Transmission Gallery

How many other art galleries in the world get frequently namechecked on mainstream radio and music television, and in movie and video game soundtracks? The Transmission Gallery’s mention in a lyric to the 2005 hit song ‘Do You Want To’ by Glasgow rock band Franz Ferdinand (‘here we are at the Transmission party / I love your friends they’re all so arty’) says a lot about its historically hip standing in the local art scene since opening in 1983.

It was a bunch of graduates from the world famous Glasgow School of Art who, frustrated by the perceived lack of opportunities available to new young artists to showcase their work in the city at that time, took over this old property on the corner of the Tron Gate and King Street in the Merchant City. Then an unfashionable and slightly dodgy locale, Transmission proved one of the pioneers for the area’s transformation into the creative quarter it is today, full of trendy bars, music venues, restaurants, cafés, shops and several other galleries and artist spaces, including Street Level Photoworks and The Modern Institute.

The list of names to have sat on the gallery’s voluntary committee over more than three decades now reads like a who’s who of the last 30 years of the Glasgow contemporary art scene – Scott Paterson, Christine Borland, Douglas Gordon, Martin Boyce, Simon Starling, Eva Rothschild, Toby Paterson, and many more. Which is to say nothing of the artists from around the world who have shown in the gallery and formed part of the wider artistic dialogue it catalyses, in cooperation with similar organisations such as City Racing in London and Artemisia in Chicago and fellow collectives directly inspired by Transmission, including Catalyst in Belfast and Generator in Dundee.