France-Lise McGurn: In Emotia
Tuesday - Friday 12 noon - 5pm
Saturday & Sunday 12 noon - 6pm
CLOSED Mondays
France-Lise McGurn (born 1983) is a Glasgow-based artist who predominantly works with painting to create layered installations that incorporate the gallery walls, floors and ceilings.
'In Emotia' is a derivative term which suggests a state of being, simultaneously emotional and in motion. Mcgurn’s figurative painting and wall drawings evoke bodies and limbs overlapping and interacting in ambivalent spaces, at parties, in night clubs, on streets or lying in bed either side of paper thin walls. Cities and bodies, are constantly moving and shaping each other, a sentiment which McGurn evokes through the shifting forms and gestures of her metropolitan figures. Often the works themselves overlap from canvas to wall to floor, creating energetic compositions which suggest intimacy, ecstasy, sexuality, violence and loss.
Working intuitively rather than through direct appropriation, McGurn uses swift brushstrokes and repeated marks to create loose associations about place and relationships, inviting viewers to conjure their own narratives. For Tramway, McGurn takes this process one step further, translating the fluid lines of her paintings into sculptural forms fabricated from neon. A series of new mobile sculptures will shimmer and turn in the space, constantly rearranging themselves to create new narratives and configurations.
Her work has been featured in Art Now at Tate Britain, Extensa Suite, Hospitalfield, Arbroath, 2018, Virginia Woolf, an exhibition inspired by her writings 2017–18, Tate St Ives, Pallant House, Chichester, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. France-Lise McGurn is represented by Simon lee gallery.
This exhibition is generously supported Simon Lee Gallery
Image: Easy Emotia, (detail), 2019. Courtesy the artist.
Hardeep Pandhal | Confessions of a Thug: Pakiveli
Tue - Fri 12 - 5pm
Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm
CLOSED Mondays
Confessions of a Thug: Pakiveli is a multimedia exhibition whose title takes its name from the pulp fiction of 1839 ‘Confessions of a Thug’ by the Orientalist writer Phillip Meadows Taylor. The exhibition’s subtitle ‘Pakiveli’ refers to one of the artist’s rap monikers, adapted from an alias of the late rapper 2Pac, ‘Makiveli’. Taking the premise that heritage is constituted through performative and discursive practices, this exhibition reflects Pandhal’s ongoing exploration into the ways in which identities are subject to conflicting realities that shift over time and place.
Pandhal takes as a starting point the historical application of the word 'thug’, which originated in British-India to name a so-called religious cult of murderers. Although opinion is divided, many believe that ‘thugs’ were politically sensationalised by the British to appear innately criminal. The fiction ‘Confessions of a Thug’ mentioned above is exemplary of such sensationalism. It was adapted from real British criminal records and took the form of a deposition of a supposed ‘thug’.
Bridging different contexts, Pandhal has approached this exhibition as an exaggerated deposition, by connecting practices of associative thinking and elliptical wordplay akin to rap production across a wide range of subject matter and media formats.
This exhibition is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.
Photography by Max Slaven
Scottish Ensemble & Untitled Projects: We Are In Time
Scottish Ensemble and Untitled Projects in association with
Perth Theatre present
We Are In Time
Written by Pamela Carter and Directed by Stewart Laing, with a new live score by Valgeir Sigurðsson
Friday 28 & Saturday 29 February 2020, 7.30pm
The performance on 29 February will be followed by a post-show talk
Two bodies, suspended in darkness.
A team of surgeons, poised as one.
A gathered chorus, singing of life and death.
And a human heart, speeding through the city...
Unfurling through song, words and a visionary live score for strings and electronics, We Are In Time follows the extraordinary journey of two strangers, one giving life, the other receiving it. Musicians are at once performers, chorus and specialist team as the drama between renowned mezzo-soprano Ruby Philogene and vocalist Jodie Landau unfolds, and time ticks on.
The result is a thought-provoking meditation on life, and on what it means to live; on the frailty and strength of human beings, working together, with science, against nature, in search of the superhuman.
“thoroughly original, offbeat and exciting” (Scotsman on Scottish Ensemble)
__________________________
Writer
Pamela Carter
Composer
Valgeir Sigurðsson
Director
Stewart Laing
Musical Director
Jonathan Morton
Producer
Raw Material
Musicians/Chorus
Scottish Ensemble
Vocalists
Ruby Philogene
Jodie Landau
And featuring
Alison O’Donnell as Narrator
Athletico Mince
Bob Mortimer and Andy Dawson are bringing their hit podcast to the stage again, for the first time since 2017. Athletico Mince has had almost 30 million listens since its launch almost four years ago, and what is essentially two middle-aged men talking rubbish was described as “the best podcast in the world” by GQ magazine. Bob is best known as half of Reeves & Mortimer while Andy is best known for regularly buying chicken dippers in his dressing gown from his local Asda.
Expect to hear from your favourite characters while witnessing Bob and Andy’s supreme levels of stagecraft.
Recommended for ages 14+
(Running time: 60 mins. Please note the show is not an episode recording)
Athletico Mince
Bob Mortimer and Andy Dawson are bringing their hit podcast to the stage again, for the first time since 2017. Athletico Mince has had almost 30 million listens since its launch almost four years ago, and what is essentially two middle-aged men talking rubbish was described as “the best podcast in the world” by GQ magazine. Bob is best known as half of Reeves & Mortimer while Andy is best known for regularly buying chicken dippers in his dressing gown from his local Asda.
Expect to hear from your favourite characters while witnessing Bob and Andy’s supreme levels of stagecraft.
Recommended for ages 14+
(Running time: 60 mins. Please note the show is not an episode recording)
UNCLES: One for the Road
SOLD OUT
Your Uncles, Rab Florence and Iain Connell, Burnistoun, are back for another round of drinks and another round of hilarious comedy as they set the world to rights.
Ages 18+
Citizens Theatre presents Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti
Wed 25 March – Sat 11 April 2020, various times
TICKET information and booking from Citizens Theatre>
A Citizens Theatre and Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh co-production in association with DOT Theatre, Istanbul.
By Bertolt Brecht. Adapted by Denise Mina.
Dear audience, let me just say in rhymes
That these are awfully ‘interesting’ times.
Roll up, roll up, and come and see
A One-Percenter roaming free!
When Argyll landowner Mrs Puntila is drunk, she’s a generous and kind-hearted boss who convinces everyone they can have a bright future under her wing. When she’s sober, she’s a cruel and greedy tyrant. Behind the scenes, her shrewd chauffer Matti irons out her drunken mishaps while pursuing a hopeless romance with her already-spoken-for daughter Eva.
Celebrated actress Elaine C Smith brings her comedic genius to the role of Mrs Puntila.
Scottish writer Denise Mina’s new adaptation of Brecht’s comedy satirising the injustices and absurdities of capitalism promises a hilarious and thought-provoking night of theatre that pulls no punches - the perfect antidote to today's gloomy political climate.
_____________________________________
Preview: Wed 25 March
Matinees: Sat 4 & Sat 11 April (2pm)
Access performances TBC
Directed by: Murat Daltaban
Starring: Elaine C. Smith
TICKETING
Full schedule and ticket options available from the Citizens Theatre website>
Glasgow International: Jenkin Van Zyl - In Vitro
Mon – Fri 12-5pm
Sat & Sun 12 – 6pm
We arrive into a chamber of cake ‘heads’ – grotesque mask-like baked goods in fridges – and thus begins a journey into the witty and bacchanalian world of Jenkin van Zyl. Taking on the dungeon-like qualities of Tramway’s T4 Theatre, the artist creates an immersive installation comprising both sculpture and video, inviting viewers into a scenario involving, amongst other things, airplane fuselage to impress a sense of claustrophobia, sexual ecstasy, hysteria and ‘folk horror’.
At the heart of the installation is a new film which introduces us to characters enacting looped rituals of reproduction and self-pollination in an effort to achieve community, individuation and re-enchantment. The work seeks to indulge in but also problematise the spectacle of transgression. Pulling together at once pleasure, pain and hope, van Zyl uses camp and humour to subvert societal expectations, and imagine what abundance and joy could mean outside the cycles of physical reproduction and consumption. For the artist ‘the hope of pretending is that, with enough time and practise, the performance becomes you’.
Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation
Image: Jenkin van Zyl, In Vitro production still (2020)
Glasgow International: Georgina Starr - Quarantaine
Mon – Fri 12-5pm
Sat & Sun 12 – 6pm
Quarantaine is an ambitious new film by Georgina Starr. Its title refers to the French word for ‘forty’, and also alludes to the period of enforced isolation known in English as ‘quarantine’ (so-called because of its original forty-day timeframe). Over the course of multiple chapters, it follows the story of two new recruits to a clandestine sisterhood whose pursuit of esoteric knowledge takes place in a secret place of instruction, similarly cut off from the world outside.
Contrasting what seems like a cult-like focus on strict supervision and mind-control with other more unruly rituals of mind expansion and extrasensory perception, Quarantaine continues Starr’s preoccupation with the otherworldly and the occult, and her longstanding interests in the visionary aspects of experimental cinema, to further her exploration of the hidden recesses of the creative imagination.
Co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, Leeds Art Gallery and Glasgow International with Art Fund support through the Moving Image Fund for Museums. This programme is made possible thanks to Thomas Dane Gallery and a group of private galleries and individuals.
This exhibition is part of the Director’s Programme for Glasgow International, Scotland’s largest festival for contemporary art.
Image: Quarantaine (2020), by Georgina Starr. Courtesy the artist, FVU, Art Fund, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, Leeds Art Gallery and Glasgow International.
Glasgow International: Bodys Isek Kingelez
24 April - 10 May:
Mon – Fri 12-5pm | Sat & Sun 12 – 6pm
11 May – 21 June:
CLOSED Mondays
Tue – Fri 12-5pm | Sat & Sun 12 – 6pm
Based in then-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Bodys Isek Kingelez (1948 – 2015) was a Congolese sculptor and visionary artist who created sculptures of imagined buildings and cityscapes that propose fantastical, utopian models for a more harmonious future society. Working in a period of socio-political shifts, Kingelez responded to an urgent need to transform urban reality.
From the late 1970s until 1985 Kingelez worked as a self-taught art restorer at the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaïre, which gave him access to supplies and materials, and a base to refine his practice. He created works from a variety of everyday and found materials such as coloured paper, cardboard, plastic and tape, meticulously repurposed in order to radically rethink the world around him.
Shown for the first time in a UK solo exhibition, Kingelez’s ‘extreme maquettes’ are vibrant, ambitious and highly detailed sculptures. These inventive works raise questions around difficult issues of urban planning, economic inequity, nationhood and national identity – resonating profoundly within today’s contemporary societies – while remaining innately infused with potential.
Kingelez’s work was first included in the ground-breaking 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la terre at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and has most recently been exhibited in the first large-scale solo presentation of his work, City Dreams (2018-2019) at MoMA, New York.
This exhibition is part of the Director’s Programme for Glasgow International, Scotland’s largest festival for contemporary art.
Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation
Image: Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kimbembele Ihunga (1992) Courtesy of The Museum of Everything