Personality, passion, and imagination are essential for any artist or teacher. Sam Ainsley and David Harding have it in spades. Over roughly 20 years, starting in 1985, these two remarkable people created a dynamic visual art community where mutual support of each other was the key criterion. Together, they helped the pioneering Glasgow Art School Environmental Art department, producing many successful award-winning artists and teachers working throughout the UK and internationally from Sweden to America, Bergen to Frankfurt.
Now, a film is to be made by Marissa Keating to document this decade of uniquely Glaswegian-style artistic activity and adventure, which produced a generation of key British artists who dominated the scene: 11 Tate Turner prizes for 17 years (including four winners kicked off by Douglas Gordon in 1996, Simon Starling 2005, Richard Wright 2009 & Martin Boyce 2011). Add in 16 Hamlyn Awards between 1998 and 2013, plus 9 Beck’s Futures nominees (winners Roddy Buchanan & Toby Paterson), and you understand why Glasgow City Council use these facts in their advertising campaigns!
So what was the secret? When Harding set up the Environmental Art course in 1985 it was the first in the country based on the premise that “The Context is half the work” so students often worked outside the gallery and in collaboration with each other and with outside bodies. But you only get out what you put in. Once the MFA, Masters of Fine Art, began with Ainsley as head in 1990, she remembers working 60-hour weeks and doing paperwork all Sunday. Only illness convinced GSA to provide an assistant.
Yet since she retired in 2006, she has continued to work 24/7 for free – giving talks and lectures, writing references, and helping and supporting former students. Only recently has she got time for her work – with great success: group shows too numerous to mention and 10 significant solo exhibitions in Chicago, Melbourne, Athens, Leeds University, Zembla, GoMA, Reykjavik and An Tobar Gallery, Isle of Mull.
Harding, now 88, began teaching in 1961 before moving to Nigeria for 4 years to a teacher training college. Back home, he became a town artist for Glenrothes new town,1968-78, working with the planning department to create large-scale, site-specific work. From 1978 to 1985, he lectured at Dartington College of Art before moving to Glasgow.
Harding’s one-liner is “I introduced the maxim, ‘the context is half the work’, as the philosophical basis of the course.” His second driving force is risk-taking travel – trips to the Loire or Berlin, and always a good party. Last is an encouragement to carry out what one might call ‘guerilla’ works – urban projects with no permissions sought and “often subversive works resulted.”
Ainsley, a feminist keen on politics who also likes parties, believes in the importance of community and ethics for her students, with both she and Harding promoting a certain generosity of spirit so that their students would always be supportive of each other. And so they are. “This sense of community and cooperation has differentiated Glasgow from any other city in the UK.” Harding endorses that notion of a family of artists. He says, “When Douglas Gordon thanked the ‘Scotia Nostra” in his remarks in accepting the Turner Prize, he was describing a fact. We still meet, socialise, and support each other. These Glasgow artists genuinely care about each other. In the art world, this must seem to be a contradiction.”
Hence, a film to celebrate this legacy. But movies cost money. A recent fundraising event saw over 700 artists paying 25 quid to make merry at Glasgow’s famous SWG3 (its postcode!), now 20 years old. I remember it damp and dirty, rain pouring in. Now transformed from a shipyard to Glasgow’s prime entertainment site, it’s one of Scotland’s biggest venues for gigs, concerts, club nites, conferences, and parties, and they generously provided the huge spaces free for the fundraiser. A roster of 13 bands, including the TENEMENTALS, were accompanied by large-screen film and sculpture installations by former students, including Roddy Buchanan and David Shrigley. Jackie Donachie’s famous advice bar, which was installed previously in New York, Antwerp and Edinbrough’s Fruitmarket, was there. Well-known master printer Matthew Rich screened Shrigley’s invitation design – an orange flame of inspirational light – onto fast-selling T-shirts. The atmosphere was electric, the noise deafening! Another great party – and by coincidence, Ainsley’s 75th B-day!
Top Photo: David Shrigley © David Shrigley