Interview: Project Ability on Bringing James Gladwell’s Dream-Inspired Art to Glasgow

Project Ability – Scotland’s foremost visual arts company for people with learning disabilities and mental ill health – will host Romany Gypsy artist James Gladwell’s intricate and colourful cross-stitch drawings at their exhibition space at Trongate 103.

We speak to exhibition coordinator and visual artist Heather Lander about the exhibition and the recent positive news about Trongate 103.

Firstly, can you tell us a bit about James Gladwell?

James lives and works at a place called Barrington Farm [Norfolk]. It sounds like he was one of the first artists to define Barrington Farm and start working there. We haven’t known him for very long.

We saw his work at an exhibition in Nottingham called Kaleidoscopic Realms, and one of Project Ability’s artists was also in the exhibition, which was why we went to see the show. We’d known of Barrington Farm for quite a long time – we just didn’t know James. Our artistic director, Elisabeth Gibson, met him in Nottingham.

His heritage is Romany Gypsy, and his family connections got him into his art?

James was born into a Romany Gypsy family. For us it’s exciting that he self-identifies as being part of the community. He learned most of his stitch work from his grandmother, doing cross-stitch on whatever materials were around.

He wouldn’t think of getting a brand-new bit of cotton to start working on. It was much more interesting to use bits that already have some history, a bit of age.

Do you hope to attract the Romany Gypsy community into the exhibition?

Or at least make sure that all these places are aware that we’ve got this interesting artist in the gallery. In Glasgow we’ve got quite a big community, especially on the southside, and that’s something we’re quite keen to try and tap into.

If we can highlight that we have some textile art by an artist from England who identifies as being from the community, that could get some people in who have never been in before. That is what we’re about, introducing new people to art, to disability art. The more people we get in, the better.

James has quite an unusual inspiration for his work?

He gets most of his inspiration from his dreams, which he then puts onto paper. From past interviews it sounds like he has a lot of dreams! He’ll wake up in the morning and immediately draw down his translation of his dream to then make into a stitch work, or use that imagery in some sort of cross-stitch composition later. That’s a big part of his life, his dreams.

The exhibition is part of Glasgow International?

Glasgow International is a big arts festival for Glasgow. It’s one exhibition every two years where we don’t need to worry about how many people are going to come. It’s so great to platform an artist during the festival, because we know that they will get loads of new audiences in to see their work. It’s marketed well across the city, as an accessible, open, welcoming festival.

I think people who don’t go to art galleries are a bit nervous that they’re going to do or say something wrong. As long as you don’t break anything, there’s not a whole lot you can do wrong! Once you’ve been in one and you get the vibe, it’s easy to walk through the door any time.

Project Ability is not just for the Glasgow International, though.

We run a full year of exhibitions, with new exhibitions every seven weeks – about seven exhibitions a year with new artists, new work, new stories. We hope that most people who like the gallery would come in to see every exhibition: a lot of people do, and every exhibition hopefully brings in a few new people from whatever walk of life.

Most of the exhibitions in the gallery will be showing work by artists that work at Project Ability, and the majority of the work that ends up in the gallery has been made in our studios; however, we open up exhibitions to external callouts.

Once or twice a year, we have a full open call – any artist working anywhere can submit. You don’t need to have a disability. We do try to mix it up, and at least once a year, we’ll invite an outside organisation to come exhibit with us, which is the exhibition we have on right now – the Neuk Collective. We invited them to come and do a gallery takeover.

Your exhibition is in the hugely important Trongate 103, which has been in the news lately. Have things settled since then?

It’s such an important building. It’s the printmaking hub, the photography hub, the disabled arts hub, and it used to be the film hub. [GMAC has now moved out]. Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre is one of a kind: a gorgeous kinetic art museum.

Hundreds of artists use these facilities. We’ve got over 200 artists through our doors every week. There’s still going to be meetings, but it sounds more positive than it did a month ago. They’ve invited everybody back around the table, said they want to try and make it work, and that they’re going to try and move us out of the commercial portfolio. They’re making all the right noises.

But it was a hugely unsettling time for the community?

It’s the artists, their parents, their support staff, and their support agency; it affects multiple people in that chain, from that one disabled artist. We’ve got to a point now where most of the artists are not talking about it every day, all the time, which is good.

The 11th edition of the free and open to all Glasgow International runs across the city from 5th till 21st June

Images by James Gladwell