Nicole Wermers’ ‘Day Care’ is an exhibition of new and recent sculptures set against the backdrop of Glasgow’s urban landscape. The works on show intertwine visions of women’s bodies at work or rest with the economics and politics of (urban) space, and the visibility and value of high art with the invisibility of care and maintenance work.

‘Day Care’ includes two newly commissioned sculptures, alongside sculptural interventions in the corporate office space of The Common Guild’s temporary premises on the seventh floor of 60 York Street. The exhibition marks Wermers’ most substantial institutional UK presentation to date.

‘Day Care’ presents work from the artist’s latest series, ‘Reclining Females’ (2022–2024). These sculptures bring together the familiar, art historical trope of the reclining nude, with readymade commercial products and the banal apparatus of the service industry to critically engage with the social, psychological and economic conditions of urban space and architecture.

Wermers’ lounging female nudes appear larger than life-size and are hand-formed in plaster over styrofoam. Striking poses that evoke Henry Moore’s reclining bronze women, these voluptuous figures have the rough-hewn appearance of largescale sculptural studies. Each of the female figures adopts a different posture of repose, heads angled to meet the viewer’s gaze from an elevated position. They balance on wheeled maintenance carts filled with mops, freshly pressed linen, plastic bottles and chemical products for cleaning and disinfecting spaces such as hotels and corporate environments: spaces like the temporary gallery where they will be displayed.

The formal juxtaposition of the figures and carts create tension between ideas of labour and leisure, undermining gestures of decadence and desire routinely expressed by (male) renditions of the female nude. Instead, the figures imply exhausted, overworked bodies: low-waged and typically invisible women’s labour that sustains commercial and business environments. At the same time their size and elevated position asserts their defiant presence and independent agency. In the particular white-collar context of The Common Guild’s temporary space, the artworks generate discourse on corporate structures and overlooked labour hierarchies.

About the artist /

Nicole Wermers (born 1971 in Emsdetten, Germany) lives and works in London. She studied at Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg from 1991–97 and received an MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1999. Since 2017 she has been a professor of sculpture at Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich. Wermers was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2015. 

Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘Reclining Fanmail’, Kunsthaus Glarus; ‘P4aM2aRF!’, Herald St, London; ‘Emscher Folly’, Urbane Künste Ruhr/ Emscher Kunstweg, Duisburg permanent public art commission, (all 2022); ‘Earring for Cambridge’ public commission for Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge University; ‘Women between Buildings’, Kunstverein Hamburg, (both 2018); ‘Grundstück’, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, (2017); ‘Givers & Takers’ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2016); ‘Infrastruktur’, Herald St, London (2015); ‘The London Shape’ Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston-upon-Thames (2014); ‘Manners’, site-specific commission for Tate Britain (2013). ‘Hotel Biron‘, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; ’Masse und Auflösung’, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2007), ‘Earring‘ public sculpture project, Camden Arts Centre, London; and ’Chemie’, Secession, Vienna (2004-2005).

Selected group exhibitions include: ‘13 Women: Variation III’, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California; ‘Phantom Sculpture’, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry; ‘Your Home Is Where You’re Happy’, Haus Mödrath, Kerpen; ‘Homo Ludens / About the Game of Art’, Woods Art Institute, Hamburg; ‘ Concerning Nature‘, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; ‘Femmenology‘, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco (all 2023). ‘Identität nicht nachgewiesen – Neuerwerbungen der Sammlung des Bundes’, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn; ‘SSSSSSSSSCULPTURESQUE’, Kiang Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong; ‘German Caviar’, Kunstmuseum Bonn; ‘On Equal Terms’, Uferhallen, Berlin; ‘By A Thread’, Tenter Ground, London (all 2022).

Her work was also included in ‘Magical Soup‘, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; ‘More More More‘, Tank Shanghai, Shanghai; ‘Grace before Jones‘, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; ‘Museum For Preventive Imagination‘, MACRO, Rome; ‘Design by Time‘, Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco (all 2020); ‘Crack up Crack Down‘, 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw;  ‘Design by Time‘, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, Ohio; ‘Tainted Love (club edit)‘, Villa Arson, Nice; ‘Das Ruhr Ding‘, different venues in Dortmund, Oberhausen and Bochum, ‘Mein Blick‘, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (all 2019); ‘ANTI‘, 6th Athens Biennale, Athens; ‘You Remind Me of Someone‘, FRAC Lorraine, Metz; ‘Die Zelle‘, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; ‘Dime Store Alchemy‘, Flag Art Foundation, New York (all 2018). ‘Elevation 1049‘, different venues, Gstaad; ‘Quiz 2’, MUDAM Luxembourg; ‘Home Is No Place‘, German Embassy, London; ‘Tainted Love (Where Did Our Love Go)‘, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers; ‘In Awe’, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; ‘You Remind Me of Someone‘, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen; ‘An Idea of Boundary‘, S.F. Arts Comission Gallery, San Francisco; ‘Display Show’, Stroom den Haag; ‘Intensive Nesting‘, Division Gallery, Montreal (all 2017); Turner Prize, Tramway, Glasgow; ‘Function Follows Vision, Vision Follows Reality’, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Vienna; ‘Überschönheit’, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (all 2015); ‘A Singular Form’, Secession, Vienna (2014); ‘Villa Massimo Stipendiaten’, Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013); ‘Crazy House’, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (2012); ‘The New Décor’, Hayward Gallery, London (2010-2011); ‘A wavy line is drawn across the middle of the original plans’, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2012); ‘Weltempfänger’, Galerie der Gegenwart/ Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2007); ‘Tate Triennale’, Tate Britain (2006).

Further Info

The exhibition is supported by The Elephant Trust.

With thanks to Sam Talbot PR and Herald St, London.

Additional Links

Day Care Exhibition Guide

‘Nicole Wermers Takes Us To The Cleaners’ review by Phin Jennings, Frieze, 25 March 2024.

‘Work hard or play hard? The art world can’t decide’ by Eloise Hendy in Plaster Magazine, 23 March 2024.

Nicole Wermers ‘Day Care’ reviewed by Rose Higham-Stainton, Flash Art, 18 March 2024.

‘Invisible Labour’, Nicole Wermers interviewed by Ellen Mara De Wachter, Art Monthly, March 2024.

Interview with Nicole Wermers with Melanie Ohnemus, Kunsthaus Glarus, 2022 (German & English).

‘Labour in Repose: Britt Barton On Nicole Wermers Reclining Fanmail’, Kunsthaus Glarus, Text Zur Kunst, 1 July, 2022.

Details

‘Day Care’ took place at 60 York Street Glasgow, G2 8JX, The Common Guild’s temporary premises.

Exhibition Guide

Day Care Exhibition Guide

Thanks

‘Day Care’ was supported by The Elephant Trust.

With thanks to Sam Talbot PR and Herald St, London.

To accompany Nicole Wermers’ current exhibition ‘Day Care’, the artist shares a selection of recommendations for our Room for Reading. 

Wermers selects ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’ by Michel de Certau (1980); ‘The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women’ by Elizabeth Wilson (1991); ‘Koolhaas Houselife’ by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (2013) and ‘Sculpture Vertical, Horizontal, Closed, Open’ by Penelope Curtis (2017). 

‘The Practice of Everyday Life’ by Michel de Certau (1980) 

“I read this book when I was completing an MA at Central St. Martins back in 2000 and it is still relevant to me and my work now, although it is dealing with an entirely physical version of public space and urban life, which is different to our current situation. The ideas about (re-)appropriating architecture, and by extension infrastructure, through spatial acts, and the subversion of given structures and hierarchies, had a direct impact on my thinking about sculpture in relation to the built environment.”

Read ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’ here.

‘The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women’ by Elizabeth Wilson (1991)

“I have for a long time been interested in the relationship of the (female) body to (urban) space and its infrastructure. The idea of the female flaneur somewhat awkwardly coined Flaneuse which has in the last 10 years been taken up in several writers of fiction, non-fiction and auto-fiction, is very interesting to me. This book from 1992, about how 19th century urban concepts and designs were closely linked to the question of how to control women in the city, paved the way for looking beyond the city as a structure which endlessly reproduces a male perspective. Plus: smashing title (with obvious references to my ‘Reclining Female’ sculptures).”

'Koolhaas Houselife’ by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (2013)

“The basic concept of this film, to look at (great) architecture from the perspective of the people who clean and maintain it, is actually something that I outlined as a proposal for a film of my own back in 2006 when I applied for a residency at the Schindler House in Los Angeles. I didn’t get the residency and subsequently abandoned the project. A couple of years ago I happily discovered this film by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine who (obviously unaware of my project) documented the cleaner and caretaker Guadalupe Acedo of the Rem Koolhaas designed Maison a Bordeaux.”

Watch the trailer for ‘Koolhaas Houselife’ above.

‘Sculpture Vertical, Horizontal, Closed, Open’ by Penelope Curtis (2017)

“Despite thinking about (hidden) structures in the socio-economic reality of today’s urban environment, I like to think my work is still all about sculpture. I first experienced this book by Penelope Curtis as a series of lectures given by her at the National Gallery in London in maybe 2014 or 2015. I love that it divides the fundamentals of sculpture into basic orientations of volume in space. It is written from an art historian’s perspective, but you can tell she is also a total fan of the medium. Naturally relating to the reclining females, I was particularly interested in the horizontal as a sculptural category, especially its origins in effigies and tomb sculpture, but also the literal ground or floor that she relates to the threshold of life and death. Visible and invisible thresholds, are something that I have referred to often in my work, especially between public and private space in our late capitalist cities.”

Watch Penelope Curtis speak at the Hepworth Research Launch on ‘Beyond Sculpture’ here.

Details

In conjunction with our projects, exhibitions and events, Room for Reading offers artists we work with an opportunity to contribute to The Common Guild library and share the books and resources that have influenced their artistic practice.

Every artist’s selection is added to The Common Guild’s expansive reference library of artist books, catalogues, and cultural and critical theory.

‘In Reflection, Shimmer’ is the final instalment of Corin Sworn’s project ‘Moving in Relation’, a series of events exploring social relations with ‘smart’ technologies: AI-enabled, consumer-grade products that attempt to learn and produce data from interactions with humans. 

 ‘In Reflection, Shimmer’ is an installation comprising video, atmospheric sound, vocal audio and sculptural collage. Both sound and image are dispersed across the exhibition space, creating a broad sensorial address. The video, ‘A Fuzzy Set’ (2023) presents a history of motion capture that aligns organic movement, such as gesture, to machinic ordering systems. Dancers are shown, testing the functional limits of video in AI enabled CCTV security systems that identify potential ‘life' through movement. Inventions by Charles Rees Wilson, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and Marie Van Brittan Brown are presented as precursors of contemporary motion capture, in each case this moves the devices away from the inventor’s initial intention. A Fuzzy Set’ examines divergent forms of motion capture, challenging 20th century notions of efficiency as ‘the one best way’. 

Each instalment of ‘Moving in Relation’ has sought new ways of engaging and understanding technological systems and algorithmic thought. Over the course of an extended period of research Sworn brought together various collaborators in movement, sound, poetry and academia to establish ways of approaching and living with networked technology and machine learning devices. Attempting to apprehend these now ubiquitous devices on human terms, Sworn explores AI behaviours in emotive and playful ways, observing our intimate and attentive relationships with automatic tools.

'Moving in Relation' began in 2021 with 'eco-co-location', a live one-off performance exploring encounters with algorithmic thought that took place in a vacant office space within a suburban business park. ‘This Harmonic Chamber’, Sworn’s second performance – an incomplete, future film taking shape as a performance lecture with experimental sound – was presented in 2022 in a 19th century loom shed.

Further encounters in the series have included an interview with political philosopher Louise Amoore, and ‘The Virtual Boulevard’ – a gathering of poets from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Glasgow to work across geographies and alongside AI translation systems, supported by online tools for communication. Collaborators working with Sworn have included Luke Fowler, Jer Reid, Claricia Parinussa, Cecelia Pavon, SPAM Zine & Press, George Hampton Wale, and Guy Veal.

Further Info

Exhibition Info

Project Details

‘In Reflection, Shimmer’ to place at 60 York Street Glasgow, G2 8JX, The Common Guild’s temporary premises.

Credits

Movement: Molly Danter; Caitlin Taylor and Isabel Umali 

Dramaturgy: Jeremy Reid 

Camera: Corin Sworn and Ambroise Leclerc

Sound Design: Luke Fowler

Sound: Jeremy Reid; Luke Fowler; Simon Weins; Feronia Wennborg; Duncan Marquiss; Phil Julian and Darren Hayman

Consultation: Timothy Lem-Smith and Louise Amoore

Thanks: Grace Jackson; Becheala Walker; Neil Grey; Bridget Fowler; Chloe Reith; Katrina Brown; Victoria Brooks; Ian Hameli; Eric Brucket; The Common Guild installation team, Jonny Lyons and Dan Griffiths.

Visit our library in our new temporary space during exhibitions.

Our expansive and growing reference library includes artist books, catalogues, art magazines (including Afterall, Art Monthly, Artforum and frieze) as well as cultural and critical theory. It also includes our ‘Room for Reading’ selections, books recommended by the artists we work with. The library has quiet space and free tea and coffee. 

Details

The Library can be found at The Common Guild’s new temporary space, 60 York Street, and is accessible during exhibitions.

Open

Thursday 12–7pm

Friday – Saturday, 12–6pm

During exhibition periods only.

Free to attend. No booking necessary.

Location

Capella Building
60 York Street Glasgow, G2 8JX

The Common Guild is on the 7th Floor.

Google Map

Transport Links: Glasgow Central Station is a five minute walk.

Access

There is ramped access from the street to the ground floor reception.

The 7th floor is accessible by lift from the reception area. Visitors can check in at reception.

There are double doors in the lift lobby on the 7th floor. Please ring the doorbell for assistance.

Sean Edwards has made a series of intimate sculptures for three libraries: Cardonald, Hillhead and Ibrox. ‘FOR WHAT WE HAVE’ draws together Edwards’ own personal memories of time spent in libraries during childhood and adolescence, with fragments of material from Glasgow’s archival collections.

These small-scale sculptures are designed, like books, to be held in the hand and close to the body, and to sit on the shelves of the library. Each sculpture has been assigned a unique shelf mark and entered into the library system; catalogued, indexed and positioned according to Dewey Decimal Classification which organises items by subject. Enfolded into the mechanism of the library, the sculptures will be locatable in the stacks; held, supported and contextualised by neighbouring titles on the shelves.  

‘FOR WHAT WE HAVE’ recalls the act of browsing books; the sparks of interest and anticipation that compel a reader to pull a book off the shelf and enter into another world, revealing possibilities beyond everyday realities. The surface of each sculpture offers an abundance of narratives; some autobiographical, some social, others fictional, and full of imagined potential. For Edwards, the sculptures contain within them “the atmosphere, texture and sensibility of neglected people and places”, but also the promise of change. 

Formally, Edwards’ sculptures make reference to the Modernist architecture and design of the libraries where they are located. Cardonald, Hillhead and Ibrox libraries were designed and built by architects Rogerson and Spence from the 1970s–1980s, towards the end phase of post-war investment in civic infrastructures that was concerned with sustaining social frameworks and public services. For Edwards, these sometimes-underinvested spaces remain physical sanctuaries, imbued with a subtle and enduring political consciousness. Embedded with the principles of free access and shared ownership, the public library persists, continuing to position itself as one path out of an endless cycle of withheld opportunity.

The project’s title is borrowed from a library membership card found in Glasgow Libraries’ collection of ephemera. ‘FOR WHAT WE HAVE’ suggests an open offer and speaks to the plurality of the library space.

‘FOR WHAT WE HAVE’ is accompanied by a piece of fiction by writer Claire-Louise Bennett. Bennett’s limited text is available from Cardonald, Hillhead and Ibrox Libraries for the duration of the project.

Browse ‘FOR WHAT WE HAVE’ in the library catalogue here.

Sean Edwards (b. Cardiff 1980), graduated with an MA from the Slade School of Art in 2005, and is currently Programme Director for Fine Art & Photography at Cardiff School of Art and Design. Edwards’ work investigates the sculptural and political potential of the everyday, often using remnants and fragments of previous activities as a starting point. In many of the works there is a sense of objects being in-progress, indeterminate and open to change. The work intertwines simple sculptural objects, mixed media installations and audio-visual components with personal family and political histories.

He represented Wales at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and was awarded the Turner Prize Bursary in 2020 for the installation ‘Undo Things Done’.

Recent solo exhibitions include 'chased losses', Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2022) ‘distant borrowing’, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2021); ‘Undo Things Done’, Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham, Senedd, National Assembly for Wales and Bluecoat, Liverpool (both 2020); ‘Drawn in Cursive’, MOSTYN, Llandudno and Network, Aalst, Belgium; ‘Putting Right’ Limoncello, London (both 2014); ‘Resting Through’ Kunstverein Freiburg (2012); and ‘Maelfa’ Spike Island, Bristol (2011). Group shows include ‘British Art Show 9’, Hayward Touring and ‘The World We Live In’, Southbank Art Centre, London (both 2022); ‘Olaph the Oxman’, Copperfield Gallery, London (2019); ‘49a’, Limoncello, Woodbridge (2016); ‘This is Your Replacement’, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2016); ‘Un Nouveau Festival 2015’ Centre Pompidou, Paris; and ‘Finite Project Altered When Open’, David Dale Gallery & Studios, Glasgow (both 2015), amongst others.

Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of ‘Pond’ (2015), ‘Fish Out Of Water’ (2020), and ‘Checkout 19’ (2021). Her fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker, Harper's, The White Review, and frieze. Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied Literature and Drama at the University of Roehampton, before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and her debut book, ‘Pond’, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Checkout 19 was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2021.

About the Libraries

Cardonald Library  

Built in 1968, Cardonald Library was the first of three libraries that would be designed by architectural firm Rogerson & Spence in a Modernist architectural style. The library was opened in 1970 and was refurbished in 2018, facilitating upgrades to the building and the creation of a new community space. 

Hillhead Library  

The most used branch library in Glasgow, Hillhead Library has been a fixture of Glasgow’s West End since opening in 1975. The building was designed in Modernist architectural style by architects Rogerson & Spence, and the library’s interior open plan arrangement with spiral staircases represents a shift towards fully open access libraries.  

Ibrox Library  

Designed by Rogerson & Spence, Ibrox Library was the last library to be built by the firm, opening in 1981. Ibrox Library was designed with access in mind, with a lift and an accessible toilet featured in the original plans for the building. Other amenities included a children's project room, a community room, and a public telephone.  

Project Details

Browse ‘FOR WHAT WE HAVE’ in the library catalogue here.

Locations

Cardonald Library 
1113 Mosspark Drive, Glasgow G52 3BU 

Google Map

Transport links: Cardonald Station

Ibrox Library 
1–5 Midlock Street, Glasgow G51 1SL 

Google Map

Transport links: Ibrox Subway

Hillhead Library
348 Byres Road, Glasgow G12 8AP 

Google Map

Transport links: Hillhead Subway

Open

Cardonald and Ibrox
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday:
10am – 5pm
Tuesday, Thursday: 10am – 8pm 

Hillhead
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: 10am – 8pm 
Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5pm
Sunday: 12 – 5pm 

Access

All libraries are wheelchair accessible.
Accessible toilets are available.

Further details from glasgowlife.org.uk/libraries or contact info@thecommonguild.org.uk for more information.

Thanks

With thanks to staff at Glasgow Life, Alison Nicol, Ruth Hunter and Audrey Cairns; Hannan Jones, Erin Donnelly, Elena Grace and Rebecca Jones; and Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Dawn Vallance, Principal Librarian at the Mitchell Library, will lead a tour of the vast back stacks of the Mitchell, not usually accessible to the public. Spanning twelve floors and three distinct architectural periods, the tour will give a rare insight into the history and operations of Glasgow’s largest public library.

Event Details

Tickets

Free, booking essential (places are limited).

Thursday 22nd June 6pm – 7pm

Saturday 24th June 11am – 12pm

Access

The tour involves stairs and walking.

Tours will begin promptly at the allocated times.

Meet at ground floor reception desk at the Granville Street entrance to the library.

View Map

The Virtual Boulevard is an experimental translation workshop collaboration bringing together invited poets in Glasgow and Buenos Aires. It forms part of Corin Sworn’s experimental series ‘Moving in Relation’. 

Sworn is joined by Buenos Aires based poet, translator and tutor Cecilia Pavón who leads translation experiments between poets in Spanish and English, encompassing dialects and colloquial languages spoken in Buenos Aires and Glasgow. Through translation, the poets explore overlapping and imagined localities between the two cities, shared and contrasting sites of struggle and antagonism, roving intimacies and literary friendship across continents. No knowledge of either English or Spanish is required — the artists aim to probe the playful potential of ‘intra-languages’and miscommunication, as encountered through human relationships with technology. 

The workshop is organised by Cecilia Pavón, Corin Sworn and SPAM Zine. Participants include valentín etchegaray, Nasim Luczaj, María Muchut, Gloria Dawson, Camila Gassiebayle, Lucy Rose Cunningham and JJ Romero. 

Cecilia Pavón was born in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1973. She holds a BA in literature from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. In 1999 she cofounded the independent art space and small press Belleza y Felicidad, Buenos Aires. She has published poetry and short stories in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. As a translator from German and English into Spanish, Pavón has translated Diedrich Diederichsen, Chris Kraus, Dorothea Lasky, Ariana Reines, Werner Schroeter, and others. 

Pavon has published numerous books of poetry and short stories, in 2021 Little Joy, an anthology of 35 short stories was published in English by Semiotext(e) as part of its Native Agents series. 

A publication by SPAM, including poetry from the workshop and photographs from Alice Brooke and will be released in 2024. 

Project Details

This event took place online with invited participants selected by Corin Sworn and Cecilia Pavón.

‘open stacks’, a digital video installation by Yuri Pattison, is situated in the heart of one of the largest public libraries in Europe, The Mitchell Library. Unfolding across multiple screens, Pattison’s videos use the popular online format of ‘ambience videos’ which combine slow-moving visuals and soundscapes meant to aid focus and relaxation. Pattison’s ambient videos have been created in collaboration with an ambient YouTuber, animating base images produced by the artist using AI image generation tools to blend original and found photographs.

 A second soundtrack, audible via headphones, presents a series of essays voiced by disembodied AI-generated narrators who ruminate broadly on the consequences of a world steadily overwhelmed by the private, commercial interests of technocratic powers. These unidentified, yet somehow familiar, narrators postulate variously on creative homogenisation and increasing cultural degradation; the pillaging of our shared intellectual and artistic heritage; eroded workers’ rights and the status of labour economies; and the social and political consequences of the unchecked centralisation of knowledge.

The voices have been programmed to mimic an amalgam of accents and anachronistic speech patterns recognisable for their perceived intellectual authority. The words they ventriloquise, which are unreliable, meandering and sometimes bizarre, are also authored by AI tools (large language models), as with the images on screen. Slipping between sense and nonsense, the video essays, made up of poor copies and degraded data, expose the intellectual limits and biases of AI. They make clear AI’s necrotic tendency to endlessly resample scraps of past human endeavour – with nonetheless alluring effect.

‘open stacks’ explores recent digital trends involving the rapid encircling and extraction of knowledge by networked technology, artificial intelligence and corporate power. Pattison addresses the library space as a stage upon which linearity, time, and veracity are in a constant state of recirculation, reformation and collapse. Through critically confronting immediate concerns and current discourse on AI technology, Pattison speculates on what appears to be history’s closing chapter of individual authorship, and the opening of a new one dominated by corporate intellectual property. ‘open stacks’ asks what becomes of human intelligence, and our perceptions of history and the present, when information is confined rather than accessible to all. The installation demonstrates the seductive aesthetics of tech whilst hinting that it is not yet too late to reclaim freedom of knowledge from extractive neoliberal powers.

‘open stacks’ was accompanied by a piece of writing by writer and researcher Aurelia Guo. Guo’s text was be available from The Mitchell Library for the duration of the project.

The practice of Yuri Pattison (b. 1986, Dublin, Ireland; lives and works in Paris) connects and materialises the intangible spaces between the virtual and physical through video, sculpture, installation, and online platforms. It explores how new technologies such as the digital economy and online communication have shifted and impacted the systemic frameworks of the built environment, daily life, and our perceptions of time, space, and nature.

Solo exhibitions include ‘clock speed (the world on time)’, mother’s tankstation, London, (2022); ‘the engine’, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2020-21); ‘trusted traveller’, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2017); and ‘user, space’, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2016). Selected recent and upcoming group exhibitions include ‘Ruhr Ding: Schlaf’, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Germany; ‘Radical Landscapes’, Tate Liverpool (both 2023); ‘Post Capital’, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022); ‘One Escape at a Time’, 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul; ‘No Linear Fucking Time’, BAK, Utrecht; ‘Proof of Stake' – Technological claims’, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg; ‘The Ocean’, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway; ‘TECHNO, MUSEION’, Bolzano, Italy (2021); ‘Long Live Modern Movement’, CCS Bard, Hessel Museum, New York (2020) and ‘Phantom Plane, Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future’, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019).

Aurelia Guo is a writer and researcher who lives in London. Her work explores interconnections between law and inequality. She is the author of ‘World of Interiors’ (Divided, 2022), a book of essays and poetry exploring contested histories of mobility, migration and displacement from social, legal, and biographical perspectives. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, ‘2016’ (After Hours Ltd, 2016) and ‘NYT’ (Gauss PDF, 2018). She is a Lecturer in Law at London South Bank University.

About the Library

One of Europe’s largest public libraries, the Mitchell Library opened in 1911 and was designed by William B Whitie, a local architect who won a competition to design the building. The original Mitchell Library was established in 1877, after tobacco manufacturer Steven Merchant left £70,000 to establish a large public library in Glasgow. Andrew Carnegie laid the first foundation stone for the Baroque style building in North Street, which has benefitted from numerous extensions over the years.  

Project Details

Location

The Blythswood Room, 5th Floor
The Mitchell Library
North St, Glasgow G3 7DN

Google Map

Transport links: Charing Cross Station.

Access

The Mitchell Library is wheelchair accessible. 

Accessible toilets are available.

Further details from glasgowlife.org.uk/libraries or contact info@thecommonguild.org.uk for more information.

Production Credit

Claire Chen, ASMR Rooms

Thanks

With thanks to Dawn Vallance and staff at Glasgow Life.

Ahead of his commission as part of ‘anywhere in the universe’, our project looking at the present, past and future of the public library, Sean Edwards shares his recommendations for our Room for Reading.

Edwards selects ‘Index Cards’ by Moyra Davey (2020); ‘Acting Class’ by Drnaso (2020); ‘Libraries of Light’ by Alistair Black (2019); ‘Checkout 19’ (2021) by Claire-Louise Bennett and ‘Help for the Dyslexic Adolescent’ by E.G Stirling (1987). 

‘Index Cards’ (2020) by Moyra Davey 

“I always return to Moyra Davey’s writing. Particularly her writing about reading. There is something about her style and approach that is akin to reading itself. She places the reader in the context of her own reading which in turn informs the text, taking the reader on a research narrative journey guided by her. Until this collection was published the writings were spread across numerous books and catalogues, but to have this collection in one place is like a small gift and one that is never far from my side.”

Listen to Moyra Davey on the Magic Hour podcast here.

Watch ‘Hemlock Forrest’ (2016) by Moyra Davey here.  

‘Acting Class’ (2020) by Nick Drnaso 

“Graphic Novels and picture books in general were my way into reading, and as a child of the 1980’s I mined the library for the small selections of ‘comics’ that they had in stock. Thankfully for young adults there are now far greater selections of these books at libraries. I still prefer to read images and Drnaso’s ‘Acting Class’ published last year is one that has remained with me. The sparse artwork and disorientating narrative arc about a group of strangers collected together through their attendance at an amateur acting class is both beautiful and deeply unsettling.” 

Read an excerpt from Nick Drnaso’s ‘Acting Class’ here.

‘Libraries of Light’ (2019) by Alistair Black 

“Black’s book looks at the emergence of a new type of architectural design for British Public libraries in the 1960’s that broke with traditions and began to consider a new type of design. The book features a range of case studies, including Cardonald Library in Glasgow, to illustrate Black’s idea of ‘libraries of light’. Within the book, he proposes that the particular architectural design of these spaces convey the principles of a shared social egalitarianism.”

Read Alistair Black on the importance of public libraries in Apollo Magazine here.

‘Checkout 19’ (2021) by Claire-Louise Bennett  

“This is a book about books, and about reading. It is also about the transformative power of books as objects. Bennett’s writing is recognisable to me in its the repetitions, loops and fragmentation. I think of her style as being immensely physical and object-like. The writing on the page carries gravity.”

Read an extract from ‘Checkout 19’ here.

‘Help for the Dyslexic Adolescent’ (1987) by E.G Stirling

“I was diagnosed with dyslexia in the final year of my Masters. I found this book shortly after in a charity shop. It was first published in 1985 and the edition I own was reprinted in 1993 – the particular timespan when I would have, could have, needed it. Regardless, this absence has allowed it to be a tool ever since, one I mine regularly for work, thinking about reading, and looking. The techniques I self-developed to deal with dyslexia became a way to consider how the act of reading and looking can be used within my practice.”

British Dyslexia Association

Details

In conjunction with our projects, exhibitions and events, Room for Reading offers artists we work with an opportunity to contribute to The Common Guild library and share the books and resources that have influenced their artistic practice.

Every artist’s selection is added to The Common Guild’s expansive reference library of artist books, catalogues, and cultural and critical theory.

Kate Davis has made a series of drawings that employ ‘frottage’ techniques. The frottages (or crayon rubbings) are taken from the interior and exterior of her local library in Pollokshields. These drawings are presented as a limited edition artist’s book which is freely available to anyone visiting Pollokshields library.

Davis’ frottage drawings take direct visual inspiration from the Surrealist artist Max Ernst (1891–1976) who further developed the method in 1925. Ernst published a collection of his own frottage drawings in 1926, titled ‘Histoire Naturelle’ (Natural History), and several of these depict animal forms. Other thematic starting points for Davis’ own ‘Natural History’ are Deborah Levy’s 2021 book ‘Real Estate’ and a 1973 small press publication, ‘An Intelligent Woman's Guide to Dirty Words: Volume One of the Feminist English Dictionary’, which includes a chapter of “woman as animal” idioms.

The term “high horse”, which is reclaimed in Levy’s book, provides a key motif in Davis’ new work. The Feminist English Dictionary offers further animal metaphors which are given form by Davis here.

Max Ernst described frottage as a means of making the unseen “visible” . This idea extends Davis’ interest in reconsidering histories and representations which are often absent, overlooked, or perhaps hiding in plain sight. Focusing on the library as a site for exploring language, ‘Natural History’ seeks to question how familiar phrases might be unpicked and reimagined.

Davis has also worked with children from Pollokshields Primary School to create their own fantastical creatures and imaginary beasts using collage and frottage drawing techniques. Their artworks will be on display at Pollokshields library.

‘Natural History’ was accompanied by a short piece of writing by author and journalist Charlotte Higgins. Higgins’ writing was available from Pollokshields Library for the duration of the project.

Kate Davis (b. New Zealand, lives and works in Glasgow) works across film/video, drawing, printmaking, installation and bookworks. Questioning how to bear witness to the complexities of the past, Davis’ artwork is an attempt to reconsider what certain histories could look, sound and feel like.

Solo exhibitions include: Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen; A-M-G5 at 20 Albert Road, Glasgow; LUX, London; Stills, Edinburgh; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand; The Drawing Room, London; Temporary Gallery, Cologne; GoMA, Glasgow; Galerie Kamm, Berlin; Museo de la Ciudad and La Galeria de Comercio, Mexico; Tate Britain, London; and Kunsthalle Basel amongst others.

Recent group exhibitions and screenings awards include: ‘Termite Tapeworm Fungus Moss’, CCA Glasgow; ‘Chips and Egg’, The Sunday Painter, London; 35th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival; ‘Class Reunion’, MUMOK, Vienna; ‘A Slice Through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings’, Modern Art Oxford; ‘The Driver’s Seat’, Cubitt Gallery, London; The Margaret Tait Award 2016/17; Cinenova Presents ‘Now Showing’, LUX Cornwall; LUX/ BBC Artists and Archive commission; ‘GENERATION’, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; ‘HOUSE WORK CASTLE MILK WOMAN HOUSE’, Glasgow Women’s Library; ‘Art Under Attack’, Tate Britain; ‘The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing’, Hayward Touring Exhibition; ‘Art Sheffield 10’ (collaborative commission with Jimmy Robert); and ‘Das Gespinst’, Stadtisches Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach.

Charlotte Higgins is the chief culture writer of the Guardian. She writes a regular column for the Opinion pages; articles for the Long Read section; and also contributes arts features, book reviews and magazine articles.

As an author, most of her books are about the classical world: ‘Under Another Sky’ (2013) was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) prize, among other awards, and has been adapted into a play by David Greig; ‘Red Thread’ (2018) won the Arnold Bennett prize and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her latest, ‘Greek Myths’, with illustrations by Chris Ofili, was shortlisted for the Waterstones book of the year 2021. A further book, This New Noise (2015) was adapted from a series of Guardian essays about the BBC.

Born in the Potteries, Charlotte is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a former winner of the Classical Association Prize, and a trustee of the British School at Rome.

About the Library

Pollokshields Library was designed by architect Thomas Gilmour and officially opened on the 20th of February 1907 by Sir John Stirling Maxwell. The library was built with money from Andrew Carnegie, in an Edwardian Baroque style. On the outside of the building, three plaques inscribed with ‘The Arts’, ‘History’ and ‘Literature’ sit below large, arched windows. 

Project Details

Location

Pollokshields Library
30 Leslie Street, Glasgow G41 2LF

Google Map

Transport Links: Pollokshields East Station

Access

Pollokshields Library is wheelchair accessible. Accessible toilets are available.

Thanks

Kate Davis would like to thank: Effie Flood, Alison Nicol and all the staff at Pollokshields Library; Charlie Hammond, Patrick Jameson, Andrew Lee, Deborah Levy, Mara the Storyteller, Katherine Mackinnon, Dominic Paterson, Yvonne Quirmbach, and Jonny Lyons.

Yuri Pattison shares his selections for our Room for Reading, ahead of his commission as part of ‘anywhere in the universe’, our project looking at the present, past and future of the public library. 

Pattison’s installation, which explores the shifting history of access to knowledge and information, will be situated in the Mitchell Library from 18 June 2023.  

Recommendations include – ‘World of Interiors’ (2022) by Aurelia Guo; ‘The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption’ (2019) by Pamela M. Lee; ‘Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information’ (2013) by Malcolm McCullough; ‘Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence’ (2022) and ‘Non-Fascist AI’ (2019) by Dan McQuillan; and Aaron Swartz’s ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’ (2008).  

“When bees are close to death, they cling to flowers.”

Aurelia Guo’s ‘World of Interiors’ is a book of poetry and essays using collage and appropriation to destabilise the first-person ‘I’. Guo, who is a writer, researcher and lecturer in law at London South Bank University writes directly about the inescapable condition of being perceived and positioned by other people. Covering economic cycles of wealth and poverty at the levels of the individual, group and state, ‘World of Interiors’ is a book about travel and immigration: migrants, tourists and refugees. It is about the work of survival and the cost of survival. It is also a hopeful book - about how strong and indomitable the will can be.

Watch Aurelia Guo ‘Place's Tragodia: Law as Poetry and as Politics in Modernity’, a live event at Cell Project Space, March 2020 here.

In her book ‘The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption’ (2019), Art Historian Pamela M. Lee uses the 2013 arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, suspected to be the mastermind of dark net marketplace Silk Road, at Glen Park Public Branch Library in San Francisco, to tease out the relationship between public libraries and digital culture. Written as a work of experimental art criticism, Lee provides original readings of five women artists—Gretchen Bender, Cecile B. Evans, Josephine Pryde, Carissa Rodriguez, and Martine Syms—who weigh in, either explicitly or inadvertently, on the nature of contemporary media and technology. 

Watch art historian Pamela M. Lee read from ‘The Glen Park Library’ here. 

Read a review of ‘The Glen Park Library’ in Art Forum here.

In ‘Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information’ (2013), Malcolm McCullough, Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, conceptualises what he terms ‘the Ambient’, interrogating how it is interacted with in everyday life and how it can be used to rethink attention.  

Watch an interview with Malcolm McCullough here.

Pattison recommends two texts by Dan McQuillan. In ‘Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist approach to Artificial Intelligence’(2022), McQuillan calls for us to resist and restructure AI by prioritising the common good over algorithmic optimisation. McQuillan outlines his proposals for this restructuring, utilising mutual aid as a means to support collective freedom. McQuillan’s article ‘Non-Fascist AI’ explains the basic workings of artificial intelligence and what is needed to achieve non-fascist AI.  

Read ‘Non-Fascist AI’ here.  

Pattison’s final recomendation is ‘The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’ (2008) a document written by “hacktivist” Aaron Swartz, outlining the importance of freely accessible information on the internet. Swartz argues against publishers charging for copyrights and for sharing as a moral imperative that allows the dissemination of knowledge.  

Read ‘The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’ here.

Details

In conjunction with our projects, exhibitions and events, Room for Reading offers artists we work with an opportunity to contribute to The Common Guild library and share the books and resources that have influenced their artistic practice.

Every artist’s selection is added to The Common Guild’s expansive reference library of artist books, catalogues, and cultural and critical theory.

Onyeka Igwe’s play for libraries is informed by socialist-realist participatory theatre and educational plays to think through ways meaning is made collectively and how we tend to look upon the institutions we interact with in everyday life.  

‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ is a short play set in the near future. The play follows two individuals who join forces in an attempt to resurrect the now-lost tradition of the public lending library. Working through their own indistinct, hazy childhood memories, and instructions from a zine, they start to assemble what they think might be the essentials of a community library, in an old, empty warehouse building. 

Through dialogue and interaction with their new library visitors, the characters work through the assumptions, ideologies and complications of institutional formation. In enacting their new roles as librarians and custodians of an organisation, they call into question the ways institutions have developed and the structures and systems we have inherited in our own public spaces. Through a process of trial and error, they propose ways in which things might be different, and in turn speculate what is needed in society now and in an unknown future.

‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ points towards cycles of knowledge loss and reformation, and explores what is valued, inherited and saved for public use. The play highlights how information is accessed and exchanged, as well as changing notions of the civic, and habits of sharing in present times.    

Igwe’s play was accompanied by a short piece of writing by the writer and researcher Lola Olufemi. Olufemi’s writing was available from Hillhead Library, Langside Library and Woodside Library, for the duration of the project.

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation, living and working in London, UK. Her work is animated by the question “how do we live together?” with a particular interest in sensorial, spatial, and non-canonical ways of knowing. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural “figure-of-eights”, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives.

Solo exhibitions and commissions include ‘A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver)’, MoMA PS1, New York (2023) ; ‘The Miracle on George Green’, Highline, New York (2022); ‘a so-called archive’, LUX, London; ‘THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM’, Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada, (both 2021), ‘There Were Two Brothers’, Jerwood Arts, (2019), and ‘Corrections’ with Aliya Pabani, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada (2018).

In 2022 Igwe was nominated for the Jarman Award and shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022–2024. She was awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize; the 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film; and was the 2019 recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.

Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the feminist imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of ‘Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power’ (Pluto Press, 2020), ‘Experiments in Imagining Otherwise’ (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. 

About the Libraries

 Located in Battlefield in the southside of Glasgow, Langside Library was opened in 1915, the last of the Carnegie libraries to be built in the city. Built on the principle of open access, the library was designed by architect George Simpson. The library features a mural of the Battle of Langside, which was painted by staff and students at the Glasgow School of Art and completed in 1921. 

One of the largest Carnegie libraries in Glasgow, Woodside Library was designed by J R Rhind and opened in 1905. A large, glazed dome on the roof is a distinctive feature, and sculpture on the front of the building is attributed to William Kellock Brown. After a refurbishment, the library reopened in 2022, and is now home to a flexible community space, new study areas and a colourful woodland-themed children’s area stocked with books chosen by pupils from local primary schools. 

The most used branch library in Glasgow, Hillhead Library has been a fixture of Glasgow’s West End since opening in 1975. The building was designed in Modernist architectural style by architects Rogerson & Spence, and the library’s interior open plan arrangement with spiral staircases represents a shift towards fully open access libraries.  

Project Details

‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ was performed in Langside Library, Woodside Library and Hillhead Library across three days.

Performed by Elicia Daly, Pauline Goldsmith and Louis Pearson.

It is now available as an audio play - listen below.

Listen to ‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ –

Thanks

With thanks to staff at Glasgow Life.

Onyeka Igwe would like to thank Gordon Douglas; David Allan; Elly Goodman and Neil Packham at the Citizens Theatre; the Citizens Theatre Community Collective Group; February Workshop participants; and the Red Sunday School.

Thanks to the performers, Elicia Daly, Pauline Goldsmith and Louis Pearson, and to Chizu Anucha for the sound mix.

Kate Davis shares her recommendations for our Room for Reading, ahead of her forthcoming commission as part of ‘anywhere in the universe’.

Davis has recommended Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography Trilogy (2014–2021), Ruth Todasco’s 1970’s Feminist English Dictionary, and a lecture by artist Amy Sillman. Read more on Davis’ recommendations and their relationship to the development of her new work, below.

Deborah Levy, ‘Things I Don’t Want to Know’ (2014), ‘The Cost of Living’ (2018) and ‘Real Estate’ (2021).

“On the back of my copy of ‘Things I Don’t Want to Know’ there is a quote from Levy: ‘Even the most arrogant female writer has to work overtime to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December”. Levy’s questioning of how to pursue a creative self alongside everyday life is a key theme in this trilogy. It helped get me through the period before, during and after the pandemic and ‘Real Estate’ provided a direction for my ‘anywhere in the universe’ project.”

Listen to ‘The Cost of Living: Deborah Levy and Olivia Laing’, London Review Bookshop Podcast, April 2018 here.

‘An Intelligent Woman's Guide to Dirty Words: Volume One of the Feminist English Dictionary’ (1973) by Ruth Todasco.

“I discovered this excellently-titled publication when doing research for ‘anywhere in the universe’. It was made by a group of women in Chicago and has a bold urgency that seems characteristic of much of the feminist activity being generated in America in the early 1970s. The ‘dirty words’ of the title are ‘english words and phrases reflecting sexist attitudes toward women in patriarchal society, arranged according to usage and idea’– and many of these derogatory terms are still so familiar.”

Read ‘Feminists Find That Words Fail Them’, a New York Times review of ‘An Intelligent Woman's Guide to Dirty Words’, January 1974, here.

‘Conversation with Amy Sillman: Drawing in the Continuous Present, The Menil Collection’ (2017).

This generous lecture fizzes with Sillman’s intelligent curiosity and humour. Drawing is key to my practice and I am often questioning what certain forms of mark-making mean today. I appreciate how Sillman manages to both critique and embrace such a wide range of approaches to drawing. I am also grateful to Sillman for introducing me to Manny Farber’s ‘Termite art’ and its articulation of ‘a bug like immersion in what is close to hand’. I am regularly seeking that sort of immersion in the studio. 

Watch Amy Sillman’s lecture ‘Drawing in the Continuous Present’, The Menil Collection, February 2017, above.

Details

In conjunction with our projects, exhibitions and events, Room for Reading offers artists we work with an opportunity to contribute to The Common Guild library and share the books and resources that have influenced their artistic practice.

Every artist’s selection is added to The Common Guild’s expansive reference library of artist books, catalogues, and cultural and critical theory.