Glasgow, like any big city, has its fair share of unused spaces. But
few could be in a more prominent position than the Mansions café at Charing
Cross. Empty for the last 18 months, the café spans the entire corner
section of one of the busiest interchanges in the UK. This is the site
for ‘Public/Private’ presented by E merge D.

E merge D is a new artist run organisation based in the city of
Glasgow, set up to facilitate emerging artists which aims to be a catalyst for
collaborative ventures between artists with a fresh focus on site
specific artworks. Its main objective is to promote growth of young emerging
artists across a broad range of disciplines and exists as a moving/adaptable
project, with a core group of artists. The intention of this project is
to have strong connections to local contexts and in the form of
site-specific arts spaces that engage local people.

Mansions has been chosen because it is part of the daily routine of
hundreds of passers-by, both on foot and on the road. During the month of April,
‘Public/Private’ will include works by 18 local and international
artists who will be presenting interesting, innovative, and thought provoking
work. The selections of works include sculpture, photography, painting,
projection, prints, drawing and installation.

April 1st –7th amy SALES & ruth LEGG.

Curtains

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

‘Curtains’ is a site-specific artwork. Created by using domestic
curtains, taken from local homes, which are hung in the windows of the former
coffee shop Mansions. Disused for 18 months, Mansions has become a familiar
space to those who regularly pass through the Charing Cross interchange.
Entirely closing off the view of the space draws attention to its presence. 
Allowing passers-by to project their own imagination onto the pace, alluding to
activities that may be happening behind the curtains.

Curtains work as shield, protecting our lives from public view. But
these identities are exposed when the curtains are hung inside out and viewed
from the outside. At Mansions the curtains act as a public sign of a private
realm.

April 8th – 9th craig PELUSEY

Untitled

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

I stand here in his café. He looks out of the corner of his eye at me
writing. Little does he know I stand here because of his wife.

As I crossed the road to the café, there she was on the other side,
caught by surprise, not expecting to see her, my stomach sank, turned and
twisted. Her hair pulled back, loosely but neatly, a long dark trench coat
covering her from the large raindrops that you knew have hit you when they
landed. I caught her eye as we crossed the road, forbidden, but safe, it wasn’t a
place to stop. I couldn’t help but turn as she passed. Low healed
shoes, black silk stockings that cling to her narrow ankles and perfect
calves, a dark navy skirt that ends just above the knees, sexy and unassuming. She
carried herself well.

It is amazing what you will find between the split in a coat. The less
there is the more. I start my second beer in anticipation of another glimpse,
the hope that more will be revealed.

Craig shined spotlights out of the space and in to the street, whilst
the curtains were still in place.

April 10th – 11th jim COLQUHORN & will HOLT

jim COLQUHOUN  (after dark)

Unholy radiance

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

In a blinding flash a divine illumination the hand of God is revealed
to be immanent in every detail of our experience.

During mystical illumination ‘darkness’ is swept aside and ‘truth’ is
revealed in the form of a transcendent white light. This seemingly
indisputable truth is either received from some source ordinarily
beyond human consciousness, or is the result of a temporary psychological
fugue state brought about by severe stress. It can also be facilitated by
ingesting various entheogenic substances.

Jim used lights to illuminate the interior of the Café after dark.

will HOLT  (daytime)

Anonymous Urban Window Aggression.
Reflections of a selective history

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Day 1.
The masked man sits at his typewriter, watching you. You provide the
initial inspiration for an improvised, non-linear history of the world. The
residue of which will eventually separate the observed from the observer. He is
always watching.

Day 2.
The masked man is watching you watch him watch you watch yourself.
Staring out from behind the glass, he intently follows you as you attempt to
pass him by.


Will conducted a live performance in the space, constantly pasting up
the products of his typing in the window.

April 12th – 13th yvonne McCLEMENT & geraldine GREENE

yvonne McCLEMENT

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

I pass Mansions everyday, and everyday l see the same thing -
reflections. The space has been the same for so long, there is nothing new to look
at, so we watch the world pass as an image in a window.

The artwork will be placed in the smaller elevated part of the main
interior. All windows will be covered, blocking the view of mansions
except for one small hole that passers by if they choose may look through,
only to be confronted by an image of themselves.

The piece itself plays with ideas of vanity, of passing a window and
catching your reflection.  The whole concept of public and private, no
one knows there is a mirror there.
In relation to the space itself, I am erasing the interior, replacing
it with a domestic equivalent of the window.

geraldine GREENE

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Mansions is located at a major pedestrian and traffic intersection,
where there is a constant flow of people passing by from the city centre to
the west-end.

The aim of this site-specific piece is to stop people passing
in-transit and to make their usual, every-day journey more interesting by engaging
them in something unexpected.

When people get caught in everyday routine of getting from A to B,
urban routes becomes passages of transition, somewhere to daydream, and there
is a loss of sense for the surroundings.

Mansions is situated in this kind of non-place, the building often
lying empty and unnoticed, its location discouraging people from occupying
it.

People find their way through cities by following a series of visual
cues in the form of road signs.

The red arrows pointing to the photos in the windows attract attention
in the same way, drawing people in, and make them pause in their journey
at a point where they otherwise would not.

Initially, the arrows draw attention to the photos, and then the images
in the photos draw attention to Mansions and its surroundings. The
presence of
a figure in the photo in the same position as the viewer makes them
aware of their own presence in the space, and physical interaction with the
surrounding space.

This causes the viewer to retain their sense of place, and reconnect
with their surroundings

April 14th kate BURTON

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Kate will be transforming the café in to the set of a short film for
oneday. The bar area will be highlighted with artificial light, as in a
stagesetting. The audience will be made up of the passers-by, observing the
performance through the windows.  The scene will not actually be
filmed,instead creating an event real to those that have seen it but
unrecorded.

April  15th – 16th jim DIXON & james HODGSON

April 17th – 18th lucy GIBSON

Charing X

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Taking a regular journey can send us into a confident lull. Have you
ever repeated a journey for the xth time and got there only to find yourself
baffled by your arrival, having no memory of the journey or which route
you took? The spaces in which we move can be so familiar that our
perception of our bodies size and movement within it are reduced.

Signage systems in the city strive to achieve such obedience as
produced in the regular journey. Yellow lines on the roads tell us not to stop,
lines painted on the floor of institutions guide us to our required
destination, tube maps isolate the real geography of the city and translate it into
a graphic definition, turnstile technology channels us accordingly.

My installations take the colours of the city’s guidance systems and
weave together spaces, impeding your movement through them, heightening
awareness of your body. Strongly based on a visual aesthetic as well as concept,
I wish to engage the audience and encourage them to explore the work. The
work addresses the physicality of the space and the body’s relationship to
its scale and geography.

At Charing Cross both pedestrians and motorists are faced with a
bombardment of instructions, traffic lights, road markings, bollards, sign posts.
Despite the complex nature of these city appendages we instantly know
what we are supposed to do, where we are being told to go and when to do it.

The construction is a web like weaving of yarns and threads, using the
columns and in situ elements of the space. I will only use the threads
themselves so that when the installation is removed no trace of its
existence will be seen.

April 19th  - 20th andy KNOWLES & mark MELVIN

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

This is friends Knowles and Melvin’s first collaboration.

Melvin’s work choreographs human action and gesture, exploring the
difference between the human and the mechanical. Predominantly
concerned with the idea of the work as process, often adopting repetitive,
cyclical and sequential structures to create photographic, video and performance
pieces, recent work has been greatly inspired by music, both classical
and contemporary.

Knowles’ previous public art works have been celebrated by their
audiences. The works range from the ordinary to the extraordinary, adopting the
language and signage of the spaces in which they are placed, and are
often sculptural yet comical in appearance. Knowles’ pre-requisite is to
always provide those who populate the public spaces with a gift, to do with
what they wish, and so the future of his public works are essentially in
their hands.

Being greatly familiar with each other’s work, Melvin and Knowles hope
to combine their very different methods of art making to create something
public, performative and comical to draw the passer-by to the activity
within the space.


April 22nd – 28th amy SALES & ruth LEGG

Wallpaper

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

"Once public and private spaces are distinguished from each other they can begin to play complementary roles in urban life; a well organized city needs both."
p.124 "City of bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn" William J. Mitchell

The home is a point of reference for the urban walker. It provides us a with a barometer for spatial awareness. The human scale of the home determines the way in which we react to our surroundings once we leave. To understand our daily interaction with the city it is useful to highlight the domestic language that exists in our lives.

Having a home gives us a sense of belonging and security. Transience, as found in hotels and hostels, leaves us exposed and without retreat. The visual language of the home is therefore of great importance to us and as it is an environment that is traditionally secure and reserved; invasion or exploration of this space evokes strong emotional reactions.

Curtains are part of this domestic shield, protecting our lives from the public view. Being both practical and aesthetic they invoke a strong impression of the personality of the owner. They also offer us a scale from which we can relate to the world around us. What happens if this scale is distorted? What if we re-place it with wallpaper?

'Wallpaper' concludes the exhibition 'Public / Private' at Mansions.

MANSIONS OFF LICENCE

The property also has a second windowed space further down St George’s
Road, amongst local shops. This space will be used simultaneously with the
main Café area.

April 8th – 14th esther WEIR aka irishface

emails

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

All my work is intensely personal. It mostly deals with my
relationships with my friends and family, and the issues that arise from making those
relationships public. The texts used in this work are the actual emails
I have sent to my four close friends, during the period of Friday 5th to
Friday 12th April 2002. Although we see each other two or three times a
year, email is our main source of correspondence, and I receive
approximately fifty emails a day from these four friends alone. The
replies I send are the closest thing I have to a diary.  By using the shop
window and display methods similar to billposters, I am exposing my private
conversations in a public forum. My love and eternal gratitude goes to
Cat, Dee, Annie and Sue, without whom none of this would have been possible.

April 15th – 21st dan MILLER

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

I have become increasingly interested in the idea of the audience
viewing the production of artworks. This has prompted me to propose a
reproductive based action within the context of the Mansions Cafe. Over the period
of a week I plan to produce a drawing/painting in the allotted window.  The
image will be reproduced on a larger scale from originals also placed in
public view. I will extract fragments from a variety of personal imagery and
reconstruct a narrative from the disparate elements. I wish the public
to view a human reproductive machine at work. Through viewing this
process, I wish to explore the heirachy of image production.  Also much of the
imagery may produce a feasible constructed history for the site. I want the
public to witness the build up of imagery and personal history within the
context of this temporal situation. My section of the Mansions Cafe will become
an image laboratory for the seven days of this exercise.

April 22nd – 28th  vicki FLECK