- 100 pairs of shoes, curtains from the Mackintosh Lecture Theatre, and ‘rest’ chairs made out of shoulder pads, knitting needles and bra straps among installations on show in specially-commissioned exhibition.
- Exhibition on hosts and visitors is set with the context of the UK’s attitude to migration and has taken on added significance in the light of last month’s vote on the UK’s membership of the EU.
Images: Mobilised no 1: with Pipe, Sogol Mabadi, 2016 and ome of the 100 pairs of shoes that form one of Birthe Jorgensen’s installations and Photos: Alan McAteer and Ruudu Ulas
Hosts & Visitors, a specially-commissioned exhibition for the Reid Gallery at The Glasgow School of Art was unveiled today, Friday 8 July 2016. The exhibition showcases new work by Glasgow-based artists Birthe Jorgensen and Sogol Mabadi. Its inspiration is the subject of diaspora and migration. Hosts & Visitors runs in Reid Gallery at The Glasgow School of Art from 9 July – 21 August 2016.
Both artists are graduates of the GSA and have made Glasgow their home. Migration has been a part of the individual life experiences of the artists both of whom were born out with Scotland. Jorgensen is Danish and as a young child she lived in the UK with her family, and later moved to Scotland as an adult to study. Mabadi, meanwhile, was born in Tehran, moving as a child with her family to Gothenburg and then as an adult to Scotland for education.
Each artist has made new pieces especially for the show. Among Jorgensen’s site-specific pieces is ‘One Hundred’ consisting of one hundred pairs of used male and female shoes confined to a square grid on the gallery floor. On loan from charity shops across Scotland this formation conjures up a group of unknowable souls from unknowable places who are temporarily gathered in the gallery on route from one place to another. ‘One Hundred’ has been sponsored by Oxfam Scotland.
Jorgensen has also created an installation ‘Good Old Light’, using curtains from the Lecture Theatre in the Mackintosh Building. The two large velvet curtains were custom made for “the Mack” in the 1950s and show the trace of decades of exposure to the light which poured through lecture theatre’s windows on to their bleached and brittle silk lining. Alongside this work is a new installation ‘From rage to grief and back again’, where shards of mirror pierce through the skin of the galley wall facing the street. As the light of the day changes the shards will reflect different patterns of light.
Mabadi meanwhile has produced a series of ‘rest’ chairs made out of shoulder pads and knitting needles, bra straps and other feminine signifiers. One of the chairs is made entirely out of glue sticks, which are threaded onto knitting needles. Tonight, as part of the public preview for the exhibition, she will work with a team of four GSA students in a sequence of private performances in people’s homes, to households that include families and individuals. Mabadi has asked each of the hosts to select a piece of their clothing to represent themselves in the gallery. She has turned each piece of clothing inside out, and hung them in the exhibition.
Mabadi’s performances, called ‘Hosts and Visitors’, will explore what it means to host a stranger and to be strangers ourselves. In two photographs, the artist explores ‘veiling’ and ‘unveiling’; the first is taken with the artist performing in the kitchen of a hosts’ home, her face covered with her intricately plaited hair. The second is an intimate portrait, with the artist ‘unveiled’ and looking directly at the camera. Mabadi has selected a film by Iranian film-maker Moshen Makhmalbaf to be screened at GSA as part of the exhibition programme.
“Often in two person exhibitions, the curator as the host brings together two artists who may not necessarily know each other,” says Jenny Brownrigg, GSA Exhibitions Director. “In this situation it is only the artworks that have the conversation.
“For this project we introduced Jorgensen and Mabadi to each around 18 months ago and they responded to this meeting with a project called ‘A Year-Long Conversation’ (2015) through which they could really learn about each other’s artistic practices and methods.”
“Hosts and Visitors is the result of these discussions and is inspired migration which has been a key issue in the UK for some time. It has taken on added significance in the light of the on-going debates on how many refugees from Syria the UK should host and last month’s vote on the future of the UK’s relationship with the European Union.”
Associated with the exhibition there will be two events: a talk by Professor Alison Phipps, Convener of Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network (20 July at 6pm), and a screening of the film ‘The Silence‘ by Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (28 July 2016 at 6pm). The film has been selected by one of the exhibition artists, Sogol Mabadi, and will be introduced by Dr Jim Harold of The Glasgow School of Art.
Hosts and Visitors’ has been commissioned by The Glasgow School of Art. The project is supported by Creative Scotland. It has been generously sponsored by Sew Essential; Prym Consumer Europe GmbH; Henkel Consumer Adhesives and Oxfam.
Ends
Further information:
Lesley Booth,
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@GSofAMedia
Notes for Editors
Hosts and Visitors events programme
20 July at 6pm, Reid Auditorium
Film Screening - ‘The Silence‘, (1998) Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, director of The Silence states: “The colour and flavour of my work are native to Iran, but its contents are not. My work concerns birth, life and death” (Dabashi, ‘Close Up’, p.277). Korshid is a blind boy who tunes new music instruments because of the sensitivity of his hearing. Every day he travels on a bus from home to the workshop. Her mother has advised him to put his fingers in his ears so that the attractive sounds that he hears on his way do not distract him. But the temptations of the sounds take him to different places every day. This film has been selected by one of the artists, Sogol Mabadi. The film’s themes of gender, maturation of the spirit and creativity as a need to transcend life’s hardships are of particular relevance to the exhibition Hosts and Visitors. The film will be introduced by Dr Jim Harold.
28 July 6pm, Reid Auditorium :
A GSA Public Lecture by Professor Alison Phipps
As part of ‘Hosts and Visitors’ the artists have invited Professor Alison Phipps who is Convener of Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network and Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at University of Glasgow to give a talk. She will focus on her developing research on languages and intercultural advocacy with asylum seekers and refugees.
Birthe Jorgensen (b. 1975, Copenhagen) http://www.birthejorgensen.com/
Birthe Jorgensen grew up in Denmark and England and spent her late teenage years on the Danish National Trampoline Team before going travelling for several years. She received a BA in Sculpture from Central St Martins College of Art in London (2000-03) and later on an MLitt in Sculpture with distinction from The Glasgow School of Art (2012-13). Placing value on her formal training in the arts, she considers her role as a Live Visual Artist with the interdisciplinary company Apocryphal Theatre (London, 2006-11) of equal importance. Jorgensen is currently a Lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art and has previously worked as a visiting tutor at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Iceland Academy of Art.
In 2015 she began a long term artist residency with Glasgow Refugee Asylum Migration Network (GRAMNet) run by University of Glasgow. The same year she was on artist residency at the Danish Institute in Athens, Greece, and the year before awarded the Interdisciplinary Residency at Hospitalfield Arts, Arbroath. In 2016 she collaborated with Zimbabwean poet Tawona Sithole on the moving installation ‘Bitter Rose’ for Glasgow International. In 2015 she was the curator and artist of ‘Delaying Tactics’ at the Studio Pavilion, House for an Art Lover. She also last year had the solo exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace entitled ‘Riotous exuberant green and the dutiful beating of one’s heart’; and ‘Sedimentation’ a commission for Platform, Easterhouse, in collaboration with violinist Alison Blunt and artist Jasper Coppes.Jorgensen has much experience in collaborating with others, from different backgrounds and disciplines, and will continue with this new collaboration with Sogol Mabadi. Jorgensen will also draw on her longterm residency and network with GRAMNet in particular for this proposed exhibition ‘Hosts and Visitors’ at GSA and the public lecture with Alison Phipps from GRAMNet. Jorgensen will build on her own practice in particular her solo show at 1 Royal Terrace in 2015, where she began to make whittled wooden objects and sculptures. Both Jorgensen and Mabadi have site-specific skills that they will draw on to work with GSA’s curator Jenny Brownrigg on the installation in the Reid Gallery, which in itself draws on visiting objects from the Mackintosh building.
Sogol Mabadi (b. 1985, Tehran) grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden and moved to London in 2005. She has a Foundation Diploma from Kensington & Chelsea College and a BA (Hons) from The Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2010 and receiving the Bram Stoker award for best imaginative work in the GSA degree show that year.
Performances/exhibitions include: 'Home Diversions', Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2014); 'Spelling Space', Pipe Factory, Glasgow (2014); 'Dear Green', ZK/U, Berlin (2014); ’24 Spaces- A Cacophony’, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2013); Endeavour no. 07', Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2013); 'Endeavour no. 06', Solo show, Studio 41, Glasgow (2013); 'Ok-yuh-pahy' Glasgow International Extended Programme-Pipe Factory, Glasgow (2012); 'Arches Live'-The Arches, Glasgow (2011); 'State of Play-10 min Manifestos'- National Galleries Edinburgh (2011);' The Mutual Assembly'- Ironbratz Studios, Glasgow(2010); 'Cabinet of Curiosities'- Lansdowne Church, Glasgow(2010)