Free Market: A Forum on Cultural Resources in Crisis

Over the course of three days, Market Gallery will host numerous arts organisers, artists, journalists, writers, economists and activists from across Scotland & the UK.

Initiated partly as a response to losing two of our gallery spaces at the end of May, we want to problem-pose the underlying issues behind the allocation of resources and property within the arts & wider cultural sphere. The aim of the forum will be to understand and critique the structural complexities and collectively search for potential alternatives or solutions.

The forum will be free and will invite responses from both invited speakers and the public. It will address our increasingly fragile ecology of arts, culture & media from a range of perspectives:

– Who and what determines how cultural resources are distributed, and for what purposes?

– What are the effects of privatisation on the arts?

– How can we actively transform art, work & culture for the better?

– How can we build radically new forms of collective, cross-cultural organisation?

Wednesday 17th May, facilitated by Harry Weeks:
Spaces open from 12pm
1pm Neil Gray (Urban Studies Foundation)
2.15pm Sarah Strang (Civic Room)
3pm Break
3.30pm Glasgow Autonomous Space
4.15pm Helen Moore (Reidvale Housing Association)
5pm Jonathan Hoskins (Own de Beauvoir Project)
5.45pm Break
6pm – 7pm Roundtable & Open Discussion

Thursday 18th May:
Spaces open from 3pm
5pm – 6.45pm Screening of Robinson in Ruins by Patrick Keiller (1hr 41min)
7pm Carl Lavery
7.45pm Patrick Keiller

Friday 19th May, facilitator TBA:
Spaces open from 12pm
5pm Carla Cruz
5.45pm Laurie Macfarlane (New Economics Foundation)
6.30pm Break
7pm Willie Sullivan (Common Weal/Citizens Basic Income Network)
7.45pm Aaron Bastani (Novara Media)
8.30pm – Late: Afterparty at Market Gallery

With a new commission by Simon Worthington

The forum is free, un-ticketed and open to all. Refreshments will be provided during breaks. Throughout the forum there will be a FREE MARKET Resource Room to engage with before and after any talks, with our galleries open earlier each day.

Invited speakers:

Neil Gray is a writer and researcher mainly working around the production and contestation of urban space. He has written extensively around the intersection between art, rent and urban space in Glasgow and is currently editing a book on Glasgow’s 1915 Rent Strikes and their contemporary relevance.

Sarah Strang is a visual artist living in London and Glasgow, whose collaborative practice seeks to examine notions of hierarchy within and beyond, commercial and public institutions. Recent exhibitions include artist in residence projects at Union Chapel, Simmons & Simmons international law firm and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Civic Room is a non-profit gallery, established by Sarah Strang and an Advisory Team including Toby Paterson and Ainslie Roddick in 2015, within an 1897 former British Linen Bank on Glasgow’s High Street. Civic Room is situated between the Barras and the City Centre planning zones and next to the original site of Glasgow University and its home to Enlightenment figures, offering emerging and international artists multiple research opportunities. Recent exhibitions featured solo shows by Adam Lewis-Jacob, André Komatsu, Katrina Valle and Selma Hreggviðsdóttir. Sarah Strang is also an advisory member of Glasgow International Festival.

Helen Moore is the chairperson of Reidvale Housing Association, a community based organisation which has provided affordable housing and other services in the East End of Glasgow for 40 years. Reidvale have supported Market with gallery space for the last 17 years. Helen is also the vice chair of Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum, the membership body for community-controlled housing associations and co-ops in west central Scotland. For the last 15 years, Helen has worked for Wasps Studios, and award winning social enterprise providing affordable studio spaces for artists and makers across Scotland. Helen has been involved in a number of organisational initiatives including the development of the Anna Lobner Exchange and Wasps Open Studios, which aims to stimulate more interaction between artists and the public, alongside developing and supporting the Wasps studio community.

Glasgow Autonomous Space is a warehouse space which hosts groups struggling against capitalism and other forms of oppression. It aims to be a safe space for all and a resource to aid groups in their aims. It is run by those using the space, non-hierarchically and not for profit. It is autonomous – not funded by the state or other institutions whose aims are incompatible with theirs.

Jonathan Hoskins is a visual artist and writer living in London. He typically works with individuals with an expertise outside of visual art, towards projects with distinct practical consequences. Recent projects and events: Tate Exchange; Somerset House; Errant Bodies Press; Open School East; South London Gallery; Spacex Gallery, Exeter. www.jonathanhoskins.com

Dr. Harry Weeks is Teaching Fellow in Contemporary Visual Cultures at The University of Edinburgh. His research concerns: community engagement in art; art in the city; the institutional politics of art; art’s autonomy; cultural policy. He is currently working towards a book entitled Community and Art after Community Art.

Carl Lavery is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Glasgow. He writes about ruins, ecology and the Situationist International. He also works as apart of the Glasgow Glam Rock Dialogues. He has hopes of reinventing the role of the crooner for contemporary purposes.

Patrick Keiller (b.Blackpool 1950). Studied and practised architecture between 1967-79 before studying Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in the Department of the Environmental Media. Keiller has been making films since 1981, which have been widely screened, internationally and in the UK. Commissions include the Arts Council, The British Film Institute, the BBC and Channel 4.

Carla Cruz is a London-based artist and independent researcher. She has a PhD in art practice from Goldsmiths. Her ongoing research experiments with forms of collectivity and practices that take place outside and in defiance of the mainstream art system. Carla is a member of THIS, an artist-run organisation that provides affordable working spaces for artists, and a Trustee of The Mill.

Aaron Bastani has a PhD in new media and social movements and is the co-founder of Novara Media. He has written for the LRB, Vice, the Guardian and Open Democracy. In 2018 he is publishing Fully Automated Luxury Communism with Verso Books.

Laurie Macfarlane is a Senior Economist at the New Economics Foundation, the UK’s leading think tank promoting social, economic and environmental justice. He is a regular media commentator on UK economic issues and is the co-author of the book ‘Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing’.

Simon Worthington is a designer and maker based in Glasgow. Often working closely with organisations and other individuals his practice aims to infiltrate the everyday sphere with both useful and questionable objects. Simon graduated from Communication Design at The Glasgow School of Art (2012). Since then he has worked as a workshop technician (Glasgow Sculpture Studios) and fabricator alongside producing his own design commissions and sculptural works.

Supported by a-n, Creative Scotland and Glasgow City Council

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