| Gallacher and Warren: Nothing Fades Quicker Than Yesterday's Ideas About Tomorrow' is an exhibition of new works that explore current trends in the revitalisation of urban landscapes and intentionally blurs distinctions between sculpture and architecture. Many of the works primarily respond to a dilapidated area of Glasgow that was the proposed location for a prestigious department store, intended as the jewel in the Merchant City's regeneration crown. As these plans never materialised, the site remains vacant, existing within the city's psyche as a place of suspended potential. Borrowing the aesthetics of architectural display, within this multidisciplinary exhibition G & W have utilised various tawdry materials to create crudely produced tongue-in-cheek 'proposals' for alternative uses. These hypothetical colossal structures take reference from ancient monuments, shopping centres, public art, civic architecture and poorly implemented utopian aspirations. The works are heavily influenced by fashionable vernaculars of 'regenerative architecture' that are played out across many post-industrial cities. As the exhibition suggests, G&W are concerned with the longevity of such projects that often employ the construction of glimmering monuments to 'progress' vomited across the cityscape, ignorant of history and locality. The exhibition simultaneously critiques and celebrates these naive visions of a futuristic cityscape through playful exploration of structure and material, paying homage to current trends in contemporary sculptural practice. |
