Glasgow: General Overview Of My Habitat

In this essay, I will explore our habitat and talk about different monuments. I will use resources from lecturers, site visits, fieldwork, books, Pecha Kucha and mind maps.

Also I will briefly touch on the subject of the history of the abandoned and unused spaces. Next I will talk about my fieldwork and inspiration from the project and finally I will talk about how the project developed and the end result. First of all we were given instructions on our area and my group got Southside of Glasgow. From that we went as a group on a fieldwork trip from Cathkin Park where we then went through Govanhill past the Gorbals into Kilbirnie Street then finally into Tradeston and KinningPark area to explore Robert Smithsons journey to Passaic and how it can relate to us. We reinterpreted Robert Smithson’s Journey to Passaic and John Cage’s piece of music which was composed of 3 movements of silence which is one of the most controversial pieces of music despite the absence of sound work by taking a 4.33 miles tour from Cathkin park’s derelict football stands to Caledonia Road free church, to various spaces underneath the M74– finding monumental negative spaces, seemingly without purpose.With so much undervalued and unused space on the route of our 4.33 miles tour we feel that there is an opportunity for large scale, collaborative artworks to transform this area of Glasgow.John Cage said “we don’t see much difference between time and space we don’t know where one begins and the other stops”For our second field work visit we had a desire to explore more about empty and unused spaces. we walked from Kilbirnie Street to Scotland street where we saw abandoned industrial buildings. from here we went to Seaward Street passing through KinningPark area

Underneath the M74 plans were drawn up to transfer a derelict area of land underneath the motorway in Glasgow into a hub for skateboarding, BMX and free running. The charity Glasgow Urban Sports wants to build the 1 million pound facility in this area but unfortunately it never happened and the area is now a massive wasteland. The underpass beneath the M74 motorway provides shelter as well as a structure that large objects could be suspended from. Some of these spaces have unique features that open up opportunities for collaborative projects as well as large scale artworks.

One of the most famous football stadiums in Scotland was Cathkin park which used to hold 50,000 fans. In 1884 the stadium was built and opened. Cathkin park was becoming home to Third Lanark. Now where the stands used to be for fans nature has taken over. It is a wasteland with nature growing. in the east section of Cathkin park there used to be a pavilion building. In the early 60s they put the new stand up but in the 1970s they were burnt out and by the 1980s they had started to fall apart. Many of these areas are transitional, previously occupied. Spaces like these lend themselves to large scale artworks that can have a positive impact on the people living in or commuting through them.

We started gathering information as a collaborative for the next step which was Pecha Kucha by making mind maps from our fieldwork then we moved onto researching different artists so we could gain more information. One of the books we looked at was “On the way to the gates” by Christo & Jeanne – Claude. The artists we looked at for research was Robert Smithson with Spiral Jetty, Gordon Matta – Clark with Splitting, Kazimir Malevich with White on white, Christo and Jeanne – Claude with The gates and The floating piers and joseph beuys with unschlitt tallow.

I attended a lecture with Kyle who was a previous student at GSA. After the lecture we had a workshop with Kyle which was about destruction and reconstruction. From the images we took from our fieldwork we deconstructed them then reconstructed them to create a collage as a collaborative. At the beginning of this project we had begun to explore the potential of negative space within our own work through the collaging workshop.

My inspiration came from looking at different artists such as Christo and Jeanne – Claude with their art The gates. I liked this temporary environmental artwork as he filled the path In the park using space by hanging large pieces of fabric which attracted people. I also looked at Wassily Kandinsky who painted composition 8. I liked this particular piece as it had bold colours and he played with shapes to create unique artworks. I also got inspiration by listening to lecturers, going on site visits and reading books. I wanted to use shapes in a negative space from our fieldwork trip to create a piece of art or sculpture or painting. It could be suspended or placed on the ground. I wanted people to walk through the art so they could appreciate the piece using vacant spaces and negative shapes. My ambition was to create a piece of art as a sculpture or painting to use negative space by presenting them on unused spaces that isn’t going to be used for anything and has been left over for a long time and has become faded.