The Mackintosh Reimagined Festival was designed to give the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) community an opportunity to engage with the Mackintosh Building during its restoration.
The project builds on the work started in You Build on Mackintosh, an initiative started with the aim of highlighting the voices of students with regards to what should replace the damaged Mackintosh building and its destroyed library space, namely if it should be restored as it was, replaced by a modern. The Mackintosh Reimagined project began with an exhibition at the Glasgow School of Art Student Association, this exhibition can be viewed here. Mackintosh Reimagined was created in collaboration with Linnéa Rönnquist and Vojta Němec.
Workshops
The Mackintosh Reimagined Festival began with a series of three workshops aimed at engaging the GSA community and be the catalyst for a dialogue around the role the building played within the community, what its lost meant to students and the restoration of the damaged building. Each workshop aimed to stimulate new conversations and artworks by having students engage with the damaged remnants, its architectural elements and its memory.
The first workshop “Sculpting Mackintosh” focused on the materiality of the devastating fire through working with the charred remains of the building to create 3D artworks, participants in the workshop were encouraged to bring their own artistic practice into the artwork and to consider themes destruction, ruins and reconstruction.
The second workshop “Making and Drawing Mackintosh” turned its attention to the repurposing of the the damaged pieces of the building, this was channeled through a process of deconstruction, processing and remaking the wood into paper artworks. This was done in collaboration with Alison Newman at PULP studio.
The Final Workshop Tara Marshal-Tierney was commissioned to create a performative artwork along with a group of students, this resulted in a performative guided tour for the opening of the exhibition inside the ruins of the Mackintosh Building. This performance focused on the memories
Exhibition and Tours
On June 14th 2016 the public was invited to view the exhibition installed within the fired damaged main gallery space and be taken on a tour of the damaged of the interior of the building.
Two unique tours were offered to the public. Reimagined Tour was led by collaborators Linnéa Rönnquist and Vojta Němec, and offered an architectural perspective of the building and examined the lasting impact of the fire on the community. Performing Mackintosh which offered the chance for visitors to explore the building’s spaces whilst taking part in a performance exploring old memories from students and events from the building’s storied history.
Legacy
Since the completion of this project a second, more devastating fire ravaged the Mackintosh Building. The Mackintosh building remains in a state of ruin and its future is unclear. This project remains one of the few interactions between the student community and the Mackintosh building.
Articles
RIAS Quarterly Autumn 2016 Issue 27
Images by:
Lucas Ferguson-Sharp, Emma Hislop, Digital Design Studio GSA, Daily Mail and Gerald Blaikie.