The Glasgow 2014 Organising committee has announced the first part of the ambitious GENERATION culture programme. Celebrating 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland, a period during which the nation’s art scene gained international significance, more than 100 artists will exhibit their works in re-stagings of pivotal exhibitions and through new commissions. Over 60 exhibitions will take place throughout Scotland between March and November 2014, in the lead up to and following the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
With an emphasis on making contemporary art accessible to a wider audience – a specific focus being on activities for the ‘new generation’ of 12–25 year-olds – the scope of GENERATION is wide-ranging. Exhibitions are spread across the country as far apart as Orkney, Stornoway and The Isles of Skye and Mull, as well as in the cultural hubs of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Work by 1996 Turner Prize winner Douglas Gordon will be exhibited for the first time in the North of Scotland at Caithness Horizons in Thurso, and his acclaimed Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work from about 1992 until Now will have its Glasgow premiere at the Gallery of Modern Art.
Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich will present 15 years of their practice in a major exhibition for the collaborative duo at the Pier Arts Centre in Orkney, while an exhibition by Toby Paterson will tour to Kirkcaldy, Inverness, Peebles and Dumfries.
First time in Scotland
A number of internationally exhibited works by several of the nation’s respected art world figures will be brought to Scotland for the first time. Graham Fagen’s Peek-A-Jobby and Simon Starling’s Burn Time will be at the Scottish National Gallery and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art respectively.
Recognition of Scotland’s extensive artist-led activity comes in the form of Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland, a discursive survey exhibition at Dundee’s Cooper Gallery.
GENERATION’s associate curator Katrina Brown, alongside a specially convened curatorial board, has worked with the numerous partner venues to devise the comprehensive Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme, the result of a partnership between Glasgow 2014 Organising Committee, Glasgow Life and Creative Scotland.
Evoking the interconnected nature of Scotland’s contemporart art scene, 2009 Turner Prize nominee Lucy Skaer, who will be exhibiting at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, said: “On my first visit to Glasgow aged 18, I saw Douglas Gordon’s 24-Hour Psycho at Tramway. Since then, my experiences here cannot be untangled from the language and influence of my precedents and peers. It’s the creative fabric of the place – formed from working collaboratively as a chaotic pack with Henry Viii’s Wives, to discussing the placing of a thickly painted egg with Sue and Hayley Tompkins on the floor of Transmission, to borrowing a whale from the National Museum of Scotland’s store in Leith.”
Scotland’s Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: “The sheer scale and ambition of this project is testament to the large number of talented artists that Scotland has produced over the last quarter of a century.”
