Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow
Mitchell Miller
When city planners cast an eye on an area and bandy the words "urban renewal," "urban regeneration" or simply "development," alarm bells often ring among local artists. The small galleries, the workshops and studios are often the first casualties of sweeping residential and business developments.
For many years Glasgow’s King Street, tucked in the downtown area of its Merchant City, has fostered a busy community of visual artists working in print, film, paint and photography. With "redevelopment" planned for this area, one might wonder about the future of the city’s downtown arts facilities, such as Street Level Photoworks, which has occupied King Street for over ten years. A familiar focal point to the local scene, the gallery will be moving to temporary premises while it undergoes a comprehensive refit as part of the City Council’s Housing the Arts strategy. By 2007 Street Level will boast a larger exhibition space, a wider front onto the street, state of the art darkrooms and better teaching areas.
Which is why when gallery director Malcolm Dickson currently met me, we were surrounded by uncharacteristically bare, white walls. Amidst the usual preparations for Christmas, Street Level has getting ready to move across the street for nearly two years. It would be easy for such an interregnum to become a gap or a setback, but the gallery has no intention of losing its momentum.
Over the years Street Level has hosted exhibitions from some of the leading photographic and visual artists, such as Jo Spence, Dalziel + Scullion, Jim Harold, Claudine Hartzel, Antonio Rego and Ral Veroni. The photoworks of the gallery title are also interpreted in the most generous, and elastic of senses–from the Doppelgangers of Beverley Hood to the zoetropes of Kenny Bean.
Much of this success lies in the strength Street Level draws from its surroundings; the representation it gives to local artists, the frequent collaborations with the neighbouring Glasgow Print Studio and Media Access Centre. The gallery’s roots lie in the painful and transfigurative late 80s, when Tories ruled from Westminster, traditional industries were in advanced putrefaction and the Labour Party still had a militant wing (which makes it somewhat appropriate that the very last event in its old premises will feature readings from the radical poet and guerrilla linguist Tom Leonard).
Street Level was founded by the Glasgow Photography Group to meet the growing demands of photographer-artists to highlight photography as art and its emerging presence in the art world. Street Level created the space to exhibit, the dark rooms to develop and the premises to educate and train. Dickson is especially passionate about Street Level’s educational function, "the soul" of the entire operation. Radical roots are evident in initiatives such as "New Horizons" that involved refugees and asylum seekers, while Barriers created four interactive artworks with disabled adults.
Given the relationship between photography and ephemera, it seems entirely appropriate that Street Level should also turn its attention to the paraphernalia familiar to the gallery experience. The "minigraphs" that introduce major exhibits limit their word counts and set out to give just enough context to spark a debate on the material, breaking up the traditional catalogue into handsome four-sided card pamphlets. Distributed free of charge at the exhibition, the minigraphs confound the popular "commodity" that many catalogues have become and gives space to its pamphleteers to engage critically and independently with the works on display. Freed from the need to list and explain, there is renewed space to expand upon the artist’s themes. John Berger is one guest writer who takes the opportunity to unleash broadsides that while arguably, an indulgence at the artist’s (Peter Kennard) expense, makes their ideas the central "event" around which the actual exhibition orbits.
As Dickson explains, this move presents as many opportunities as difficulties. "The temporary premises will be used as an experimental space in which things can ‘happen,’ projects can be developed, ideas can take shape, as well as giving space for continuing education and outreach activities." The minigraphs will be reviewed and tweaked, and 2006 will continue to see new talent fostered. Mark Neville’s "The Jump" Film will open on April 19th, an innovative 16mm installation using a camera usually used in high speed car crash tests. As a result, the moving image appears static, yet is actually, slowly, surely moving on–a fitting keynote to Street Level’s new beginnings.
