Wasps has been shortlisted for two awards given by Glasgow City Council and the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce this year, with the winners being announced at a black-tie event this October. It’s an honour for Wasps to be named amongst the best of businesses in the city, and we thank everyone who voted for us and the Chamber of Commerce for the recognition.

Wasps was first shortlisted for the Community Wealth Building Award alongside two other businesses (Kibble and Pest Solutions), before receiving the news that we’d been shortlisted for the prestigious Glasgow’s Favourite Business Award. Our commitment to protecting artistic jobs and providing affordable dedicated studios and offices through the pandemic has been commended, as well as our mission to reclaim historically significant buildings across Scotland and refurbish them into thriving cultural spaces. This particular nomination is momentous because it’s governed by a public vote, so we thank everyone who voted for us.

From CEO Audrey Carlin on the nomination: “It’s about keeping talent in Scotland and allowing people to have sustainable creative careers. Wasps has been around for 45 years and we’ve supported a whole creative community for that length of time in four buildings across Glasgow, with probably about 500 creative people. So it’s fantastic to have ourselves and our creative community recognised as being a favourite business.”

To vote for us to win the award for Glasgow’s Favourite Business, click here and select us to win before Thursday 15 September at 5pm.

Good luck to our fellow nominees; Glasgow Science Centre, Silverburn, Sprigg, Glasgow Central Hotel and Marshall Travel Ltd. See you in October!

Painter and West Park Place tenant Carolyn Burchell is set to open an exhibition of new work under the title In Nature at the Kirkcudbright landmark, the Tolbooth. Visit the exhibition at the Kirkcudbright Tolbooth Art Centre, 14 September–1 October.

In Nature is an exhibition of paintings mainly in acrylic which includes small and miniature wood panels of nature in close-up of leaves, fungi, flora and bees displayed in a glass case. The work has evolved from visits to parks, gardens and wooded areas throughout Scotland, many in Edinburgh, where Carolyn often draws in sketchbooks. The artist aims to capture fleeting movement, pattern, light and shadow, with colour and composition of key importance. She is attracted to mysterious corners and slightly overgrown pathways, suggesting an element of fantasy.

Carolyn Burchell was born in Edinburgh where she has rented a studio at the Wasps location in Dalry since 1996. She studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1980s to post-graduate level and from 2009-10 at Glasgow School of Art for a Master of Research.

a shade is a shade by writer Sara O’Brien is now available for you to pick up from the current Briggait exhibition Chronochromia by Lynsey MacKenzie, which is open until Friday 2 September.

Sara was commissioned by Wasps to write a piece of text on the occasion of Chronochromia‘s opening. The brief for the style of writing was kept open, and Sara created a beautiful work of art writing located in Lynsey’s paintings. Sara visited Lynsey in her studio to speak about the influence of time and colour on her practice, and meditated on the body of paintings that make up the show before writing a shade is a shade. The text finds inspiration in the planes of Lynsey’s work, and complements the exhibition’s expanses of colour and cadence.

Umbers, oranges, indigos, akin to the cloak they watch drift above them, cycling through chromatic flutterings, while they ponder the dual proximities of space. – Sara O’Brien

Read the text below, or pick up a copy from The Briggait galleries while Chronochromia is open. The printed version is on a peach-pink paper – a choice of the writer’s that was influenced by the historical significance of this particular colour; it is estimated to be the oldest (around one billion years old) pigment found by archaeologists digging beneath the Sahara Desert.

Sara O’Brien is a writer based between Dublin and Glasgow.

Lynsey MacKenzie lives and works in Glasgow and graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2019 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking. Recent exhibitions include ‘Platform: 2022’, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh (2022), ‘UNMUTE’, Society of Scottish Artists, Dunoon (2022), ‘Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition’, Online (2022); ‘REVERB’, Visual Arts Scotland, Online (2022). Recent awards include the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award, the RSA Latimer Award, and the RSA x Wasps Award.

On the occasion of her exhibition Chronochromia opening at Glasgow’s The Briggait, we spoke with Lynsey MacKenzie about her studio practice, what advice she’d give to aspiring artists, and what books or music she’s drawn to lately.

Lynsey, who is also a Wasps tenant, was given the opportunity to exhibit at The Briggait after winning the 2021 Royal Scottish Academy x Wasps Award in February last year. Wasps’ selectors were drawn to Lynsey’s play with scale in her paintings, and chose her for her experimental processes with a traditional medium.

Lynsey MacKenzie presents a body of new paintings for Chronochromia which explore ideas of time, repetition and memory through shifting planes of colour, gesture, and scale. Engaging with the materiality and physicality of paintings as objects, she works intuitively, driven by colour and composition. Feelings of spaces in flux permeate the work, at once moving and static. The labour time contained within the paintings unfolds upon viewing, encouraging pause, and a slowing down of our increasingly hyperactive contemporary gaze.

From Lynsey: I’m delighted to be presenting a new body of work for Chronochromia as a result of receiving the RSA Wasps Award. In the works, I am interested in the play between paintings as surfaces and as spaces, exploring memories and working intuitively.

Glasgow-based writer Sara O’Brien has been commissioned by Wasps to write a piece about Chronochromia and Lynsey’s practice. The text will be available for visitors to pick up at the exhibition and to read online from Thursday 18 August.

Don’t miss Chronochromia at The Briggait; opening hours are Thursday 11 August–Friday 2 September, 9:30am–5:30pm or by appointment. You can also see Lynsey’s work as part of the Platform: 2022 group show at Edinburgh Art Festival until Sunday 28 August at the French Institute for Scotland, West Parliament Square.

Lynsey MacKenzie lives and works in Glasgow and graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2019 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking. Recent exhibitions include Platform: 2022, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh (2022), UNMUTE, Society of Scottish Artists, Dunoon (2022), Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition, Online (2022); REVERB, Visual Arts Scotland, Online (2022); Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2021); RE:CONNECT, Society of Scottish Artists, Online (2021); Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition, Online (2021); Interactions of Colour, Royal Glasgow Institute, Online (2021); New Contemporaries, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2020); and HERE AND NOW, SaltSpace Gallery, Glasgow (2020). Recent awards include the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award, the RSA Latimer Award, and the RSA x Wasps Award.

This month we’re putting the spotlight on our studios located in Stromness, Orkney. Opened in October 2016, the former public library is now home to five artist studios as well as the Soulisquoy Printmakers Collective. A stone’s throw from the Pier Arts Centre, the building is situated in the historic town centre close by the Stromness Museum.

Orcadian artist Brandon Logan is a current tenant, having returned to his hometown after studying at Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh. His recent work is made through a distinctive painting process which developed from a desire to work on a surface more permeable and mutable than a traditional canvas. This technique involves the flooding, sealing and fusing of warps of string using the gradual application of layers of paint, resulting in works with an open, fretted structure and an innate delicacy. Watch this film below documenting Brandon making work in his Stromness studio (courtesy of Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh).

Founded in 1982, the Soulisquoy Printmakers Collective are long-term tenants at Stromness Studios. As a group, including tenant rep Carol Dunbar and Stromness-born Nick Gordon, they have established printmaking facilities for the surrounding community as well as a series of workshops and classes on relief print, intaglio, screenprinting and monoprinting techniques. Their studio benefits from lots of natural light that comes through the original windows. They have a restored Columbian press and an etching press. Soulisquoy is dedicated to creating access to printmaking for all, including young people through community outreach projects and workshops.

Tenant Kerrianne Flett is an artist based in Harray, Orkney. Originally trained as a jeweller, Kerrianne now occupies a space at Stromness Studios where she makes beautiful ceramic designs that are often inspired by her Orcadian surroundings.

Are you interested in finding out more about Stromness Studios and maybe arranging a visit? Click here for information about the currently available spaces, or contact us on lettings@waspsstudios.org.uk.