Glasgow's Kelvin Hall, which has enjoyed a varied history as Scottish motor show location, anti-nuclear rally venue and city sports arena, is to find a new role during a major art show.
The seventh edition of the Glasgow International (GI) programme, the biennial festival of contemporary art, will feature around 230 artists with the centrepiece of the programme being at Tramway, which will have housed the Turner Prize exhibition until January.
However two major shows, by Glasgow-based Claire Barclay and Australian Helen Johnson, will take place at Kelvin Hall, which is in the process of being transformed into a new home for the Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum.
Ms Barclay's show will be a site-specific commission in the disused function hall at the front of the building, which is not part of the renovation process, while new paintings by Ms Johnson, presented in association with Glasgow's Mary Mary Gallery, will be hung in the Hall's wood-panelled entrance, in what is her first exhibition in Scotland.
The 2016 GI programme has again be curated by Sarah McCrory who said: "The festival has been programmed to incorporate a careful balance of artists to form a discussion around making, the post-industrial complex and the city. The importance of the wealth of artistic talent in Glasgow both emerging and established is well represented, alongside exceptional international artists."
The director will work with Scottish winner of the 2011 Turner Prize Martin Boyce on an element of the group show at Tramway which echoes that building's former purpose as a tram depot and then transport museum in matching Glasgow's industrial heritage with its current status as a cultural centre. The process of making in craft and industrial production features in the contrasting work of Argentinian Mika Rottenberg and 81-year-old American textile artist Sheila Hicks.
GI will run from April 8 to 25, 2016 and will also occupy Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), with multi-media work by German artist Cosima von Bonin and British artist Tessa Lynch, and will also feature Turner Prize winner Simon Starling and shortlisted Jim Lambie. Work will be seen in empty retail units in Sauchiehall Street's Savoy Centre and at the Roller Stop Roller Rink in Kinning Park.
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