Glasgow International 2016 Programme Released

Next year's exhibition, from 8-25 April 2016, will be curator Sarah McCrory’s second Glasgow International, with 2014’s edition having occupied the city art spaces (and old public baths) with disparate presentations. For 2016, McCrory hints towards a further extended ambition with the beginnings of a thematic coherence in some of the main exhibits, “programmed to incorporate a careful balance of artists to form a discussion around making, the post-industrial complex and the city.”

It’s fitting then that reference is made to one of the first major industries that defined the city, with an emphasis on artists who place the material and techniques of textiles at the centre of their work. Cologne-based Alexandra Bircken is put alongside American Sheila Hicks in a major group exhibition in Tramway, co-designed by Glasgow stalwart and Turner prize winner Martin Boyce. Also included is Lawrence Lek, who in his new site-specific work imagines the Glasgow-built QE2 returning to the city to be made into a monumental artwork.

As well as the old favourite venues recently used by the festival, such as Tramway, GoMA and Kelvingrove, Kelvin Hall (across the road) will house exhibitions by renowned Glasgow-based sculptor Claire Barclay. Usually working with a strong sense of site-specificity, Barclay will extend this approach to the disused function hall with new and very tactile works in print and sculpture.

While there is an observable interest in Glasgow’s deindustrialisation, perhaps there’s also a nod to the Style Mile and all the pink collars of the city with multidisciplinary artist Corin Sworn’s collaboration with Trakke Roving Machines and Middlemen which will directly connect with the retailers of the city. And there’ll even be a Glasgow International greengrocer’s in Garnethill, with Fireworks Ceramics showing the work of Garnet McCulloch, who runs the pottery workshop. (Alert: the 'fruit' will be inedible sculpture.)

More shops still, with the GI coming back to the empty retail units of the Savoy Centre. Here, there will be Co-Pourri, a group project by artists Laura Yuile and Leslie Kulesh. Taking their cue from the pleasant mixing of materials of pot-pourri, there’s a deliberate housestyle (delicate and decorative) of this project adopted by its various anonymous artist-contributors.

Don’t worry though; there’s no dogmatic or tenuous theming of the entire festival. SWG3 will present Time Is, a suite of screenings, performances and participation. At centre, there will be the films of lesser-known experimental filmmaker Don Levy, whose work as artist, filmmaker and teacher spanned from the 60s until his death in 1987.

Also within the same performance part of the GI 2016’s programme, Leila Hekmat will, with a cast of local artists, student and dancers, adapt her work Mercury in Retrogade to a Glaswegian context at Koppe Astner. With its doleful associations, the name of the work gives a sense of Hekmat’s interest in the contemporary associations and manifestations of melancholy.

The programmes only been partially revealed, and there are a host of unknowns included in the list of artists for GI 2016 with “venues to be confirmed”. With Open House (the festival where any living room can be a gallery) taking place every other year (the years which don't feature a GI), there’s a move for Glasgow International itself to have less defined boundaries between its position and that of Open House, which began to professionalise itself to an extent this year. All artists at the moment diplomatically alphabetised on the website, efforts are evident to avoid a tiering of exhibitions and events between professional and recent graduates/students, and there's still plenty more to be announced ahead of next April.