Who would you invite to your birthday party? Arts and Business Scotland, the organisation formerly known as Absa that fosters links between, well, the arts and business, is marking its 20th anniversary in the company of Christo, Thomas Joshua Cooper, John Bellany, James McIntosh Patrick, Jenny Saville, George Wyllie and Alberto Morrocco. The hoolie is being held in the Clydesdale Bank Exchange building in Glasgow and it is as fine a free exhibition as you are likely to see all year. Arts and Business director Barclay Price cheerfully admits that he stole the idea from a sister organisation, but the Scottish incarnation of Art in the Workplace is much bigger and bolder than its inspiration. On the entire first floor of the office block, the organisation has construced a gallery, using some stands hired from the Glasgow Art Fair and some work that usually never has a public airing. Price
wrote to 200 Scottish businesses asking if they had art in their offices which they could lend to a celebratory exhibition. Some 70 works of surprising diversity are being shown in a show that is nonetheless remarkably coherent. Of course, the 20th birthday of Arts and Business Scotland is not only (or even chiefly) what is being celebrated. Price had in mind a riposte to criticism that business was not supportive of contemporary art. While he concedes that certain types of work would be deemed unsuitable for the workplace, the show gives the lie to any impression that boardrooms only give space to conventionally pretty pictures. Just as it was important to Arts and Business that Art in the Workplace was shown in an actual workplace (and isn't it great, by the way, that they resisted the temptation to call it Inspire! or some such handle), it was also crucial that the businesses themselves
chose which works to submit - and explain why they bought them. The panels that accompany the exhibits are often just as interesting as the pieces themselves. Sculptor and art technician Duncan Bremner has hung the show, starting with representational works and journeying via an account of the Glenfiddich distillery's acclaimed artist-inresidence scheme to the more challenging contemporary work, culminating in a huge Christo drawing of the islands off Miami. It is undoubtedly one of the most unusual and valuable pieces on display and, appropriately, is in the collection of AXA Art Insurance. That company has assisted with the insurance of the show; Constantine, the art movers, have arranged the transportation and lent work from their collection; and Great Circle, who are doing the public relations for the show, have a lovely ash triptych by Grant Birse from the Borders Woodschool on display.
All of these partnerships illustrate in the most practical way what Arts and Business is about. Price estimates that there is around GBP50,000 of "in kind" sponsorship on display, and the show also demonstrates that the organisation is itself capable of mounting the kind of big project it is usually in the business of facilitating and encouraging. The Clydesdale Bank, which lives on floors above the show, has a considerable art collection and staged its own exhibition as a contribution to Glasgow's year as European City of Culture in 1990 when Sir Eric Yarrow was chairman. These days a very handsome George Wyllie piece based on Glasgow's coat of arms greets the visitor in the foyer downstairs. It finds a partner in the exhibition in Wyllie's characteristically witty Bank Balance II, commissioned by the Clydesdale for the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988, which sits well in front of Avril Paton's
depiction of the garden festival itself (from the collection of ScottishPower). The Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB are all represented and there is more apt subject matter in Shepherd and Wedderburn's submission of Ogilvie Reid's painting Legal Advice, hung alongside a McIntosh Patrick that probably looks less overwhelmed on the wall of the bank it came from. Here it fights for attention with three big bold Bellanys, two in his familar recent style and amore unusual one from the mid 1960s, supposedly based on his father. Aberdeen Asset Management's Alberto Morrocco is another attention-grabber, as are Navy Blue Design's triptych of photographs by Florencia Durante. Standard Life shows monochromes by Thomas Joshua Cooper and one of the graduates of its art school postgrad Brave Art scheme, Ingvild Anderson. I covet that Jenny Saville self-portrait though, from
the small display provided by Glasgow School of Art.
Art in the Workplace is at Clydesdale Bank Exchange, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow, until June 9. Open midday to 5pm, Monday to Saturday. Admission is free.
There are more musical treats this week than you can shake a baton at, but tonight the place to be is St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh for Harry Christophers's sensational choir The Sixteen, currently proving that crossover can be credible with their CD Ikon. Tuesday presents problems for those of catholic tastes. At Glasgow's National Piping Centre, Sligo fiddler Manus McGuire is launching his new album Fiddlewings, substantially recorded at Castlesound Studios in Pencaitland, East Lothian, and which sounds like he has come round to play in your front room. Meanwhile at King Tuts, the contemporary sounds of young France (poprockers Phoenix) meet the even more youthful Californians The Like: the songs of Z Berg accompanied by bassist Charlotte Froom (daughter of producer Mitchell) and drummer Tennessee Thomas (daughter of drummer Pete). Spot the Elvis Costello connection.
The Sixteen, St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Palmerston Place, Edinburgh, tonight 7.30pm Manus McGuire, National Piping Centre, Glasgow, Tuesday 8pm Phoenix/The Like, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, 8.30pm
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