The Opening Night

After so many hours of cutting and spraying it came to the point where I could do no more as the opening night of my solo show at The Arches was upon me. As well as a few older paintings featured in my Bristol show I created new paintings of my home city of Glasgow shown below.
There are more photos than text in this update for your viewing pleasure and I am in the process of making an edit of the build up and opening night so look out for that.


'Central Tracks'


'Paddy's Jeans'


'Through The Wire'


'Aston Lane'


'Escape on Church Street'


'Back Alley'



So Friday the 7th of March was the opening night and I was asked to hang the work first thing in the morning, getting up nice and early I headed off to get the van I rented for the day. The rain was not shy that day but I made it to The Arches to hook up with my friend Mike Amato of UpUp Design and the legend that is Rob Gunn who drove 100 miles to help out, thank you both so much for all your help.



The space.



The Arches is situated under the platform of Glasgow Central Station and has three of these tunnels acting as a club/gig space and below this area is a restaurant/cafe bar.
We unpacked the work and began to get an idea of where the work was going to hang and how which took the longest time especially figuring out how to support the weight of 'Central Tracks' but thankfully Rob has a good knowledge of knots.







Mike took most of these pics, the one below was a favourite of ours.







Not much light in in the space other than the spot lights for the paintings.



Rob showing his mad skills with knots.





Finally we got everything hung and cleared up with a couple of hours to spare, 'Central Tracks' was a tough one but we got there in the end.



I loved the way the paintings seemed to almost hover off the brick wall and as the venue is dark all the lights were focusing on the paintings. Perfect.













And then it was 6pm and the people just kept coming through the doors greeted with a whiskey.














The space became overflowing with bodies, finger foods and drinks, it really was a good opening night, an overwhelming night for me infact and I thank everyone who made it to the opening night. If you didn't make it the show is on until the 9th of April and I would like to thank Mike and Rob as well as Lj for all her help in making the show happen.