In a city where post-industrial sites that were pressed into artistic service in the heady capital of culture days of 1990 - like Tramway and The Arches - have been spruced up and formalised by lottery money, raw spaces that really seem like workshops for the arts are increasingly rare.
The Studio Warehouse in Eastvale Place, also known as SWG3, is one such place, however. Turn off the west end portion of Glasgow's Argyle Street and journey down Kelvinhaugh Street until you see the railway arches. At the end of the street, a venue that houses art happenings, guerilla fashion events and the occasional blast of music awaits.
Artists working here at this time of year have to be dressed in the traditional Puccini manner, so the two Bohemians completing the installation of their first joint exhibition are clad in warm jumpers and woolly hats. In fact they are from Leeds and both came to Glasgow to attend the School of Art, where they met and from which they graduated in 2002. Will Holt and Jonny Shaw have followed different paths since their student days, but the plan to show work together has remained in mind and now, with Shaw working from a studio in the Eastvale Place facility, the show, Far Removed, has opened.
The title may be a reference to the gallery location or to their travels since art school, but equally it might suggest the sort of perception involved in the making of their work, and that required to see it best. The five pieces in the show all play with being that which they are not, and their workings are exposed for all to see. Although Shaw and Holt have brought different approaches to the exhibition, and different skills, they are both using techniques in sculpture and video to tell their stories.
Narratively, Shaw's pieces are the more abstract, and contrasting. A sculptural piece that is the full height of the space, joining the floor to the ceiling, greets visitors to the show. It appears to be protected by a cordon, but the rope rail is really just guiding viewers round to the front of the piece. Its backside, brightly lit and facing the doorway, is a jumble of construction, like the insides of an early timber aircraft. Round the front, the "wing", although vertical rather than horizontal, is a thing of curved aerodynamic perfection, painted scarlet. It might look like sculpted steel, but it is really corrugated card painted to a high gloss. The view from the back and sides gives the game away.
Shaw's other work is much more intimate in scale, a stop-frame animation of 150 stills, 8cm by 6cm, made in his studio next door. Viewing it is as intimate and personal as a studio visit, the images projected within a box in a corner of the space and reflected in a mirror on the floor. To work out the content of the manipulated images, it is necessary to be up close and peering down, and even then it may not be clear what you are seeing. Shaw has just returned from a residency in Barcelona - and hopes to return - and credits that city's Gaudi buildings with his interest in working with shapes that are distorted.
Will Holt has most recently been working in his native Leeds, alongside Glasgow's Stewart Laing, on the design of Opera North's new contemporary comic operetta about plastic surgery, Skin Deep, which has a libretto by Scots TV comedy writer Armando Iannucci. Since graduating in environmental art (Shaw studied painting), Holt has been increasingly drawn into the world of theatre. Under Laing's direction, he contributed to the Stornoway location for the launch event for the National Theatre of Scotland, Home. Laing's interpretation of the brief involved a Doll's House, with each room designed by a different artist. Holt was responsible for the hallways.
That led to other work with the NTS on shows by writer/director Davey Anderson, Rapture and Snuff. Adding a 10-month crash course in theatre design to his CV, Holt has now also worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, providing animations for the John Adams opera Dr Atomic.
Holt's work in Far Removed springs from this theatrical life. One is a stage set in itself, a grey office designed to change colour to reflect a sound design of four different scenes: a dawn blue light, daylight, red neon at midnight and a green-lit dream state. The different ingredients are intended to evoke a personal story in each viewer, and visitors can choose to wander through the set and become part of the narrative or watch from "outside".
A second piece is the story of the duo's exhibition presented as a 1:25 scale theatre designer's model. Holt has made a scaled-down rendition of Far Removed, complete with the figures of Shaw and himself at work installing the pieces for the new show.
The artist is also present in his third work, which features his actress mother, Maggie Nash, and himself running through their lines for an imaginary staging of a French play about a mother and son, in translation. The two videos take their cue from actor's "line runs", the final check that performers are word perfect before the dress rehearsal.
In a manner similar to Douglas Gordon's video piece with Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, Holt runs the two films out of synch so that surprising dialogues, unintended by the playwright, can abruptly leap out from the non-sequiturs.
Holt's backstage look at the theatrical world chimes nicely with Shaw's desire to reveal the nuts and bolts of his own work. Both are asking pertinent questions about the perception of art. It is an approach that would sit much less comfortably in a neat and tidy gallery than it does in the unfinished environs of SWG3. Appropriately, too, you'll have to be quick to catch it. Far Removed is at the Studio Warehouse in Eastvale Place, Glasgow, until January 18, and is open from noon until 6pm from Wednesday. Viewing today and tomorrow is by appointment only (call 0141 357 7246).
