My 2024 Art Highlights

The ten exhibitions and events I found most memorable this year

Dec 20, 2024

When you don't own a TV, don't work in an office, and don't have kids to ferry around, you have to do something with your time that helps maintain your connection to other human beings. For me, that something is a habit for attending events, exhibitions, talks etc.

Last Saturday, my friend Neil Bromwich (who, with Zoe Walker, has a big show opening at Talbot Rice Gallery in 2025) asked me for my top events of the year. So here, in no particular order, are the artistic encounters that stuck in my memory.

Human Chess — Jonny Keen

I hadn’t intended to take part in this performance by the river Clyde but they were short of "pieces". The idea was that 32 people would be living chess pieces moved by players with occasional misdirections by the artist. It was fun. GSA sculpture student Jonny Keen orchestrated a powerfully immersive work, raising questions about agency and submission to higher powers. I hope it is restaged soon to see how it changes in a different context.

Death and Life — Gustav Klimt

My trip to Vienna was rather frenetic, stimulated by the stupid tourist pass I bought. However, this painting by Klimt stopped me dead. Familiar to me from it being on the cover of a book on modernism, it embodies my midlife crisis.

Before Behind Between Above Below — Martin Boyce (Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh)

This was not so much a retrospective as a reimagining of his obsessions. I saw this twice and both occasions were memorable. The first time Martin Boyce came in to rearrange the vinyl leaves that had been disturbed at the opening. The second time, a group of blind art lovers came in to enjoy the textures and descriptions of the work. There's an uncanny effect to hearing abstractions turned into words that made it even more immersive.

Give Your Thoughts and Win — Shona Macnaughton (17 April 2024, QMU)

An absurdist participatory workshop about dysfunctional academic questionnaires in which Macnaughton critiqued the neoliberal university. Ostensibly part of the launch of Hannah Proctor's book Burnout, I was totally mystified but in a way that heightened the senses.

Obstruction — Cameron Rowland (Glasgow International)

A heavy chain with a padlock prevented people from entering the Ramshorn Cemetry, home of Merchants who made their money from enslaved tobacco pickers. Like Maurizio Cattelan's The Comedian, this has a brutal simplicity that cuts through the noise of modern life. While initially I found it banal, the image stayed with me and has been the spur to investigate Glasgow's darker history.

My other highlight of GI was Lawrence Abu Hamdan's performance essay in Audio about the live translation of the Nuremberg trials.

Glasgow Show — Niall McCallum (Glasgow Project Room)

Glasgow Project Room quietly gets on with showcasing quality work every month or so. I was bowled over by Niall McCallum’s exhibition there, which itemised and moved everything he owns into the gallery and turned his flat into a white cube with TV stand sculptures and the ghost of parties past. The weight of a life lived, the sacrifice of the artist. McCallum joins Cathy Wilkes, Smith/Stewart (one of whom is from there), Francis McKee, and Neil Clements as part of a peculiarly Northern Irish perspective.

This year, they also hosted great shows by Lilian Ptáček, Andrey Chugonov, Patrick Jameson, John Nicol et al. Fascinated to see what is coming up next.

Perseus with the Head of Medusa — Benvenuto Cellini

Florence was a disappointment—no city can bear so many tourists—but Cellini's bronze in the Piazza della Signoria transcends all the vulgarity. Indeed, it spits on the selfie sticks and baseball caps with contempt. It helped that I had been reading Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae for whom Perseus represents the Apollonian male triumph over the Dionysian female nature of Medusa. Incredible statue.

Dion Kitson — The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

When travelling by train, it is sometimes nice to get a split ticket and visit another place for an hour or so. We stopped in Birmingham and visited the Ikon Gallery for Jesse Jones's Artemisia Gentileschi show featuring the marvellous Stephanie Lamprea. The other exhibition they had was Dion Kitson's Rue Britannia, where you could play pool with brooms and see a Fontana-esque trampoline. Fun and brilliantly executed.

Brutal Glasgow — Natalie Tweedie and Rachel Loughran, Glasgow City Heritage Trust

Brutalism was a utopian dream to reshape humanity through architecture. Alas, the dream turned into a dystopian nightmare. Rachel Loughran's exhibition based on Natalie Tweedie's iconic illustrations was not a celebration nor a condemnation but a nuanced attempt to place brutalist architecture in a real-world context. Check out my brutalist tour of Glasgow and interview with Loughran.

Waiting Room — David Bellingham (Dunoon MOCA)

Alastair Noble & Kathy Bruce's grandly titled Museum of Contemporary Art in Dunoon has quickly become one of the most interesting small galleries in Scotland. Their exhibitions explore the spaces between language, art and poetry. Just as the island of Iona saved Christian texts in the Dark Ages, maybe Dunoon MOCA will save modernism.

David Bellingham's delirious collection of printed-out texts, visual puns, and conceptual jokes was a delight to experience. It was especially memorable to go to the Masonic Lodge afterwards and discuss with David what art can and should do. Thanks to Angela for inviting me along.