Founders still making mark to inspire studio’s new talent

The list of 130 exhibitors at this show celebrating Glasgow Print Studio’s 50th anniversary reads like a veritable who’s who of contemporary Scottish art. Over the years, artists of the calibre of Elizabeth Blackadder, John Bellany, Adrian Wiszniewski, Peter Howson, John Byrne, Alison Watt, Lys Hansen, John Houston and Victoria Crowe (to name a few) have all collaborated with the studio’s master printmakers and worked in a variety of techniques — from etching to monotype and from polymer gravure to screenprint — to create new, innovative works and to push the boundaries of their own practice.

The studio’s first home in the city was a ground-floor flat in St Vincent Crescent. At the core of the founding group of enthusiasts were four female printmakers, including the 28-year-old Beth Fisher, originally from Portland, Maine. The others were Ellie Lamb, Sheena McGregor and Jacki Parry. It’s good to see work by all four here, including Fisher’s 1974 etching, Anecdotal Plate, depicting a breastfeeding infant and mother. Fisher has used her characteristically bold, energetic mark-making to explore the human form in the context of the familial and the domestic.

As the current director John Mackechnie (whose photographically derived prints are also included here) points out, the original aim of GPS was “to promote, maintain and advance education particularly by the encouragement of the study, practice and knowledge of the art of printmaking”. In that, the studio has resolutely stuck to its guns through thick and thin.

Printmaking is a democratic medium because it makes art affordable, while GPS membership is reasonably priced and open to all. This approach chimes with Glasgow’s political ethos and undoubtedly accounts for the studio’s economic and artistic success — pre-pandemic annual turnover was £800,000.

Another element in its success has been the studio’s ability to attract and nurture generations of artists. In the 1990s and 2000s, the “Glasgow miracle”, when winners and nominations for the Turner Prize were routinely awarded to artists trained at Glasgow School of Art, began to unfold.

Many of them — including Douglas Gordon, Christine Borland and Jim Lambie — chose to work at GPS. Borland’s series of botanical etchings demonstrates a deft command of the medium.

It’s good to see that the studio is now attracting the attention of the current generation of up-and-coming artists. Here’s to the next 50 years.

Until March 12, 2023