Tongs ya Bass

6th March to 3rd April 2004
Private View, Friday 5th March, 6pm

Duncan Campbell, Katy Dove, Charlie Hammond, Darren Marshall, Gary Rough, Clare Stephenson, Stephen Sutcliff

The Ship presents 7 new artists who have lived and studied in Glasgow over the last few years.
Scouring the landscape from coast to coast, country to country, over the past freezing winter The Ship’s diligent search found these 7 artists, who only by chance happened to be in one place.
Despite Glasgow’s cool ubiquity we did not shy away in disgust at our trend-following curatorial techniques. We declared that the art shall rise above petty debates concerning age, nationality and style, and that the art shall grace the green floorboards of Shadwell.
Located in a pub well known as a former BNP meeting place and now attracting a healthy crowd of local teenage gangs, The Ship is au fait with various aspects of gang culture. Artists’ studios and new spaces are often forced to reside in the less-than-desirable areas of London; we were therefore relieved to find that, judging by our visit to Glasgow, among other cities, this appears to be a global trend, gangs and cold temperatures included. So in this spirit of global community and the new friendship with our Scottish cousins, we have named the show Tongs Ya Bass, Glaswegian gang slang normally scrawled on the combatants’ walls, which, roughly translated, means …We’ll get you, you bastards…
With special thanks to the Transmission Gallery and Zenomap, Glasgow.