Living room art to live on after Switchspace

Published on Tuesday 7 December 2004 00:25

IN THE spring of 1998, artist Cathy Wilkes gave a lecture to final-year students at Glasgow School of Art, describing how she had opened a gallery in a spare room in her home. The lecture was an inspiration to two painting students, Sorcha Dallas and Marianne Greated, who went on to start their own project, Switchspace.

Launching Switchspace in the front room of Dallas’s West-End flat in February 1999, they expected it to last a matter of months. Instead, it lasted five years and helped transform Glasgow’s art scene. Dallas now has her own gallery in Glasgow’s Merchant City. Tomorrow, she and Greated will mark the end of an era when they open their final show in a flat in Dennistoun, displaying new work by Cathy Wilkes.

"It makes good sense that it’s a cyclical thing," says Dallas. "It started with her inspiration, and it’s great she’s completing it. We feel very privileged to be showing her work because she hasn’t done a show in Glasgow for a couple of years, she’s been really busy with international projects."

As they prepared to graduate, Dallas and Greated realised they were emerging into a city "saturated" with artists, but with few exhibition spaces, and fewer people prepared to take a risk on contemporary work. "There were really important spaces like Transmission within the city," says Dallas. "We saw there was a real need for other things to happen too, to support local artists. Hearing Cathy’s speech seemed like a real and instant solution. We loved her DIY attitude of just setting up something and getting it going."

When they planned a couple of exhibitions using Dallas’s living room as a gallery and invited other submissions, they were surprised by the range and standard of proposals they received. What had began as a response to a lack of exhibition space snowballed as artists, both emerging and experienced, saw it as an opportunity to show work in a new environment, a gallery which was not a "white cube".

After 15 shows in as many months, by artists including David Sherry, Mick Peters and Ilana Halperin, they brokered a deal with property agency Fab Flats which allowed them to show work in vacant properties in the East End. A varied programme included Sally Osborn, Beagles & Ramsay, Ian Balch and Beck’s Futures nominee Neil Bickerton, who installed video works and a dinosaur made of bubble gum. At the same time, Dallas and Greated were programming exhibitions of emerging work at the Offshore cafe-bar in Glasgow’s West End.

Switchspace was now registered as a charity, holding fundraising art sales to keep afloat. Though run on a shoestring, and propelled often by little more than Dallas and Greated’s determination, the organisation was becoming a recognised part of the city’s art scene. They showed work at the Arches as part of Real Art Weekend in 2002 and in the "extension" at Glasgow Art Fair the following year. In 2003, they were granted Scottish Arts Council funding to commission a year of shows, and publish a book about the programme. In 2002, they became involved in the Chateau, a run-down warehouse in Bridge Street which was being used as a rehearsal space by the band Franz Ferdinand. "Even to get it looking semi-derelict took a lot of money," she says. "We thought about putting money into it and setting up a studio space, but as a charity we felt it was too risky for us." But they curated an exhibition for the launch night, a gig by Franz Ferdinand which is now part of music history.

Switchspace’s success has inspired other artists to open exhibition spaces in their homes, from Aurora and Magnifitat in Edinburgh to Mary Mary in Glasgow. But despite the flourishing underground scene, most organisations are run on a shoestring, and artists struggle with a variety of part-time jobs. In starting her own gallery, Dallas saw the need to take the infrastructure to the next stage: putting artists in contact with collectors.

She says it’s a natural time to wind up Switchspace: "From the start we knew it was going to be a temporary thing. The fact that it’s kept going for as long as five years is longer than we expected. We’ve both grown and learned a lot through doing this. It has allowed us to work in a lot of different areas and become more focused on what we both want to do."

• Cathy Wilkes is at 116 Sword Street, Dennistoun, opening tomorrow, 6-9pm, then daily 1-5pm until 15 December. Artists’ talk 12 December, 3pm. Switchspace’s book launch and closing party is 16 December at Woodside Social Club. Tickets available from Sorcha Dallas Gallery, Glasgow.