CREATE x YOUR x CULTURE
The World Tree Carving Club
The World Tree Carving Club is a monthly gathering where we teach and learn to carve beautiful objects from the Ash trees of our local parks that are currently being felled as a result of the Ash Dieback epidemic that has swept through Europe over the last twenty years.
As well as providing the prime raw material to learn green woodworking skills, the tree trunks are processed into a manageable resource that can be used by many other community groups and woodworkers in the Southside of Glasgow. The carcass of the trees are diced up and sold as firewood and the planks can be offered at a competitive price to local makers to help sustain the activities of both ARC Independent and The Bowling Green.
Our vision is to create a tangible example of how we can collectively engage with the changes that are happening in our environment in a positive and sustainable way that actively connects us to our wider bio-region, the local land on which we live, and one another.
This project is kindly supported by Creative Scotland and The Bowling Green @ Pollokshields
How can we create a meaningful culture that nourishes and connects us to one another in an age dominated by machine metaphors, Big Tech and a toxic Social Media environment?
Our ethos is to support one another in the development of creative skills, knowledge and connections for the benefit of all involved. Combining a collaborative environment with independent artistic and creative freedom means we can engage and mutually benefit the wider collective, both local and global.
METAPHOR - - - Culture as a Tool – An External Projection of the Human Psyche.
ACTION - - - Creative social events, Workshops providing people with basic knowledge and skills to enable them to create both functional and aesthetic objects, Access to basic tools, Discussions around what art and culture is and how we can exercise some influence over our cultural and physical environment, Educational engagement centred around environmental awareness and connectedness.
REASON - - - To question the wider culture we find ourselves embedded within right now. To cultivate deeper connections using the DIY aesthetic that Glasgow is renowned for. Also to help us channel some of that Pictish, guerilla style, community spirit.
ARC Independent SOCIAL CLUB
We run an experimental Social Club once a month with our neighbour McNeills, held on the last Friday of every month. This is an evolving space that brings people together and encourages informal discussion centred around creative practice and how this connects us with the wider culture and environment we are all embedded within.
Music is central to the space as both a communal activity and a direct way to collectively release some energy. Through this space we attempt to create the conditions for the emergence of an as yet unformed larger cultural programme that can begin to tackle the prevailing societal mindset that places debt based market economics above every other aspect of being. This may be a bit ambitious and driven by wishful thinking for what is essentially a boozer in the Southside of Glasgow, but we'll give it a go and see if we can plant some seeds that talk of symbioses, collaboration, relationship, reciprocity and the mesmeric power of our technology now making the human species a major geophysical, and potentially cataclysmic, event.
COP26
ARC Independent engaged with the Minga Indigena during their time in Glasgow to help amplify and connect with the knowledge and wisdom from the indiginous leaders of the global South. These elders and younger spokes people, who are at the forefront of a system that oppresses indigenous rights to land across the globe, were based in the Southside of Glasgow throughout COP26 and were especially keen to communicate their message of struggle for the rights to their ancestral lands with the local people of Glasgow.
If you can volunteer some time or space to help make their long journey worthwhile please contact them through their website https://www.mingaindigena.org/volunteers-at-cop26
2019
Síbín, a supportive environment for critical conversations responding to artists work in progress.
Each month we shift focus to a different medium/artform. The five lunar months between each Equinox make up one cycle of Síbín, rhythmically aligning to the rotation of the planet and punctuated by each Solstice. This cycle is then repeated, in a different order and with slight changes in iteration.
Síbín starts low-key and will grow organically, eventually connecting out beyond the walls of Torrisdale Street studios. The intention being to encourage an artistic community to come together and discuss their practice with a critical approach.
From 6pm there will be four artists showing speculative work in progress. Each piece is given a maximum of ten minutes followed by a fifteen minute critical feedback/discussion with the group. From 8pm the evening moves on to a social with music and drinks to fuel informal discussion and more intimate conversations till midnight.
Síbín is inclusive, everyone is welcome. (Síbín is pronounced Sheebeen)
ARC Independent registered CIC No. 569812
Describe your image
2018
ARC Independent presents Cleave, a group exhibition of six artists installed across three arches in Laurieston, Glasgow. Programmed as part of the Glasgow International 2018.
To cleave; meaning both to split and to adhere to, embodies both acts of divergence and convergence. It begins as a concept split along natural lines of being, an invitation to reimagine the distances between binaries: internal/external; earth/space; body/technology; feminine/masculine; near/far; native/other. Taking over three of the Laurieston arches, six artists working across sound, sculpture, video, painting, photography and performance will be paired, reacting to one another’s work and creating moments of intersection across the various mediums to establish an expression of commonality.
Exhibiting Artists:
Sofia Alsbo
Maria de Lima
Craig Dow
Timo Kube
Ines Rebelo
Francis Thorburn
Preview: 20th April 6 – 9pm
Performance: Francis Thorburn, 20th April at 6pm
Exhibition: 21st April – 7th May, Wed – Sun 12 - 5pm; Laurieston Arches, G5