MORE than 130 artists, including major award winners, will exhibit their work at 50 venues across Glasgow during its 18-day contemporary art festival next year.
A “once-in-a-lifetime” display by Turner Prize winning Glasgow artist Richard Wright is among many major new exhibitions which will be showcased at the festival.
Wright will have his first exhibition at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum; Karla Black, the favourite to take this year’s Turner Prize, will display new work at the Gallery of Modern Art; and the Tramway will become a centre for promenade theatre and film making for the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, or GI, next year.
The festival, which will be held at both temporary and permanent venues, also features new shows from artist such as Adrian Wiszniewski, Alex Frost and the formerly Scottish-based artist Rosalind Nashashibi, who will collaborating with Scottish Ballet on a new work.
Now in its fifth year, the festival will run from April 20 to May 7 next year. The biennale is growing in importance and cache in the international arts world, according to its director Katrina Brown.
More than 90% of the art in the 18-day festival is new or previously unseen in the UK, and there will be more than 40 exhibitions, both solo and group shows.
“The festival feels like it grows every time and it is the enthusiasm of the artists who want to make work for the festival that makes it so dynamic,” said Ms Brown, also a judge for this year’s Turner Prize.
“I still think it is growing in its reputation. The last festival, in 2010, really generated a lot of interest -- a lot more people know about it and want to take part in it.
“It is not a straightforward biennale like Venice, it is something a little bit different: It is definitely a festival -- it is 18 frantic days and there is a lot to see.”
Wright’s show at Kelvingrove will be a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to see his meticulous and complex paintings on paper.
Wright won the Turner Prize, the most prestigious award in contemporary art, in 2009 for his temporary wall paintings or frescos, in particular a large work painted in gold.
The Kelvingrove exhibition will be the first showing of his works on paper, which are rare examples of permanent work by Wright, as he often paints over his wall paintings.
“It is a one-off,” Ms Brown said. “He has been painting on paper for many years but usually they go off to collections around the world, so this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Among other highlights is a new exhibition by Ruth Ewan, co-curated by Siobhan Carroll and Kitty Anderson in association with The Common Guild, which will examine Glasgow’s turn of the 20th-century Socialist Sunday School movement.
An exhibition of new work made by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles during a three-month residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios will form the first show in the studio’s extensive new premises in The Whisky Bond.
There will be the first UK showing of Triumph, an installation of 2529 discarded sporting trophies collected by Polish-born artist Aleksandra Mir.
At the Tramway, the theatre director Grahame Eatough and the artist Graham Fagen, team up with cinematographer Michael McDonough for a work which will be “art installation, promenade theatre and film making” in collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland.
Ms Brown added: “GI shines a light on Glasgow’s visual art scene at its liveliest and best. its artists, galleries, museums and indeed the whole city and its specific architecture, which serves as a backdrop and a key part of the GI experience.
“GI 2012 includes a remarkable array of outstanding emergent talent as well as some of the most significant artists of our time, in a great line-up of local and international figures.’
The overall attendance at the 2010 festival was 153,182, which represents an increase of 71% on the 2008 festival. The number of unique visitors was 16,237, an increase of 27% on 2008.
In 2010 Susan Philipsz won the Turner Prize for a sound work, Lowlands, which was commissioned by the 2010 festival.
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