SWG3 OPENS NEW GALLERY - YARD LIFE - A new urban arts gallery for the graffiti and street art community
SWG3, Scotland’s leading multi-disciplinary arts venue, will today launch its new urban arts gallery - Yard Life. The gallery marks the first exciting step in SWG3 and Yardworks’ bold plans for a new street arts district and will exhibit the latest works in street art and graffiti from Glasgow and beyond.
Brought to you by the team behind the internationally respected Yardworks Festival, Yard Life Gallery will showcase some of the incredible artists who many will have seen at Yardworks. The gallery will host the art of these skilled individuals, with their work now hanging on the walls.
Proudly occupying one of SWG3’s archways on Eastvale Place, the first exhibition will display new works by a group of emerging and renowned artists, from sign-makers to illustrators, cartoonists to sculptors.
Andrew Fleming-Brown, MD of SWG3, said: “We’re delighted to be launching this new space with a genre that is truly ingrained and part of the walls at SWG3. Our ambition is to create a new Street Arts District and Yard Life Gallery is the first exciting step in these plans. We look forward to welcoming everybody down to experience the incredible variety and talent from the urban arts community.”
Gary Mackay aka Gaz Mac, SWG3 Studio Director and co-founder of Yardworks, said: “Yard Life Gallery has risen from the success of Yardworks Festival and the talented artists that adorn its walls. From grassroots to the more established house-hold names that we see on our day-to-day travels around the city, Yard Life & Yardworks will interact with groups and individuals to realise their creative ambitions. The gallery will allow us to work alongside our artists on a day-to-day basis, pushing the boundaries and breaking the barriers that are commonplace for this exciting artform.”
The gallery forms part of a broader plan for a new street art and graffiti district sprawling across Govan, Yorkhill and Partick based around an innovative studio for emergent graffiti and street artists in the Galvanizers Yard with construction beginning in December 2021.
Local artists included in the launch exhibition include:
Molly Hankinson who creates ‘bold and subtly detailed, inclusive celebrations of feminine vitality’. GSA graduate Molly Hankinson is a resident at SWG3’s Design Studio, having been awarded our graduate residency. Her vibrant, brightly-coloured work is an honest and unapologetic representation of people who experience misogyny; a celebration of people re-claiming and re-owning their space; an inclusive celebration of feminine vitality.
Charlie Anderson is a painter and designer based in Glasgow. His work has been exhibited internationally including the V&A Museum in London. He has worked with Ringo Starr, Coach NY, Urban Outfitters, Amir Khan and Gordon Ramsay amongst others, and he has been shortlisted for the Jerwood contemporary painting prize (2010) and awarded the Meyer Oppenheim prize by the Royal Scottish Academy (2010).
Ursula Kam-Ling Chen is a Northern-Irish born Scottish based illustrator and visual live drawing media artist. Broad influences from street art, folkloric history, music, ancient relics, religious artworks, childhood memories spent in Hong Kong, escapist American television and Asian comics all collide into two-dimensional linework that presents a conversation on the hyper-real future, social ideals and expectations of the female individual.
The gallery will be open Wednesdays to Fridays 12:00 to 18:00 welcoming visitors to discover, purchase and collect the pieces exhibited.