This year’s Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art is full to the brim with Turner prize royalty, cementing city’s reputation as contemporary art hub
130 artists – including Turner Prize nominee Karla Black, and winner Richard Wright – have been announced as exhibitors at 2012 Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. The festival is scheduled for 18 days from 20 April 2012, and will take place across 50 venues. The announced programme is particularly exciting since over 90% of the works are new or previously unseen in the UK.
It will be a big moment for this year’s Turner Prize favourite Karla Black, as she is set to have her largest yet show in Scotland (her place of birth), exhibiting a series of new sculptures at the Gallery of Modern Art. Equally significant will be the exhibition of Turner Prize winner Richard Wright at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, in which he promises to unveil his first exhibition of works on paper.
According to the director of the festival, Katrina Brown, ‘GI shines a light on Glasgow’s visual art scene at its liveliest and best’, highlighting its ‘artists, galleries, museums’, along with the city itself ‘which serves as a backdrop and a key part of the GI experience’.
Glasgow Council leader Gordon Matheson has similarly commented that the biennial festival reflects the Glasgow’s ‘reputation as a centre of excellence for cutting-edge contemporary art’, with GI demonstrating ‘Glasgow’s unique flair and outstanding style credentials’. And there is, of course, the added benefit of ‘generating significant economic benefit for the city’.
Other exhibiting artists include: Polish-born Aleksandra Mir, who will display her work ‘Triumph’ (an assemblage of sports trophies exploring the inevitability of replacement by younger talent) in the UK for the very first time; and Scottish artist Ruth Ewan who promise to investigate the Socialist Sunday School movement in the first half of the 20th century.
Follow ArtLyst on Twitter for breaking art news and latest exhibition reviews