a corrupt power structure.

His most recent work is a body of satirical prints focusing on the undying and undead presence of Margaret Thatcher in today’s neoliberal political circumstances. These include an etching of Thatcher as a doner kebab on a rotating grill, titled “The Lady’s Not for Turning”, and a mezzotint on a lithograph, depicting her as a ghost, haunting catacombs under 10 Downing Street.

“The Wicker’s not for Burning” uses imagery from The Wicker Man (1973) and the perhaps more shocking appearance of Margaret Thatcher to evoke a sense of cultish horror. 50 years on from the release of the film, the Tory government pushes for the UK to become increasingly separatist and unquestioning of the evil motives behind amoral decisions, with a ruling style echoing the (much more charismatic) Lord Summerisle.

The monolithic figure behind Thatcher takes on multiple guilts, national shames, and the ever-burning omnishambles that is UK politics. Who would Thatcher have put in her wicker man?

Stina Aldén was born 1997 in Sweden. She moved to Glasgow 2021 to continue her studies at Glasgow School of Art.

Her work is mainly focused on her heritage and her identity within that. If Stina would describe the work she makes, the word "confused" is probably the first word that would come up. Confused as an artist, but also as a person.

The work she makes is simply a way of trying to make sense out of the life she is living. She is doing this by questioning her background, being raised in a very masculine and labour focused environment. But also by questioning her own identity and persona, and the structures that conflicts with her being. In other words, pretty much everything. Like we all do in one way or another.

Claire is a child of the Pacific Northwest, born of a French father and Mexican mother.

Her first photograph, taken at age 5 while camping in the Redwood Forest, was of her parents’ hands trying to make it into the frame.

Having grown up with an old Nikon camera and being inspired at a young age by the likes of Robert Doisneau, Annie Liebovitz’ early work, Barry Feinstein’s shots of Bob Dylan and Vivian Maier’s keen eye, she sees moments best through film photographs.

She is first and foremost a collector of moments. People, how they are defined by their historical context, shaped by the culture they make up and the spaces they live in, are her greatest fascination.

Since early 2020, I have been researching instances in which security and surveillance cameras, both industrial and consumer grade, can be breached and accessed without permission or knowledge from their original owners.

Through this I found numerous websites that would facilitate the unauthorised access of devices, in this case cameras connected to the internet via their IP address, and decided to illustrate how easy this is to achieve and how dangerous this can be to those who have not appropriately secured their devices.

The ‘Admin’ project aims to confront the public with an insight into the potential for the camera to be used as an unbiased tool for perverse and predatory means.

The work, presented as both a physical book and video installation, documents instances in which technology intended to provide security has been neglected and abused, resulting in a scenario where it proves to be more harmful than it is beneficial.

Intentionally vague, the project intends to coerce the viewer into imagining the many malicious ways in which these cameras could be utilised by those who now have unrestricted access to not only the visual stream from the device, but also its data, including passwords, locations and personal information.

Axl Kasper is a French photographer who studies at the Glasgow School of Art.

As an artist, he dives into the depths of his inner self to capture the essence of his existence. His work is not only about capturing what he sees but about exploring the emotions and feelings within himself.

Axl uses his environment as a tool to express the anxiety that is present in most of us. In his work, you will find symbols representing life’s complexities and the human experience.

Through the use of self- portraits, Axl is capturing his own emotions as well as demonstrating the universal struggle of being.

Recycled sterling silver and smokey quartz

Miranda is a Silversmithing & Jewellery Design student at Glasgow School of Art.

‘Wish You Were Here’ is an alternative interpretation of the traditional souvenir, incorporating themes of ancestry and displacement.

This piece is inspired by what is left behind and what could have been.

Found objects from beaches cast in solid silver act as tangible links between the past, present and future.

Purchase enquires - contact us at info@alchemyexperiment.com

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GSA GALLERY SOCIETY - MOMENTUM

Three Grannies

Indecipherable

The Building

The Sower

Stuck

The Wicker’s Not for Burning

The vegan butcher part 1

Tul on the Columbia

Admin

Sommier Onirique

Wish You Were Here