A NEW exhibition in contemporary craft that responds to the politics of housing, property rights and access to space is to open in Glasgow.
It is being staged while another housing crisis exacerbates the wealth gap between renters, landlords, property and landowners.
The exhibition will also feature interviews with makers discussing their experiences with the job and housing insecurity and how they are priced out of adequate studio or making spaces.
The contemporary works will be shown along with film footage documenting housing activist movements and redevelopment schemes from Glasgow from the 1960s to 1990s. These have been sourced from Glasgow Women’s Library, the Moving Image Archive and Glasgow City Archives.
The exhibition, If Only We Had The Space, takes its name from a short film commissioned by the Corporation of Glasgow in 1974 to show how improvements to city tenements could be made with the aid of home improvement grants.
These grants came in response to a total lack of adequate housing in Glasgow and “to provide the ordinary citizen with help and encouragement to make his existing home and its surroundings a more pleasant place to live”.
In today’s context, the curators are keen to explore the shifting way in which people view their homes.
Textile designer Jeni Allison has created two tapestries which deal with her experience of tenement living, motherhood and societal expectations. Deirdre Nelson presents SURPLUS, a knitted money box created in 2011 in response to Irish craft and ghost estates in Ireland. There are also ceramic works by Fionn Duffy and stained glass works by Jack Brindley.
The show will run at Platform from October 17-26.
Speaking on behalf of the curatorial team, Soizig Carey said: “In a hyper-capitalist society, many artists and makers experience job and housing insecurity and are priced out of adequate studio or making spaces. Homes become the space where they create and produce work.
“We have been asking artists and makers: how does this impact or restrict what and how you create? Does it change how you inhabit or perceive your home?
“If Only We Had The Space asks the visitor to consider the blurring between personal and professional time when we work in a domestic space. Rent surges for studio spaces have made them unaffordable and therefore prevent makers and artists from having distance from their practice.”
The show is being delivered in association with Craft Scotland.
