AHM End of Residency Farewell

Habitual escapees Sam, David and Sandy, otherwise known as AHM, move out - and on? Before they go they would like to invite Members to a Farewell Event.

Wednesday 14 December 2011
4pm – 5pm
Research Resource, Glasgow Sculpture Studios

“After three years of getting to know how to get to Kelvinhaugh Street we will have to find another route to somewhere else. The GSS residency has offered us a variously warm and always friendly place. Great staff support, and mingling with a bunch of terrific artists, has meant we couldn’t have had a better place for our weekly ‘thought showers’. And what were they all about? Well nothing less than to change the whole culture of where visual arts stands in Scottish life – for the better of course. Did we achieve this - of course not. But we don’t share the aspiration of the character in an Eric Linklater novel who ‘aimed low and missed’.

We spent a lot of time working to set up an idealistic ‘drawing school’ for ‘disadvantaged’ 16 year-olds but the recession did for that. We worked on our proposal to present an exhibition in Glasgow in 2014 that told the 30 year story of the enormous success of Glasgow artists but national/local cultural politics did for that. (The National Galleries with Glasgow Life and others across Scotland will celebrate contemporary art in 2014 and we await details of that.) Our recorded ‘Conversations’ with artists, critics, writers and, more generally, thinking people, prepared us for the presentation of three symposia over twelve months under the title of State of Play - Art and Culture in Scotland Today. In our view, and that of many others, these have been a great success and to maximise that we have to publish the material that they produced. So we move on to doing that.

We received financial support from a private donor and, for some of our research, from the SAC as was. We also got crucial support for the symposia from Glasgow University, the National Galleries of Scotland, Dundee Contemporary Arts and The Hope Scott Trust.

We had two absolutely brilliant research assistants Naomi Brown and Helen Shaddock who kept us on track and worked way beyond the call of duty.

Our sincere and grateful thanks go to David and Amy who invited us to be part of GSS‘s aspirations and activities, and wish them, and all who work in and support what the Sculpture Studios stands for every success in the fantastic potential of the new home.”

Sam, David and Sandy

Image Credits:-

AHM Portriat (l-r Sandy Moffat, Sam Ainsley & David Harding) 2008 © Alan Dimmick
sponsors