Role: organising committee member
A two-day interdisciplinary conference examining the nature, value and legacy of Alasdair Gray's artistic output, considering his literary work and his visual practice, and the relationship between the two in Gray's oeuvre. The conference is entitled "Making Imagined Objects" in tribute to Gray's own repeated and modest claim that he was a "maker of imagined objects".
Keynotes from Ali Smith and Jenny Brownrigg
The first of the three objectives of the conference is to explore, interrogate, and hopefully rebalance the nature, value, legacy and reception of Alasdair Gray's prodigious output across visual art and literature in its many various forms, after decades of analysis of the literary art dominating that of the visual. Sometimes this will mean analysing the literature or visual practice independently of one another - though at other times it will mean considering the two in conversation with each other, as they often appear in Gray's murals, portraits, stories, landscapes, non-fiction and illustrations.
Another objective is to bring folk from around the world with an interest in Alasdair Gray Studies together in the home city of the artist. With murals across the city, so many portraits and landscapes portraying its people and places, also with a great deal of his literary objects concerned with Glasgow itself, Gray has become an integral part of the Glaswegian culture and political landscape. For that reason, we wish to bring together those interested in Gray's work in the place he has made his subject since the late 1940s. Ideally, the conference will be a meeting point between people working on different forms. We believe this coming together will bring a change in perspective in contrast to looking at Gray's work through the prism of separate disciplines.
Finally, we also aim to use Gray's artistic approach - that of making imagined objects across space and form, often integrating word and picture - as a model to inspire the writers and artists of the future in Scotland and beyond. An avowed recycler of both his own works and those of others, Gray's greatest creations were often a creative response to existing works by others. He never shied away from declaring those influences. And he believed that great new works are nearly always made out of old.
Our plan is to gather the proceedings of the conference in Making Imagined Objects, a planned book of critical, creative, and personal responses to Alasdair Gray's work, that would present the diverse findings, insights and artwork - both academic and creative - resulting from the conference and honour the Alasdair Gray's legacy in fresh, imaginative ways.
Produced by University of Strathclyde and the Alasdair Gray Archive, in partnership with the Glasgow School of Art, the University of Western Brittany (HCTI), Aix-Marseille Universite (LERMA), Edge Hill University, the University of Lausanne with support from The Tannahill Fund for the Furtherance of Scottish Literature.
