Some moments in life demand to be photographed. These sisters recalled an image I had seen before, maybe in Aperture Magazine or on . The danger is that the photo-obsessive only sees echoes of other photos.

The sisters were attending Gerard M Burns’ Mother Glasgow event, which featured a painting of the mother of comedian Sanjeev Kohli (right). He was on good form and happy to see Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar (left).

It remains to be seen if the Labour Party can emerge from its deep unpopularity. One person who might know is psephologist John Curtice, here asking a question at Lea Ypi’s talk.

On Sunday, 8 March, my wife texted me to say that there was a fire at Central Station. By the time I got there, the smoke was rising in huge plumes.

An advertising hoarding illuminates the smoke, making it look like a John Martin painting.

I found it was too brutal to stay for long.

The following day, I took a look at the wreckage and grimly noted that The Blue Lagoon was barely touched.

A walk to the Southside of Glasgow shows how beautiful architecture can be.

A topic that was discussed at the ACX Edinburgh meet-up after a visit to the distinctly uninspiring Scottish parliament. Photography was discouraged, so this was taken surreptitiously.

I went there after getting the first train of the day to Cupar to do a parkrun. These people were sleeping in the station after a night out.

But why do we no longer have nice buildings?

Behind the scenes photo of the Glasgow Community Energy team.

From Eid.

Artist John Butler before a screening of Arda, his new satire of the post-apocalyptic dreams of Silicon Valley.

Fiona Banner at The Common Guild.

Homage to Robert Frank

Homage to Bernd and Hilla Becher.

A hair-raising trip to Whitby.

Laura had wanted to visit for her birthday.

Despite this photo, the place seemed to be thriving.

When the Glaswegian poet Tom Leonard wrote that the national is parochial, he meant that it is an abstraction not experienced through the senses. He offered the example of James Joyce, who is seen as a great Irish novelist, yet focused exclusively on the lives of Dubliners. For Leonard, it was Joyce’s emphasis on local experience that made his art universal.

And what about photography? While it can capture sensory evidence, what we photograph is often predetermined by our expectations, as I found out last weekend when meeting with friends in Budapest.

We decided on Budapest because it is exactly equidistant between Glasgow and Cyprus, where one friend lives. But I was also curious to see what decades of national populism have done to the country.

For a long time, Hungary was seen as the black sheep of Europe, but it increasingly feels like a harbinger. The anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, pro-natalist, and pro-traditional policies of Viktor Orbán have provided inspiration for nationalists all over the world. What does this possible future look like?

The first thing you notice is that it is an unnervingly quiet city. There are no buskers, barely any beggars. Coming from the chaos of Glasgow, it was eerie.

It’s also an extraordinarily grand city, with the neo-Gothic parliament showing the wealth of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Every so often, the grand narrative is punctuated by one of the many disruptions in Hungarian history. A monument to the crushing of the 1956 revolution demonstrates how nationalist memories are formed.

The eventual collapse of communism saw Hungary integrated into the free market, which they celebrate with statues to George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, as well as the Milton Friedman University.

Hungary was the only country within the EU to maintain positive relations with Russia after the Ukraine War. Propaganda posters showing Ursula von der Leyen encouraging financial handouts to Volodymyr Zelenskyy were, to my eyes, extremely jarring.

Nevertheless, I only saw one anti-Orbán sticker. Perhaps the government are efficient at removing them, or the punishments are too harsh. Either way, polls suggest Orbán’s Fidesz party are going to lose the forthcoming elections.

The reason for their unpopularity is corruption, with cronies like Lőrinc Mészáros getting wealthy from state procurement. The construction of the impressive new Museum of Ethnography is one contract the oligarch won recently.

One of the oddest things in Budapest is the series of Scruton cafés dotted over the city. The English philosopher is a minor figure in his home country but a hero in central Europe for supporting conservatism at a time when the only ideas on offer were Marxism-Leninism. The café I went to was pleasant and full of books, but I am not sure if it would make a profit (it is supported by a billion-euro state endowment). Which intellectual would you dedicate a chain of cafés to?

The only pilgrimage I made in Budapest was to the gymnasium where John von Neumann was taught mathematics by László Rátz. This episode was memorably captured in ’s 2017 post The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project.

I stopped off at the school on the way to Széchenyi Thermal Baths, an extraordinary spa complex opened a year before the First World War. This was perhaps the highlight of the trip and an amazing example of public luxury.

Other highlights included:

The brilliantly curated Robert Capa museum, which not only tells the story of Capa but also provides space to exhibit contemporary photographers like Zoltán Tombor.

And the glorious St. Stephen’s Basilica.

By the end of the trip, I didn’t feel I had grasped the sensory reality of Budapest. But I had a much clearer understanding of how the national story was formed and how it can cast a shadow over the local present.

So, while I was delighted to see last week’s post about Greenock linked to by The Glasgow Bell, it was slightly unsettling to be labelled as “Glasgow’s premier flâneur”. Had The Bell painted a target on my back?

Fortunately, no one I spoke to had even heard of the word flâneur. It was like being the West End’s pre-eminent wandervogel or Paisley’s number one peripatetic: I had been saved by obscurity.

But it made me pause: am I a flâneur? And, if so, what does that entail? The definition that pops up on Google is: “a man who saunters around observing society.” This sounds about right, although I am usually rushing around rather than sauntering.

A more poetic description of the flâneur can be found in Charles Baudelaire’s essay, The Painter of Modern Life:

For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world [… ] the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy.

Yes! This is the thrill of modernity, of being part of the crowd yet still able to observe patterns amid the chaos.1

In On Photography (1977), Susan Sontag aligns the flâneur with the street photographer, who is:

an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitring, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world “picturesque.”

It’s a seductive passage, but one that better fits the decadent excesses of seventies New York than modern Britain.

Last weekend, I was in England visiting family and found myself playing pool in an industrial estate.

Rather than the urban life, I was drawn to take photos of bales of popcorn at the cinema before seeing Hamnet.2

We arranged our train bookings so that we could spend an hour in Birmingham, whose modern towers were shrouded in mist.

The centre of Birmingham has been transformed with flashy new developments.

It seems a shame that almost all the sculptural brutalist buildings and fittings are being replaced by vulgar bling.

Next to the gilded library is a gilded statue of Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and William Murdoch. It’s really vulgar … almost Trumpian.

When in Birmingham, I always take the opportunity to visit The Ikon Gallery, one of the best contemporary art spaces in Britain.

Their current exhibition is a retrospective of Donald Locke (1930-2010), a Guyanese sculptor whose maximalist paintings employ photography in a stark, expressive way.

Locke shows what happens when an artist wrestles with identity in their work. As Eddy Frankel writes:

Amazingly, Locke, who died in 2010, at first rejected any political reading of the works, insisting they were just exercises in form. It wasn’t until years later that he realised how overburdened with the pain of colonialism the works really were.

Part of the reason I resist identity politics is that I find it impossible think of myself in terms of labels. This is the privilege of one who hasn’t had a label assigned to them. However, now that I have been assigned a label—the flâneur—I begin to understand how it could induce self-consciousness.

While on the train down to England, I compiled what will hopefully become the definitive timeline of the controversial artist Sophie Calle:

1

The subject of Baudelaire’s essay was the painter Constantin Guys, who is described as having an “aim loftier than that of a mere flâneur”:

He is looking for that quality which you must allow me to call ‘modernity’; for I know of no better word to express the idea I have in mind. He makes it his business to extract from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from the transitory.

Not really. But when you search for “Greenock”, the top autocomplete suggestion is: “is greenock rough”. It’s true that, like many towns in Scotland, Greenock has seen better days. Much better days.

2. How did Greenock become wealthy?

Greenock’s port was well-placed to take advantage of the transatlantic triangular trade. Ships went to Africa with guns and textiles, then to the Caribbean with captured Africans to work on the plantations, and finally back to Europe with sugar and tobacco. This trade brought wealth and helped build the town’s huge Italianate municipal building with its ornate sculptural details.

3. What’s there now?

There is still an active port and a terminal where cruise liners dock, but this is not the thriving town it once was.

4. What happened?

Apart from shifting trade patterns, the other cause was the effects of deindustrialisation as shipbuilding left Greenock. All that’s left to remember the industry is a public sculpture by Jason Orr which was recently vandalised.

5. What happened to the post-war redevelopment?

Like Glasgow, Greenock tried to modernise by expanding the roads through the town. It was not a success. The result is an alienating urban experience negotiated via underpasses.

6. So, it’s rough around the edges?

Yes. The population continues to decline, down by 2.7% in the ten years since the last census. People are unhealthier than in the rest of Scotland. Graffiti is not as bad as in Glasgow, but the messages are more pointed.

7. What about signs of hope?

Well, there is a beautiful esplanade, which holds a Parkrun every Saturday …

8. What’s a Parkrun?

A volunteer-led 5k run every Saturday morning. I was in Greenock because all the Parkruns in Glasgow had been called off due to ice. Thanks to the briny water and the temperate maritime climate, they rarely have to cancel.

9. Are there any museums?

Yes! The most interesting new addition is The Wyllieum, a gallery celebrating the artist George Wyllie (1921–2012).

10. George Wyllie?

George Wyllie was an engineer, who joined the navy in the second world war (visiting Hiroshima after it was bombed), but spent a large part of his life working as a customs officer in Greenock.

He liked making things, but it wasn’t until his was in his forties that he became an artist, having visited an exhibition of arte povera at the Kelvingrove. He thought to himself, “I can do that”, and started sculpting.

Wyllie was taken under the wing of cultural entrepreneur Richard Demarco, who introduced him to Joseph Beuys. Wyllie described himself as a “scul?tor”—he had a thing about question marks—and believed that the artist’s role is to ask awkward questions.

Like Beuys, his work is “social sculpture”, most notably in his life-sized straw locomotive that was hung from a crane and later set on fire to reveal a question mark.

Learn more about Wyllie in ’s article from 2021.

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I had never met an Oxfordian before and was curious about their motivation. It seems such an outlandish theory, particularly as de Vere died in 1604, long before Shakespeare’s final works. But the Oxfordians dismiss these concerns. What matters to them is that the details of de Vere’s life have echoes in the plays.

For Oxfordians, it is impossible that a commoner could have had knowledge of distant lands and high court intrigue. In this, they resemble the Young Adult fiction community, who seek to cancel any author who hasn’t directly experienced the thing they write about. Neither the Oxfordians nor the YA think of the artwork as something that can be enjoyed without referring back to the author; biography is absolute.

I tend towards the opposite view. The work comes first, the biography a distant second. I don’t care about gossip. Similarly, I can condemn the life of an immoral artist (e.g. Pablo Picasso, Eric Gill, or Michael Jackson) and still enjoy their work. And yet …

And yet, if the pieces are good, paying attention to the artist and their context becomes a way of honouring them. We are compelled to devote time to that which we love. Also, perhaps there are other lessons to be learned in their life.

Peter Hujar’s photography was my great discovery of last year. In his body of work, Hujar achieved levels of formal mastery and psychological insight that are unrivalled.

And his life is fascinating. He lived in downtown New York at a time when bohemians could still afford to experiment; he died of AIDS; he hung out with Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz, William Burroughs, and Nan Goldin. He dated Paul Thek and David Wojnarowicz. All of this is culturally resonant and features prominently in the photographs.

Yet it is only because the images are so mysteriously vital that I care at all. Indeed, I cared enough to interview Hujar’s biographer, John Douglas Millar. And I cared enough to read Linda Rosenkrantz’s book Peter Hujar’s Day (2021) and watch Ira Sachs’ adaptation, which came to Glasgow this week.

Rosenkrantz’s book is remarkably slim: 27 pages of an interview plus Stephen Koch’s brief introduction. Even so, there is much to be gleaned about how Hujar saw the world, his working practices, and with whom he associated.

The key event of the day was an assignment to photograph the beat poet Allen Ginsberg for the New York Times. Hujar describes Ginsberg as living in a run-down neighbourhood, endlessly chanting his mantras. However, Sachs never shows us any of this directly. All we ever see in the film is Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) talking in her apartment. In this, the film is too respectful of the source material.

I longed for Sachs to show the life that Hujar describes in the interview or the photographs that he made. It would be a lot more fun. It is telling that the only heartstoppingly beautiful moment is when the characters are static, and the film reaches towards the condition of Hujar’s photography.

Coincidentally, the editor of Peter Hujar’s Day, Affonso Gonçalves, also edited Hamnet (2025), the new film by Chloé Zhao, which shows the biographical events that inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet. Presumably, the Oxfordians will boycott it as another instance of Stratfordian propaganda, but I am keen to watch. You never know, it might even inspire me to re-read the play.

The Week in Photos (3-9 Jan 2026)

A selection of photos from the past week. Welcome to all those who have joined after the move from Instagram.

Links

1. This week, I posted my interview with Laura Carreira from last February. Carreira won a Scottish BAFTA for On Falling and was subsequently named the hottest person in Scottish culture by The List.

2. I enjoyed reading ’ essay on context and ignorance when judging a photograph, which partly inspired my piece. Molders complains that our focus on Francesca Woodman’s suicide or Vivian Maier’s life as a nanny means we ignore the work itself.

3. conveys the joy of being clueless at the Pyramids.

4. The Oxfordian I was speaking to was Duncan McLaren, who is a biographer of Evelyn Waugh and Enid Blyton. His current obsession is On Kawara.

5. Incidentally, the most prominent Substackers I’ve seen discuss the topic of Shakespeare’s authorship are, on the Oxford side, monarchy fanboy, , and on the Stratford side, the literary critic, .

6. writes about Edinburgh surrealism and life in a freezing flat.

7. delivers an ode to the Tuk-Tuk.

8. photographs a delightfully inauthentic Polish celebration of Epiphany.

Whenever Hollywood studios want to reboot a superhero franchise, they invariably retell the character’s origin story. A bite from a radioactive spider, the destruction of the home planet, both parents murdered in a dark alley … such events are part of their DNA, their raison d’être.

At the end of 2024, I retired my weekly photojournal, The WIP, to focus on documenting The Golden Z. I wanted to be more intentional with my photography. My theory was that, while we find pleasure in individual images, there is often a higher order of meaning in a sequence.

However, an origin story rarely comes from good intentions. An origin story is also a fatal flaw, an Achilles’ heel.

In my case, the origin story of The WIP ensues from my ambivalence to algorithmic social media, especially Instagram.

We know the arguments against Instagram by now:

• It is incredibly addictive.

• Frequent use leads to distress and anxiety.

• It is a leading source of misinformation and disinformation.

• Meta tracks/sells huge amounts of your personal data to advertisers.

I was prepared to put up with all of this because there are people I like on the platform. But Instagram is now almost entirely focused on short-form, brain-rot video.1 I’m out2 … and reviving The WIP.

The WIP is my attempt to solve the problem of social media: how to stay current without being lost in ephemera. It will be a quick, light read—the week in photos and my work in progress—that links off to longer pieces on The Crop.

This week, for instance, I wrote about the best books I read in 2025 and my ten favourite films.

The topic of origin stories was on my mind after visiting The Well, a new mosaic that entices viewers to look down into the place where Glasgow was born. It’s tricky to capture the sense of depth, so I made a video throwing a coin into the well:

Otherwise, I have been enjoying the lull between Christmas and New Year. I checked out the weird Bonnie Blue aesthetics of the fun fair.

I cleansed myself of this experience by walking around the Necropolis. Saying hello to the industrialist Charles Tennant, a man who built an empire by finding a better way of bleaching cloth. His notable descendants include the Bright Young Thing, Stephen Tennant, among many others.

After spending Christmas with my in-laws in Spain, I got back to Glasgow and took a final walk along The Golden Z in 2025. At the start of the year, my photography was distant and alienated from my subjects. By the end, I felt just about comfortable engaging with them.

Earlier in the day, after seeing a photo of him with Stephen Fry, I had been wondering why Michael Pedersen is not more famous. He is one of the best-connected writers in Scotland, getting blurbs from Alan Cumming and hosting events with Shirley Manson and Nicola Sturgeon.

And then, quite by chance, I saw him on Sauchiehall Street and said hello. We had a lovely chat about Oscar Wilde, being a cat, and the extent to which morality influences our view of artists.

He is a thoughtful, funny man who looks you deep in the eye when having a conversation. I asked if I could take his photos as part of my Golden Z project, and he kindly consented. However, I found it difficult to capture the person I had met rather than the flamboyant public persona. The double exposure above is an attempt to show the two aspects.

One person who has been ever-present during my Golden Z project is Muyiwa Olawumi, a busker who is almost always to be found on Buchanan Street. Originally from Nigeria, he plays music for a church in the East End of Glasgow, and is constantly changing his busking set-up, going from traditional African drums to karaoke from a laptop.

Finally, wishing you all a very happy New Year. Here’s me on 1 January taking a plunge into the icy waters of 2026.

1

When you download the app, the subtitle is “Videos, creators & friends”. Photography is gone.

Happy Christmas! Hope you had a good one. I felt like a discarded Santa hat by the 23 December so it was nice to go south to see my family.

It was worth 8 hours of travel, including 3 trains and a replacement bus service.

On the 25th I managed to convince at least some that it would be an invigorating start of the day to do a parkrun. The people of Leicester certainly made an effort.

Last week I talked about how different it is to take photos from a bike than walking, but that’s nothing compared to from a car. I just caught this wreck as my Dad drove past it.

We were off for a different kind of driving - golf. Fortunately none of us hit it far enough to lose a ball in the mist.

Christmas Day was a blur but a great time was had by all.

Even if I can’t remember half the context of the photos I took.

Otherwise I have been enjoying the silence of suburbia.

It’s so exotic.

Happy new year (when it comes) and see you in 2025.

Today is the solstice and we have emerged from the darkest days of winter. I’ve not been walking or getting out much lately, but cycled across to Maryhill on Monday afternoon after hearing that The Wyndford flats were being demolished.

I’ve been following the campaign to save them from afar and was particularly inspired by the work of Colin Templeton.

Photography while cycling is a very different experience than walking. Sometimes nice to embrace the constraints.

Need to get better at leaving the house before the sun sets, if only for vitamin D.

On the few occasions I have been outside, this is what I’ve seen.

One thing that was cheering this week was Phoebe Weston’s Big Softies show at Nicolls Gallery.

I was particularly struck by Alasdair Watson’s portrait of the Hyndland Bear, which is apparently is very famous in a small part of Glasgow.

Laura flew to a yoga retreat in India on Friday, leaving me home alone (😱). It’s fine, honestly—I can cook, clean and tidy … though I still don't know how to iron properly. It has also been a good opportunity for introspection. Almost like going on a retreat!

On Saturday, I went to Libby Walker’s memorial service in Arrochar. Sadly, I only met her a handful of times, but she had an incredibly sunny disposition and was a pleasure to be around.

It was a beautiful service. Libby would apparently pick up pretty leaves making wherever she went. We were all given one to reflect on the life that surges through the humblest leaf.

When I heard that Nick Millar was going to be dancing all night under a bridge as part of a durational birthday performance I thought it might be literally outside. It turned out that it was in an incredibly hip railway arch club-studio called Mesh. The vibe was They Shoot Horses, Don't They crossed with The Arches.1 It was great to dance and see lovely people but I couldn't help but reflect on the dance of death. It was like something out of Poe. I left at 11.30pm but came back at 7.45am where they were still just about swaying to some dark Industrial trance music.

It was intense. But having seen the sun rising and the beautiful clear day ahead of them, I knew they were in for a treat when they went outside. The final set, curated by Neil McGuire, consisted of spiritual soul classics, appropriate for a Sunday morning.

My reflections on life continued on Sunday afternoon when I met my newest pal, Lenny. Just 100 days old!

I went out on Sunday evening but didn’t take any photos. I did however get flu, whether through over-indulgence or sitting next to a coughing man on the train, I don’t know.

On Tuesday, a freezing fog descended. It was barely possible to see more than 20 yards in front of you. Picturesque, you might think. Well, no, apparently the lack of wind had created a polluted fog. What is known as smog. Patrick Jameson posted maps from Ventusky showing toxic levels of particulate matter. The epicentre was the West End caused, he guessed, by the popularity of woodburning stoves and 4x4s, though an unexplained explosion in the area may have contributed.2

Fortunately, I survived the week and, yesterday, I popped along to Queens Park Railway Club for the opening of Sam Ainsley’s show, where she continues to show the younger generation (including all her star pupils) how it is done.

2

I tweeted Patrick’s maps and almost 100,000 people tuned in.

Last Saturday to Agitate Gallery in Edinburgh where one of my photos was being exhibited as part of Contact Print. The gallery had received funding from Fair Saturday, an anti-consumerist alternative to Black Friday. The premise was to encourage people who had never had anything printed to share their work in public. I have visited Boots and Snappy Snaps to print film twenty years ago, but not much more. Here are some lovely friends (, , , and Sophie) who turned up to offer interpretations that had never occurred to me.

In the Christmas fair, I was struck by the bleakness of working in a permachristmas environment. What torture to hear those same cheery songs over and over.

“Anybody over the age of 30 seen in a bus has been a failure in life”, said the poet Brian Howard (and not Margaret Thatcher). But clearly Brian had never enjoyed the thrill of the top deck.

The winter days are so short that I have been struggling to see any light, but there are images out there.

Instead, I have been taking a voyage around the kitchen, looking in the microwave and at the spatter guard.

Food is the main subject of Durty Beanz, an “action research group” who have collaborated on a billboard with Mark Titchner. In a talk last night with Sanjeev Kohli they squeezed every last drop out of the work, but it was stimulating to think about what makes us obsessively watch eatfluencers like Beard Meets Food.

Meaning is not found, it is generated. One connection leads to another, you just have to commit. Today (Saturday 30 November 2024) one of my photographs is being exhibited at Agitate Gallery in Edinburgh as part of a project to encourage people, like me, who have never had anything printed before. It was really hard to choose which one to submit, but the photo I chose has a similar vibe to this image — another man who has lost his head.

There was snow last Saturday so no parkrun. Instead, I cycled through the slush to Tramway to see the Maud Sulter show that had opened the night before.

The exhibition looks amazing and uses the space well, but I can’t help but feel it does a disservice to Sulter’s photographs by repurposing them so brazenly in projections, blown up on boards, and even printed on diaphanous sheets. Once someone’s dead, who gets to decide what happens to the work?

On Sunday, I walked to the Barras market, one of my favourite places in Glasgow. I spotted the Sgàire Wood billboard, which appears to be a way of using advertising space for art. Presumably so that people pay more attention to billboards.

At the market I found an exhibiton of items stolen from workplaces curated by Sophie Stewart and Richard D. Ehlert. Each item had a short text explaining how the artist ended up stealing it—from rebelling against exploitation to boredom. I found myself hating the idea of celebrating crime and asked this guy if he had ever stolen anything. “Never,” he replied decisively. What a great and provcative concept for a show.

Johnny Rodger has a new book out.- his 20th! Despite costing £45 (£90 RRP) it sold out on the night, such is the esteem with which he is held.

To the New Glasgow Society AGM on Wednesday. NGS does great work as a forum for discussing the city’s built environment. Here is Thierry with fellow Glasgow obsessive @thisismyglasgow.

Alas it meant I missed the readings at the launch of @contralytic, Glasgow’s premier philosophy & poetry magazine.

I have been thinking this week about the appeal of the local after immersing myself in The @tenementals brilliant album. More on this soon!

Going from -3C degrees outside to the humid air of the Subway leads to steamy glasses. A health hazard particularly with an island platform. I took my glasses off to wipe them and they became one with the tunnels.

The cosmetic surgeons near me left their blinds open allowing one to see the faint outline of the figures inside behind frosted glass. Now I'm imagining them performing transformations like in Seconds (1966).

I find the whole world of conventional beauty standards mystifying, but at least this mannequin will be warm.

This is the look I am going for. Set me free!

Last Saturday, I went to Falkirk to see the unveiling (unmasking?) of Caspar’s covid memorial. The perspective of this photo makes it look smaller than it is, but is 3m high and very impressive. Do check it out if you’re in Callendar park

It certainly made some attendees pause for reflection.

Quiet Sunday revisiting the multifaceted Derek Jarman show at the Hunterian. He is such an interesting artist and I’ve been reading Modern Nature.

Made it back from Falkirk in time for Sheila Rock’s talk at Street Level Photoworks, though just missed Jill Furmansky’s. It is a spectacular and vital exhibition, full of the energy of punk rock.

Dean Kissick’s essay The Painted Protest was on my mind when I visited Messy, a group show at New Glasgow Society curated by . However, I found nothing in it to suggest the art world is dulled and exhausted by politics. The work not only comes from the margins but operates in the literal margins of the page. It felt like a laboratory for trying things out. Very nice vibe.

I popped into Hillhead Library on Thursday to see Adele Bethel quiz Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian about his novel. Despite being about ME, it sounded like a fun read with plenty to enjoy for fans of the band.

Because I live in town, walking around the neighbourhood makes me think that everyone is a hedonist, out to enjoy themselves. I have to remind myself that most people have duties and go to work.

They are in town to have a good time … or at least be distracted by the Grinch.

Trackie McLeod’s background is as a graphic designer. He hasn’t been demoralised by four years studying art and as such his show is pretty shallow and fun. The references are obvious, the politics are basic, but folk seem to enjoy it. When I mentioned it to a friend he said “it’s very nineties - where is the anthropocene?”

McLeod felt like the diametric opposite to Arika which launched on Wednesday. Arika is heavy with guilt about colonialism and the carceral state. The rage against Zionism and fascism has exhausted them, but they are still set on totally refashioning the western sense of self.

On Monday I saw Pamela Hieronymi talk about the problem of free will with rigorous philosophical logic. She was adviser on The Good Place and spoke exactly like Chidi. There were four lectures but having only seen one I don’t know what the solution was.

I have been reflecting.

Searching for the light.

And going to the agora to debate

Oliver recommended Girls Overheard, a popular podcast by some Glaswegian women that is apparently even better than Red Scare.

The trouble with doing this weekly blog is that I often get people asking: “Is this [random event] going to be in ‘the WIP’?” The whole thing becomes self-conscious. R. lacks the agency to know what is going on, but her sceptical glance carries a judgment of sorts. I hope she doesn’t mind being on here.

I had an injury so couldn’t run on Saturday. Instead, I volunteered at Queens Park parkrun. The area has been in the news recently after The Glasgow Bell wrote about gentrification and the odd phenomenon of people queuing outside bakeries. My theory is that people only go to the queue for the gossip.

After struggling to find a café without a queue, Sophie, Jeremy and Caspar and I managed to get breakfast in HUG. Afterwards, I took them (and R) along to The Workroom where Laura had been developing a new performance.

I suggested we all go to the Glasgow Print Fair, which was being held in my favourite brutalist building, The Pyramid at Anderston. One of Glasgow’s top graphic designers, Orlando Lloyd, was there, punting books.

The main reason I go to art events is that I don’t have a TV. One has to fill the time somehow. I met a woman at Morwenna Kearsley’s show at Strangefield who had come all the way from Stirling. Like me, she used the Glasgow Art Map to see what was going on. And like me was often mystified by the opening hours of these events. She mentioned a gallery that was only open for two hours on a Sunday. Madness!

I’ve had it in my diary for months to visit Sculpture House. It is an artist run studio and only open between 12-4pm on the first Monday of the month. I didn’t feel like getting the train to Paisley, but couldn’t face another month.

Here is Laura Aldridge showing me one of James Rigler’s animals.

I was also curious to see Anya Gallacio’s Stroke, which Jupiter Artland have installed in a dilapidated shop on the high street. It’s perhaps not as impressive as Rachel Maclean’s Mimi Store, but the smell of chocolate is overwhelming.

A man reading in Paisley’s new library.

I was reminded of my old friend John Moore when I saw his name in lights. He was briefly a member of the Jesus and Mary Chain so has some connection to Glasgow.

While a faulty fire alarm is annoying, you do get a space-age blanket in return.

Rosalind Nashashibi talking about her short film, inspired by William Blake’s The Sick Rose, at the CCA.

This is the view from the tenth floor of the new JP Morgan offices which I visited as part of a discussion about product design.

Christina McBride is a tutor at Glasgow School of Art and it was fascinating to see the influence of her colleague Thomas Joshua Cooper in her show at Wasps Studios and how she has influenced students like Freya Cookson. Her cyanotypes produced using plant colours were extraordinary.

I try to make these photo essays cohere to a theme but really struggled this week. We are living in chaotic and interesting times.

I enjoyed Hallowe’en, particularly when seeing witches doing banal things like ordering burgers.

I enjoy seeing anyone ordering burgers, really.

The Barras Market got crowded, but that also led to possibilities.

It’s sad that the digital leaves so few communal traces. I am fascinated by the times when books were issued and sad we no longer see such things.

On the way to the Derek Jarman preview I was tried to notice anything blue. From window frames …

… to shiny shirts.

On the 30th October I popped into Jieyu Deng’s extraordinary show at SaltSpace. Really totally different from anything I’ve seen recently.

A conversation between Sean Elder and Marlene Smith.

It was a busy week. Always bring a book.

A day trip last Saturday to Dundee, Scotland’s fourth biggest city. What it lacks in population it makes up for in confidence. For instance, it has its own little V&A—which I had wanted to visit before the Photo City exhibition closed.

It is much more compact and pedestrianised than Glasgow which makes it very walkable. The weather helped.

Dundee has a gallus attitude to public sculpture with Desperate Dan, Minnie the Minx, Oor Wullie, Lemmings, polar bears, and even dragons on the high streets.

We visited the Cooper gallery, show which follows on from Women in Revolt in focusing on zines, posters and other ephemera. More than unearthing an archive, it shows what we lost by going digital.

Went to see The Apprentice, the film about Trump’s relationship with his mentor, Roy Cohn. Very entertaining and well-pitched. Funny without being banal. Critical without being too unfair. Glasgow looked very Gotham from the fifth floor.

The film was mainly set in the 70s, a time of mass union membership. Mick Lynch spoke nostalgically about the era in the grand city chambers.

He is a great speaker but it is difficult to see how the unions can attract the current generation of precarious workers.

Readers may recall that I am fascinated by Scenius. This is Brian Eno’s idea that genius is an emergent property from local cultural activity rather than mere individual talent.

One of the conclusions I have come to is that a scene needs to be tightly knit. Glasgow, as a city, can’t have a scene, it’s too big and too diffuse, but something like Transmission in the 90s could.1

Perhaps, I mused, it is possible to create a scene on a small island or peninsula.

Last Saturday, despite hail and winds, I took the ferry to Dunoon. I knew that Streetlevel Photoworks were supporting an event at the Burgh Hall and my friend Angela mentioned that MoCA also had an opening.

Bizarrely, despite being a tiny town, there seemed to be barely any crossover between the two events. No scenius! Not yet, at least.

Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert’s Artists of Scotland is a thorough survey of Scottish artists in their studios. There’s a pleasing variety in how Jeremy presents their personalities to reflect their work. The exhibition covers the Glasgow Miracle generation but also includes younger and older artists. I particularly like his Howsonian portrait of Peter Howson.

We arrived late during the talk, but I was emboldened to ask a question. I was curious what he thought about the relationship between art and photography. Jeremy implied that he was a documentary photographer, not an artist. Indeed, he had made no portraits of photographers.

Two he might have included were Thomas Joshua Cooper and Roger Palmer, who taught Fine Art Photography at the art school and who had made the trip to see their former student David Bellingham. Bellingham’s work is playful, wry, and conceptual. The show is delightful. The obvious reference point is David Shrigley (they are friends apparently) but Bellingham is less nihilistic.

Both shows are worth a day trip.

In other news …

We have new shelves.

I have been looking in at the cat cafe.

Trying to capture autumn.

Inspired by ’s Palimpsests.

Visiting the home planet.

And generally gadding about too much:

On Thursday, I was reminded of the bit in The Truman Show where the producers artificially engineer a storm to prevent him from escaping the set. Just as we were queuing to get on the plane, the heavens opened. Would we ever leave the Basque Country?

The day before a hurricane in the region meant, after a 6 hour delay, our flight was cancelled. The whole airport was gripped by FlightRadar, watching the planes circle like they were on a Scalextric before deciding, no, they wouldn’t land.

Rumours swirled that the airline had abandoned us. The next available plane was on Monday, 5 days away. I checked the Skyscanner app recommended flying to Tenerife then Lanzarote then back to Edinburgh. A mere 27 hours of travel. In the end, we managed to fly out of Biarritz.

Bilbao is by now so familiar to me that I sometimes find myself exercising my absolute worst habit: texting (or even reading) while walking. I looked up on one of these walks and discovered I’d almost missed seeing the Guggenheim. Ooops.

But, as ever, it was a joy to be there. Here is Juan Jose celebrating some good news with a cigar.

It’s such a clean city. They even sweep the river for leaves.

There has been a lot of debate around the future of Glasgow since Dani Garavelli’s superb article in The Bell. But no one seems clear on what the future should look like.

Bilbao provides a good model, I think. It is a dense, walkable city that takes pride in its appearance.

Back in Glasgow, there was not much of a queue for gelato on a wet October evening. Hopefully it’s not the start of a new ice cream war.

In Bilbao, there is a cultural centre that has a swimming pool with a glass bottom on the top floor. You can stare up from the foyer at people swimming above you. It’s very strange, like staring up at the afterlife.

We were there to see The Substance, an intense new horror film about a middle-aged woman who takes a drug that allows her to be young again. It is a cross between Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde. Dumb but enormous fun, like a rollercoaster.1

It has made me reflect on ageing and how we treat those who we think of as old. This chap seemed as spirited as the kid on the bike.

There are echoes everywhere.

It is great to be back in the Basque Country …

… and enjoy some Autumn sun and warmth.

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Last weekend, in Glasgow, it was lovely to visit John Barry’s open house retrospective. Here is John after having written a text on the wall. His work is a combination of socially engaged practice with poetry. He had invited all his Hyndland neighbours and there were a lot of classic West End accents. The vibe was very congenial.

On Sunday, I made it just in time to Neil Clement’s Tactical scene at Govan Project Space. Northern Ireland has colonised the Glasgow art scene. In September alone, there have been shows or appearances by Cathy Wilkes, Niall McCallum, Smith/Stewart (one of whom is from there), and Neil Clements. Northern Ireland is a microcosm of British extremes—imperial and religious—so it makes sense that its artists would show us who we are.

The centrepiece of Tactical Scene is a modernist sofa resting on a khaki green parachute. In one corner, a slide projector shows a series of playgrounds that look like archaeological digs. Was modernism parachuted in? Is Northern Ireland a playground for the empire?

The sofa faces a red, white, and blue neon museum barrier. This protects bold paintings on the metallic non-slip surface (the kind used for wheelchair ramps). One painting has what looks like a cup and ring mark. The other has a bright grid structure. It’s a thoughtful, economical show that is more than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately, it ended last Sunday, so you can’t see it.

On the way home, I walked past a comic con, which made me wonder if I should know more about Furries? Is a mask a way of avoiding ageing?

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Autumn is here, bringing with it what Keats called a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Last Saturday I went to Edinburgh where I got a PB at Holyrood. I reckon it is due to shedding a couple of kg recently, but since the weather turned, the desire to scoff my face to survive the winter is overwhelming.

I was reminded of Martin Parr’s Home Sweet Home when I saw Sophie and Caspar on retro sofas.

I took them along to Face/Off, a group show curated by Miriam Morris. In it, 26 photographers were randomly paired off to take a portrait of each other. It was fascinating to see how (in the words of Teju Cole) the “photographer’s intent and the sitter’s agreement are made visible.”

My phone (on which I take all these) is 5 years old. How much better would a brand new one be? Turns out, not much. Progress has stalled. This is a “found photo” from an iPhone 16 Pro.

I wrote about Sonica festival and our ideas of progress. Here is John Butler talking about his superb digital films, The High Frontier, at the GFT.

This graffiti by the Rebel Bear presents another future.

Johanna inspects film as Esther Kinsky had a mellow, fruitful talk with Anne-Marie Copestake at the Art Writing event.

You have to make the most of the sun when it comes.

With the market collapsing, artists have been forced to do other professions. It was lovely to meet folk at the launch of a new artist run flower shop on Gt Western Road. Axl impressed me by saying he wanted to be a barrister after his degree. Turned out he said barista.

As part of my ongoing attempt to capture the elusive essence of Alan Dimmick, I took this last night at the CCA. Not only did I fail, but I seemed to annoy his friend. Next time!