Glasgow School of Art‘s Postgraduate Degree Show is open to the public until 7th Sept, and artists on the MLitt Fine Art Practice programme are exhibiting their final work, in the School’s Stow building. The show features an impressive range of work, and we’re highlighting just a few of the pieces here. The works of the 55 artists are available to view digitally on the School’s website.
One of the most notable works is by Alan Brash. His oil on canvas paintings, presented in multiple dimensions and hanging unframed on the wall, strike a calming tone, and carry the comfort of simply existing as who we are.
As a ‘figurative abstract impressionist painter’, Brash explores queer identity, from a deeply personal point of view. Growing up in the ‘70s and ’80s as a gay man, he explains, ‘often meant navigating a double life. I respond to the societal and political pressures of that era.’ Painting, he says, allows him to examine internalised shame and to let it go: ‘It’s an act of reclamation – of self, of story, and of space.’
He reflects these emotions not only through loose brushstrokes and colour choices, but also through the spaces he paints, capturing moments of both resilience and vulnerability. ‘The figures are frequently caught in moments of stillness – nude or semi-dressed, alone or in intimate domestic settings – evoking both presence and absence.’
The small paintings of details create a sense of intimacy, sparking curiosity about the bodies, giving viewer the urge to explore.
He allows us to see his brushstrokes just as he allows us to witness vulnerability and resilience – the most intimate and simple moments in life, when we are confronted with who we are – deliberately inviting us into his world and into the body. The use of pink and blue gives a sense of transparency to the flesh, letting us inhabit those bodies and experience the comfort of being as they are. Otherwise, how would we feel such ease and comfort at first encounter, without even carefully examining the paintings? It is the beauty of not showing off, both in the works themselves and in the quiet, honest scenes he creates.
As an artist working across drawing, painting, printmaking, environmental art and landscape design Felicity Steers aims to understand the place and our relationship to the world.
She paints with gradual abstraction, from a realistic landscape into something dreamlike. The work invites the viewer to spend time with the painting, witnessing the layers present, both in landscape and in emotion. Details are almost hidden beneath the brushstrokes. It is not something just to look at, but something to feel.
Velvet Breath by Chinese Artist Yuchen Zhang is based on her experience of anxiety. She recorded the unconscious repetitive actions during anxious moments such as biting her nails, recording the friction of her fingers. With a background of ‘comprehensive material painting, fibre materials, glass art for contemporary art creation’, she made wool tactile with repetitive movements like a soft breat, easing the anxiety. She also uses iron wire to mimic the boundaries of the human body. She has perfectly conveyed the sensation of encountering and walking around something highly fragile, especially with the white crystals she has placed on the floor around the artworks, and walking around the works it’s as if you’re in between reality and illusion, not even certain if she positioned the crystals herself, or someone else has accidentally crossed the boundary.
Hannah Gibson’s work strikes with its primitive, geometrical shapes and natural tones that resemble soil and stones. She invites you to come closer to see the layering of materials and the frames, which evoke a sense of construction and deconstruction, adding depth to her narrative. Her practice is based on painting, drawing, and usage of transparent textiles.
She explores the possibilities of the materials and the process of building an environment. She draws her inspiration from archaeology, where materials are fragile and responsive, treating the environment she works on not as a passive space, but as a responsive medium with a character. She is interested in the independent responses from the materials she uses.
‘My Body My Land’ is an installation by visual artist Liúsaidh Ashley Watt, consisting of consists of films, sound works, sculpture, photography, ceramics and texts. Standing between five stones and three screens, you listen to a calming text that invites you to turn inward to your body, almost feeling the wind and rain that shaped the stones, and the cultural identity shaped by nature.
Raised in Shetland, Ashley Watt has a deep connection with nature and culture, and invites us into an experience of a ritual, surrendering your body to nature. She explains, ‘Stepping into the centre, my audience is transported into the landscape with me. Bracing the winds and rain, welcoming all the elements that shape the land.’
Resembling the human body, the stones are made from wood, wire, plaster, sand, and matte vinyl photographic prints.
Sam Torbett–Schofield is a multi-disciplinary artist working with installation, photography, moving image, and sound. The moment you step into the installation area, it transports you to another world. The central sculpture is a circular loom, constructed from wood, steel, yarn, and jute fabric. A basin of water sits at the top, inviting visitors to move their hands through it. Sam encourages us to become collaborators in his artwork by gently touching the water and watching the reflections of lyrical movement on the wall, while a raw and spiritual song from the Rocks and Waves Song Circle accompanies you on your journey.
As It Was is a series by Saudi Arabian artist Jude Zahid, whose work is triggered by Arabic proverbs which, in her words, ‘traditionally carry absurd surface meanings yet conceal deeper truths about human life.’ In her paintings, quiet yet powerful meanings lie within everyday moments that play upon our memories, even the ones we don’t remember or reflect on until we encounter them on canvas. The simplicity of the paintings allows the viewer to focus on their own memories. Why would a detergent box invade an empty flat with its bubbles? Why would a simple baby toy fill the room? Why has she painted a crystal chandelier? Why would she use a giant cleaning spray? Every detail takes us back to the places where our roots lie.
These memories form our personalities, though they remain quiet and interwoven into daily life. Each piece moves gently through light, texture, and space, capturing scenes that feel familiar.
Collage, gouache, and mixed media, the materials she uses, allow her to mimic these layers of thought and imagination on the canvas, with her material choices contributing to the narrative. Her paintings are rooted in private spaces, yet they invite us to reconsider how cultural memory and collective understanding are formed.
Shivani Patel uses braids, with symbolic and deeper meaning: they serve as a way of showing how women in South Asian families are connected across generations. It’s also as a way of reflecting what it means to belong to a society. And what it feels like to be without it. Her work Where We Lay Our Roots explores ‘diaspora, dual identity, place, belonging and tradition. It’s a body of work that offers a way of seeing ourselves from a deeply personal yet political perspective.
Patel’s parents came to Scotland from South Asia, seeking a better life – but immigration is never a one-way journey. Another begins when you live a dual life, carrying a culture that exists in your DNA, like food, colours, and traditions. She chooses to carry all of those in the fabrics she uses.
Shivani doesn’t just let you see her work; she invites you into a cohesive experience through scent, vivid colours, rich textures, and repetitive patterns. In the centrepiece, What the Hands Remember, she even incorporates a braid-like pattern in the interactive sculptural piece.
What’s the mortar that holds us together? Victor Garel’s paintings stand as the opposite of this question, drawing our attention to the cracks in the mortar. They picture the pain and joy of coexisting in imaginary spaces that could yet be real – on a ship, in a garden… They frame an order in a chaos that results from being driven by inner urgencies. The use of unrelated objects like guns, knifes, teapots, ties, a toy rabbit, reminds the viewer of everyday life’s absurdities.
Thank you to Omur Sahin Keyif (Insta: @theartsreporter) for this review.
