Monday, April 14, 2008

WEEKEND IN PICTURES

It was another one of those amazing weekends wherein you find yourself in a totally surreal adventure unique to Glasgow.

If you ever move to a foreign country/ city, I highly recommend incorporating my philosophy of saying, "yes" to every invitation. If someone invites you out for a night on the town, say yes! If someone invites you to a party, say yes! If someone invites you to an art show, say yes! Honestly, you will meet so many new people and see the city for it is.

Right. So Saturday, Paul and I spent the day wandering around St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art and Glasgow Cathedral. Saturday evening, Paul and I met up with his friend, Jamie and his girlfriend who invited us to various art openings, which were part of the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art. I think Glasgow International, or Gi, is meant to be the Scottish equivalent of Nuit Blanche but instead of lasting one night, it's for two weeks.

Also, there is free booze at the openings.

The first exhibition we stopped by was a "performance" of Kalup Linzey, an artist from New York who makes videos in drag. At Gi, he (she?) performed a couple songs and to be honest, I didn't really get it despite having studied art in University? Basically, he's a drag queen acting under the banner of contemporary art.

We then went to a few exhibitions at the Transmission gallery but don't ask who the artists were because at this point, the free beer and wine was kicking in. We then managed to see an exhibition of Alasdair Gray's paintings.

By the time we got to our friends gallery on the south side and the exhibition of The Last 3600 Seconds of Wasp by ZATORSKI + ZATORSKI, we were pretty much toast. Awesome thing about the gallery though, is that there is an outdoor clay oven and when we arrived they were making pizza for the art festival crawlers...
Clay oven baking said pizzas (sorry, dodgy photo, I know)

See that dude on the far right wearing the orange tie? He's part of the ZATORSKI duo who made the Wasp installation. When we first arrived, he turned to me and in the most POSHEST English accent I have ever heard said, "I looooove your hair. Do you find that quite hard to cultivate in Scotland? Hrm? Are you an artist? Is this your studio space? Hrm?"

HUH?
At one of the exhibitions - again, no idea which one.

At the outdoor studio/ exhibition with pizza and beer! Contemporary art rules when there is pizza and beer!

Towards 11.00pm, the exhibition warmly welcomed the arrival of some party crashers - Czech gypsies from next door. I guess they heard that there was a sweet exhibition next door and had to see it? Or perhaps it was the promise of free slices and wine? Either way, a whole extended family or two showed up and everyone plastered them with pizza. Apparently they had only been in Scotland for two months and it's satisfying to know they received a warm Glaswegian welcome.

Gated off license selling booze; what is this? Compton, LA or Glasgow? So weird.

Saturday afternoon, we checked out Glasgow Cathedral and St Mungo's (Patron Saint of Glasgow) tomb.











Glasgow Necropolis.
Exhibition inside Religious Museum; note the orange drum on the lower right side. Whatever, y'all know what I think of orange marches.



Friday night, we went to one of my favourite restaurants: Stravaigin.



Paul, not looking impressed about having his picture taken. Whatever, dude; that is what happens when you're too fucking cute!

3 comments:

Sibia Marie said...

A blue police call box! cool!

Jennifer said...

I know! It's the tardis!

Unknown said...

Ooooh, that must be JJ's, one of the cheapest off licences in town. Have you seen the police box thats sells coffee on buchanan street. That was definatly one of the greatest things I saw in my first week up here