The shock of the new stands firm in this exhibition by Simon Phipps, whose long-term documentation of Brutalist architecture has given already dramatic constructions a sense of era defining largesse from what may or may not have been a golden age of town planning.
Throughout the gallery’s two rooms, a panoramic display resembles production stills from the opening credits of a late 1960s/early 1970s TV drama about sharp suited urbanists intent on creating new worlds made out of concrete and glass. In actuality, Phipps has mapped out a space age psychogeography already predicted by Fritz Lang and mythologised by J.G. Ballard as it transformed the post Second World War built environment in monumental fashion.
Here, Phipps presents a travelogue of civic spaces designed for a brave new world beyond the tenement slums of yesterday to the clean line abstractions looking out onto tomorrow. This comes in the solid form of office blocks, car parks and cathedrals, shopping centres, post offices and tower blocks, all dreamt up by assorted partnerships of utopian visionaries and marketed by with-it whiz-kids on the up.
Beyond the hype, it has been said that the brutopia depicted by Phipps looks better in photographs than it does on the street, particularly if you happen to live beside them, or even in them. And while some have become historicised monoliths and grown in status, others more resemble some post apocalyptic tomb left behind by a more homely kind of progress.
Some, like Glasgow’s Savoy Centre and Edinburgh’s Cable Wynd Flats in Leith, are long mythologised sites. Others are less so, though the ubiquity of this high street revolution makes them feel familiar. Some buildings still thrive. Others don’t, victims of the elements, civic neglect and impossible economics. No better is this illustrated than by the image of the Cardross based St. Peter’s Seminary in all its dilapidated glory.
While Phipps never forces any dystopian narrative, the lack of people in his images somewhat conversely give things both a barren air as well as a sense of civic pride. It is as if the buildings pictured are being presented as high fashion architectural pin-ups for chic state of art coffee table magazines. This actually did happen in a series of groovy looking spreads in back issues of the Architectural Review circa 1969 and 1970, when eight issues of the mag documented something called Manplan. This showcased what the mag called ‘a radical manifesto advocating a new vision for architecture’.
These days, the buildings are so embedded into today’s all eras skyline that they blend into the background, barely noticed anymore, let alone frowned upon or dismissed as eyesores or carbuncles. But the camera- and Phipps’ camera in particular – still loves them, bringing them out of their shell.
All of this begs for a soundtrack, something perhaps recognised by Phipps in the snatches of lyrics from forward facing songs from the same era splashed across images like creative advertorial. Couplets by the Beatles, Can, Nina Simone and Soft Machine are in there. See if you can work out the rest while you view the work from the leatherette office chairs that seem to have been acquired by the gallery as an accidental retro touch.
Both the exhibition and Phipps’ just published book, also called Brutal Scotland, conjures up visions of an imaginary metropolis in which everyone lives happily ever after in this all angles brutoscape. This in turn casts the city as a vast piece of public art in which the civic and the aesthetic co-exist in some kind of urban Eden. This was meant to happen, of course, in some of Scotland’s New Towns depicted here, before real life got the better of them. In Phipps’ work, futures, pasts, and possibly the revolution beyond, start here.
Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, 21st February - 16th May 2026
Scottish Art News, March 2026
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