Keith Bruce argues that art is not just for Christmas.

What I want to know, and what Alex Salmond should definitely want to know, is: what is it that is making a generation of Scotland’s artists the ones to watch if you care about the cutting edge of the contemporary scene? Groom went on to make a suggestion. “You cannot ignore the quality of the teaching at Glasgow School of Art and Duncan of Jordanstone,” he said. Yet the provision of tertiary education to those who have the ability, but possibly not the trust fund, has never been more under attack than is at the moment, and schools of learning are having to contemplate severe cuts and fill an increasing number of places with cash-generating overseas students. The Herald Scotland

Susan Philipsz: Sonic boom

Susan Philipsz has won the Turner prize – using just her own voice. So was her night marred by the student protests? How did she get into sound art? And what's this about a run-in with Stephen Fry? the Guardian

Scots celebrate latest Turner success

Simon Groom, director of modern and contemporary art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said there must be “something in the water” in Glasgow and Scotland to account for its consistent success, or a way of both working and living in the city and country which led to artistic excellence.

“It is such a haunting and beautiful work, and like Richard Wright before her, it is about finding the right place and space and working with it,” he said. “You have to look at all kinds of things, but you cannot ignore the teaching at Glasgow School of Art and, in Philipsz’s case, Duncan of Jordanstone: it’s been a great legacy.” Herald Scotland

Institute for Art and Design / TU Vienna: Call for Contribution

www.urban-matters.org invites (public)art projects, programs and organisations of diverse cultural and geo-political backgrounds worldwide to contribute to this new platform for locating and connecting urgent urban issues and discussing critical and innovative approaches.

In particular, urban-matters.org investigates the potential of 'unplanning' as a possible new strategy for dealing with today's urban challenges. 'Planning' seems no more an adequate response to today's challenges of a multilayered society permanently on the move. Yet, critical projects developed during the last decade by architects, urbanists and artists continue to be a parallel production to the conventional planning methods which are predominantly investor-orientated. How can we develop new visions for urban and regional matters – counteracting the dominant pragmatics of neoliberal economy?

urban-matters.org is seeking for a new positioning of artistic practices, exploring the diverse and often conflictual interests as potential for a new role: the urban practitioner.

Student protests: Turner prize awards day sees Tate Britain invaded

Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota acknowledged their presence and said "all" were concerned by proposed cuts to arts budgets.

He said: "Art should continue to be accessible to all no matter where you live or indeed whatever your wealth."

Philipsz gave them more direct support as she accepted the prize, saying: "I support artists against the cuts." The Gaurdian

Turner prize won by Susan Philipsz for a sound installation

The winner of this year's Turner prize has created nothing you can see or touch – not even the lights famously turning on and off, which was Martin Creed's winning turn in 2001. Susan Philipsz is the first person in the history of the award to have sculpted her prizewinning work in sound – indeed from the sound of her own frailly beautiful voice singing a Scottish lament over the black waters of the Clyde in her hometown, Glasgow. The Guardian

Magician Space: Micro-Intervention | Celsius 36.5

Contemporary art, as a cultural characteristic of the post-totalitarian era, has become the accomplice for state capitalism’s cultural and strategic capital, meanwhile, it is also the herald for a new wave of capitalist economic expansion. As the other ideology in a context of conflict, contradiction and instability, it aims to establish democratic rules of survival in a wide public.

We are exploring art as a medium, and call for proposals from artists, on artworks that are suitable to be disseminated widely, and thereafter to redefine the social functions of artworks and its importance, and re-interpret actual significance of art consumption.

Mierle Ukeles: Excerpt from Not Just Garbage

RSA Residencies for Scotland

The Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture Residencies for Scotland programme 2011 in collaboration with Creative Scotland, the Friends of the RSA and The Barns-Graham Trust. Funded residency opportunities with partner venues across Scotland, enabling contemporary artists a period of research and production.

Application details for the 2011 programme are now online

Deadline for applications: Thursday 20 January @ 5pm

Natalie McIlroy: Shard and Tunegar

The Mutual Members Show

The Conscious Subconscious

Invitation to All

The Conscious Subconscious

First year Sculpture and Environmental Art. An exhibition of work.

Tuesday 30th November - 17.30 onwards

Studio 19, Mackintosh basement

Susan Brind & Jim Harold: Curious Arts – No. 3

Curious Arts – No. 3, a refurbishing of the Library, takes the form of a series of related wall and ceiling texts on a rich and warm coloured ground. The chosen texts re-introduce to the Library history and ideas discovered by the artists during a period of residency in the house in 2007. During the residency, jointly funded by Hospitalfield Trust and the RSA Edinburgh, the Library provided both a studio space and a source of research for the artists. The work is about the nature of libraries, the acquisition and ordering of knowledge, and the overarching desire to understand the world around us.


Hospitalfield House dates from the C13th and its current style reflects the cultural values of its C19th owners, Elizabeth and Patrick Allan Fraser. The design of the House is very much about their relationship with the landscape that surrounds the building and a wider understanding of the world and the individual’s place within it. These same concerns are reflected in the holdings of the Library and in the writings of one man in particular, Richard Parrott, an ancestor of Mrs Fraser. His journals, and most of the books in the Library, reveal a reading of the world informed by a study of astronomy, cosmology, theology, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, the natural sciences and Classical antiquity.


One particular journal, hand-written and compiled between 1740 and 1762, is indexed alphabetically; encyclopaedic topics appearing in an apparently random order under subject headings. Strange and poetic connections are made as ideas on the pages seem to grow out of each other like rhizomes: Memory, Meridian, Melancholy, Thunder, … . When facts are recorded that cannot easily be categorised they appear under the heading Curious Arts, the title adopted for this site-specific work. This journal, with its elliptical approach to the recording of knowledge, provides one of the sources for the texts used in the installation, It is also inspired the form of Curious Arts – No. 3 as a series of apparently disconnected ideas that seem to spin around the room attracted to each other by the context.

GSA Pecha Kucha

next event is Wednesday 1st December 2010

Pecha Kucha is the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", and as a format for show and tell, has become very popular around the world. It rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds each. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a good pace. No navel-gazing or deathly pauses here...

Speakers: Bruce Peters, Jac Mantle, Graham Ramsay, Neil Mulholland, John Quinn, Gayle Rice, Robert Mantho , Gordon Hush, Tara Beall, Mil Stricevic and more

FIGHT CUTS! FIGHT BACK!- General Meeting - All Welcome!

18 November · 17:00 - 20:00

Glasgow School of Art: Vic Assembly Hall (Renfrew Street)

Student unions across the country have called for a national day of student action on the 24th of November. Still fresh from the overwhelming strength shown on the 10th of November in London, Students are planning Mass walkouts, demonstrations and occupations to coincide with other universities across the nation.

Come along to the Vic Assembly hall on Thursday 18 November at 5pm to discuss how all Glasgow universities and colleges can work together to make our voices heard on the 24th, to make our argument stronger. Invite everyone you know!

For those of you unsure where the vic is, it's opposite the Glasgow School of Art (167 Renfrew street), just go upstairs to the main hall. It's the same building as the clubnight if that helps...map here

NO IFS! NO BUTS! NO EDUCATION CUTS!

Dandy, Beano and Whizzer and Chips the inspiration for Huddersfield comic book comeback with Doctor Simpo

DOCTOR Simpo is on a mission to bring the lost art of stupidity back to comic fans.

SEA III

the 3rd year SEA show, opening this friday the 19th Nov. at 17:00 followed by another event at Gambetta 19:00 onwards.

WISHING YOU THE HAPPIEST DAY UNDER THE SUN

an exhibition of third year work downstairs in Gambetta (pub down from Mitchell library) from 7pm till 9pm on Friday the 19th. This is followed by an after party until 12am upstairs in Gambetta with cheap booze and dj's.

Everyone welcome, please come along!

Jeremy Deller and college leaders warn of cuts' impact on young artists

Turner prizewinner and principals fear colleges will become socially exclusive and science and arts collaborations will be lost

The heads of some of Britain's most prestigious arts institutions have warned that government plans to slash funding for teaching humanities subjects could drive future designers, artists and musicians overseas and put vital collaborations between science and the arts at risk.

Deep cuts to teaching budgets for the arts, coupled with proposals to raise tuition fees for undergraduates to as much as £9,000 a year, have also prompted fears that art colleges could become the preserve of a social elite. The Guardian

Gillian Wearing / 2 into 1 (1997)