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By Degrees - The Legacy of ECA and GSA Graduates

When David Shrigley spoke in 2010 about how the arts institutions in
Glasgow were crucial to his creative development, he may have been
bemoaning the impending threat of arts cuts, but it nevertheless spoke
volumes about where art education really happens. As this year's art
school graduates prepare to display their wares in degree shows at
Glasgow School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art, perhaps its worth
taking stock of how the schools help young artists to find their voice.
Especially in a climate where two graduates of GSA's Masters of Fine
Art Course, Karla Black and Martin Boyce, have just been shortlisted
for the 2011 Turner Prize. This on top of their presence representing
Scotland in the Venice Biennale, Boyce in 2010, with Black picking up
the mantle this year.

This too given that previous Turner winners such as Douglas Gordon
(1996), Simon Starling (2005) and Richard Wright (2009), and nominees
including Jim Lambie (2005), Nathan Coley (2007) and Lucy Skaer (2009)
are all ex GSA, with the 2010 winner Susan Phillipsz alumni of Duncan
of Jordanstone College in Dundee, whose succesful graduates were
gathered in a group show at Dundee Contemporary Arts, The Associates, a
couple of years back. And let's not leave out 2001 Turner winner Martin
Creed, who may have studied at Slade, but grew up in the same Glasgow
environment that so inspired Shrigley. We should bear in mind as well
that prior to doing his MFA in Glasgow, Richard Wright studied at
Edinburgh College of Art, where other high profile graduates include
Keith Farquhar and a family tree dating back to the 1970s that pretty
much founded Edinburgh's lively post-punk music scene.

GSA students too have provided homes for those who've ended up
branching out beyond the visual disciplines. Umpteen bands too numerous
to mention were sired here, including members of Franz Ferdinand, while
actor Robbie Coltrane and playwrights Liz Lochhead and Robbie Coltrane
both studied there. Novelist Alasdair Gray even ended up teaching there
once he graduated.

Given such illustrious forbears, then, what can we expect from the
latest crop of graduates once they stumble blinking into the real world
just as arts funding cuts look set to bite this side of the border? And
just how much have their various alma maters helped shape their work?

“The influence of GSA is huge,” according to Alice Steffan, about to
finish the school's Sculpture and Environmental Art Course with a piece
entitled 'Back-Seat Butterflies'. “You get a lot of freedom to do what
you want, and it’s as much about finding out who you are as anything..”

Which may go some way to explain how 'Back-Seat butterflies' is about
how “when you're young and you go in the back seat of a car for the
first time, and you get butterflies in your stomach.”

Steffan turned down a place at St Martins to come to Glasgow, where
during her second year she and members of her course visited Jim
Lambie's studio, where “meeting him you realise he's one of us.”

ECA Painting student Rhona Campbell concurs with Steffan in that
“you're very much left to your own devices.”

While Campbell is reluctant to identify any trends in her music and
film influenced work, or in the work of others, she does acknowledge
that “there's maybe a little bit of a Karla Black influence around the
college.”

social scenes are paramount to both colleges, with a plethora of DIY
pop-up galleries and off-site activities actively encouraged. Glasgow
International Festival of Visual Art wouldn't be the same without them,
and the Edinburgh Annuale probably wouldn't exist without it. But
things are changing. ECA's forthcoming merger with Edinburgh University
will inevitably shake things up, and as ECA Head Stuart Bennett
acknowledges, this will be the last year Degree shows will exist with
ECA as an independent institution.

“The impact of this will open up different ranges of research at the
university,” he says, “and there'll be a real scope for students to
collaborate and open up opportunities for different types of work to be
made possible. That's quite exciting. The students here aren't doing
this just as a degree. It's more important than that.”

The List, May 2011

ends

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