26-29 April

For the next retreat as part of our Syllabus III programme, Studio Voltaire will host the group at Glasgow International. Please note that we have selected the artists for this year's Syllabus III programme.

Syllabus III artists Frederica Agbah, Chris Alton, Conor Baird, Ilker Cinarel, Phoebe Davies, Freya Dooley, Rose Gibbs, Jill McKnight, Ben Sanderson and Karis Upton are visiting Glasgow International for their fifth retreat, hosted by Studio Voltaire.

Thursday - Syllabus lead artist Jesse Darling will host 1:1 sessions for the group during the day. In the evening the group will attend a choice of events from the Glasgow International programme.

Friday - Jesse Darling and Glasgow International Director, Richard Parry, will introduce the group to the festival. In the afternoon, the group will attend an artist's talk from Jamie Crewe and will have time to visit exhibitions.

Saturday - Ellie Harrison and Ross Birrel will deliver workshops in the day. An evening communal dinner will coincide with a session of "youtube cinema" before the group attend Social Event curated by Love Unlimited.

Sunday - Practice Mapping delivered by Syllabus artist Chris Alton followed by a reflection on the weekend

Contributor Biographies

Ellie Harrison​ is an artist & activist based in Glasgow (UK). Her work takes a variety of forms: from installations and performance / events, to lectures, live broadcasts & political campaigns. Using an array of strategies, Harrison investigates, exposes and challenges the absurd consequences of our capitalist system: from over-consumption, inequality and alienation, to privatisation and climate change – and explores the impact free-market forces are having on our society, and our individual day-to-day lives. As well as making playful, politically-engaged work for galleries and public spaces, Harrison is also the founder and coordinator of the national Bring Back British Rail campaign – which strives to popularise the idea of re-nationalising our public transport system – and is the agent for The Artists’ Bond – a life-long speculative funding scheme for artists, now with 160 members across the UK. Since 2013, Harrison has been Lecturer in Contemporary Art Practices at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, she is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is engaged in an active critique of higher education.

Jamie Crewe​ is an artist, a singer, and a vicious changeling who lives in Glasgow. They graduated from Sheffield Hallam University in 2009 with a BA in Contemporary Fine Art, and from Glasgow School of Art in 2015 with a Master of Fine Art. They have presented two solo exhibitions — Female Executioner, Gasworks, London (2017), and But what was most awful was a girl who was singing Transmission, Glasgow (2016) — and have been involved in recent group exhibitions in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, and Vienna. Their book GLAIRE was published in 2017 by by Ma Bibliothéque, and they have presented their performance work Potash Lesson (2016) in Glasgow, London, Berlin and Belfast. Jamie is currently developing a new moving image work, commissioned by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, as well as working towards a solo exhibition at Tramway, Glasgow, for September 2018.

Mother Tongue (Tiffany Boyle) ​ is a research-led, independent curatorial practice working locally and internationally, formed in 2009 by Tiffany Boyle and Jessica Carden. They have since then collaboratively produced exhibitions, film programmes, discursive events, essays and publications, working with galleries, museums, archives, festivals and national organisations, primarily in Scotland and Sweden. Mother Tongue’s practice in exhibition-making intersects with research interests – including, but not limited to – post-colonialism, language, translation, heritage, race, indigenousness, migration, and movement. Mother Tongue are recent recipients of a grant from the Paul Mellon Centre, London, to undertake archive and collection research into the presence and exhibition histories of artists of colour in Scotland towards a future ‘AfroScots’ exhibition project. They have undertaken residencies in Scotland, Sweden, Finland and Barbados, and participated on the 2011/12 CuratorLab programme at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm. Commissioned by the British Council Scotland, Mother Tongue is a partner within the cohort for the inaugural Tilting Axis Fellowship, a one-year opportunity for a Caribbean-based practitioner to undertake across the region and in Scotland designed in collaboration with the CCA Glasgow, David Dale Gallery and Hospitalfield, as well as our Caribbean partners. Mother Tongue’s projects are frequently accompanied by writing, from ourselves and writer’s commissions, both critical and creative texts. These have been published in English and Gaelic, and translation has played a prominent role also – from Swedish and Portuguese - as examples into English. They have written foroutlets including MAP magazine and Africa is a Country, and published with Palgrave Macmillan.

Richard Parry ​is the current Director of Glasgow International, following his appointment in 2017. Previously Parry was Curator-Director of the Grundy Art Gallery between 2013 and 2017, where he curated and organised over 25 exhibitions. Following the group exhibition Sensory Systems (2015), Parry was awarded an Art Fund New Collecting Award and in 2016 curated NEON: The Charged Line, the largest exhibition of neon-based art yet staged in the UK.

Ross Birrell ​lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. Birrell employs a range of media including film, sculpture, installation, music, text, events and publications to produce works which interweave contexts of poetry, philosophy, politics, and place. He works both solo and collaboratively in gallery-based installations, site-specific projects, concerts and publications. Birrell’s ongoing Envoy project of site-specific actions across the globe, responds to traditions of radical politics and utopian literature and is published in An Envoy Reader (LemonMelon, London, 2014). Other works explore classical musical forms in personal, poetic and political contexts which often form the basis of recitals, films and audio installations, including: Duet (2013) a work for two violas performed by Palestinian and Israeli musicians; Sonata (2013) a composition for piano trio, performed in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, Rome; A Beautiful Living Thing (2015) performed in the Mackintosh building in the aftermath of the fire; and Fugue (2017), a work developed in collaboration with Syrian violinist and composer Ali Moraly for documenta 14.