Ghost Art School is a growing undefined entity which was initiated by conversations with BA, MA, PhD students and graduates across Fine Art faculties at Glasgow School of Art, Slade School of Fine Art and John Moores, Liverpool School of Art & Design. The organisation and community exists to haunt art schools. The caretaker of Ghost Art School is UK-based artist and curator Rory Macbeth. A range of projects, events, exhibitions and exchanges are documented below:
The End of Glory
The exhibition, The End of Glory, was assembled by graduates and current Foundation and BA students at BHSAD. They worked remotely with Ghost Art School artists in a similar way that a medium works with a spirit. They have had to concern themselves with the translation of a message [the artwork] from a being [the artist] and manifesting it [the display] to an audience.
From a distance they fabricated, realised and curated artworks for artists of Ghost Art School (none of whom were present). This began to develop important skills in exhibition production. From sourcing materials to communicating and collaborating with artists internationally; installing and hanging artwork to formulating curatorial decisions; having strict instructions to total freedom; fabricating new pieces, to giving the exhibition a title.
In the exhibition, the artist Cos Ahmet & Gary Finnegan collaborated on creating a performance video called ‘ Pull The Other One’ (2024). The origins for ‘Pull The Other One’,stem from an idiom or saying, that usually presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase in question. In the case of the duo’s work however, this saying retains the phrase's literal meaning - what the phrase translates as. As a consequence, the short film shows two figures literally being pulled by the other around a large space on an office chair
Dressed head to toe in white coverall’s and masks, the protagonists are anonymised from identifying particular details, together with being pulled, has turned this phrase into absurd actions.
Preserving this anonymity, forces these figures to be viewed more as objects, and references the ‘Theatre of The Absurd’, where the figures play out this strange tableaux of meaningless actions - its repetitive nature, pays homage to works such as ‘Quad’ by Samuel Beckett, and reiterates the Theatre’s ideas surrounding existentialism, expressing what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose.
The exhibition includes artworks by The Ghost Art School artists:
Cos Ahmet / Ritu Arya / Leo Bailie / Hannah Browne / Henry Burns / Anna Candlin / Jasmir Creed / Jess Crowe / Tom Doubtfire / Jon Edgley / Gary Finnegan / Lucia Lernyei / Halyna Maystrenko-Grant / Theodora McClellan / Robert McCormack / Jordan McCrae / Zander Mckenzie / Ursi McIlwain / Matthew Merrick / Molly Mousedell / Karema Munassar / Rose Reekie / Karin Ruggaber / Liam Scully / Anna Shankie / Yolanda Sneddon
With thanks to the mediums at BHSAD:
Yarik Antipin / Renata Basyrova / Yana Besova / Sonya Fatina / Mila Gerasimova / Ruslana Kuksova / Katya Makunina, Nastya Nikiforova / Alena Povetkina / Olya Samokhina / Nadia Satkova / Nadya Vasilieva / Maria Vaulina / Polina Vazhenina / Anjelika Vertkova / Valeria Voevodina / Martha Voronina / Vasilisa Yachanova / Sonya Yun
Images: Installation and detail views of ‘Pull The Other One’, excerpt of single channel film, 03:45 mins, performers, rope, chair, white coverall suits, masks — a collaborative video work by Cos Ahmet & Gary Finnegan featured in The End Glory, co-curated by Rory Macbeth & Doug Bowen, blip blip blip Gallery, Winzavod Contemporary Centre for Art, Moscow, Russia.
The Dazzling Edge of Darkness
Aiming to be a speculative and unfolding process, adopting the idea of a sculpture park, and involved taking over laboratories, the library, gardens, grounds and parts of the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory building temporarily as sites for a series of sculptural interventions and experiments. Within this format, the exhibition makes reference to aspects of public art, exhibition making and how things translate into external, natural or landscaped environments. The exhibition aimed to open up an imaginary space and is working with the limitations of time to experiment with exhibition making, sculpture and the environment. All works appeared and disappeared within one day.
The show’s title —The Dazzling Edge of Darkness —is a direct quote taken from UCL MSSL’s press release for Euclid, a European Space Agency mission whose massive optical camera was built by an international team led by UCL researchers releasing its first full-colour images of the cosmos in 2023.
Projected onto the spines of research journals in the library of UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, is the collaborative work ‘Break In Presence’, by the artists Cos Ahmet & Gary Finnegan, screened here for the first time. This work was an experiment which then led to a number of collaborative performance videos by the duo, and is a precursor to their video work ’Transmitting’, made from three live performances filmed in different locations.
A break in presence (BIP) is a concept that refers to a moment in a virtual reality environment (VE) where a user's awareness shifts from the virtual world to the real world, therefore, disengaging and interrupting their immersion and causing them to respond to real-world sensory input instead of the virtual.
Break In Presence is part choreographed, part improvised, bodies and shadows intermingle displaying a sense of appearing and disappearing, becoming part of the moving patterns, taking on the nature of other bodies or entities. The sequence of movements and gestures within this, have been pixellated into a monochrome mass that responds to time and space, which questions whether this reality or happening in the virtual.
Participating artists:
Cos Ahmet / Hyee Jin Bae / Mercedes Balle / Daya Belzer / Madeleine Bender / Bella Bradford / Michael Bradshaw / Hannah Browne / Henry Burns / Natasha Burton / Anna Candlin / Gilles Conan / Jasmir Creed / Jess Crowe / Gwenllian Davenport / Tom Doubtfire / Matthew Duan / Natalya Marconini-Falconer / Gary Finnegan / Tobias Gumbrill / Gabriel Kidd / Hansol Kim / Jack Kinsman / Rory Macbeth / Mei To Man / Molly Mousdell / Karema Munassar / Signe Pook / Nicola Pozzani / Yeye Qiu, Ben Qi / Luo Qianxi / Karin Ruggaber / Susie Shiying / Eve Stotesbury / Rex Townrow, / Bo Ywen / Rie Ye Zijing.
Images: Cos Ahmet & Gary Finnegan, Installation view and details, including a projection excerpt of 'Break In Presence’, (installation in the research library), featured in The Dazzling Edge of Darkness, curated by Rory Macbeth, UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Dorking, Surrey, UK.
Good Luck, Mysterious Stranger!
Good Luck, Mysterious Stranger! grew from a meeting and discussion between artists, BA MA & and PhD. students, involved with Ghost Art School and students from British High School of Art & Design Foundation in Moscow, formed an exchange project based on creating an instructed drawing. The project was based on a set of instructions that were used for their own drawings from a previous project, for the artists of Ghost Art School to re-make or reinterpret.
The students at BHSAD sent a set of text instructions for Ghost Art School participating artist to recreate one of their drawings from a previous project. Artist from the Ghost Art School would not have access to the original work until they had created and interpreted their own from the text instructions issued to them. Once all the works were created, an online seminar meeting was set up, where all the participants met for the first time to reveal the results of these instructions, to discuss and compare them to the original works.
Following this, a virtual exhibition of the works was composed in the UK & Russia, together with a small publication to accompany the exchange project. Good Luck, Mysterious Stranger! was initiated by Doug Bowen at BHSAD, Moscow and Rory MacBeth, of Ghost Art School, UK.
The artists include: Cos Ahmet / Hannah Browne / Anna Candlin / Jasmir Creed / Tom Doubtfire / Molly Mousdell / Kareema Munassar / Yarik Antipin / Mila Gerasimova / Alisa Maeva / Nastya Nikiforova / Olya Samokhina / Nadya Vasilieva / Angelica Vertkova / Valeria Voevodina
Images: Seminar of the exchange project and online presentation of Good Luck, Mysterious Stranger! (showing on screen, my drawing living amongst the various random pipes, materials, and objects in my studio) Photo courtesy Doug J. Bowen; Cos Ahmet, Untitled (doppelganger), 2024. Cotton bag, artificial hair from a deconstructed wig. Created from instructions set by Olya Samokhina. Photo courtesy of the artist; Olya Samokhina, Untitled, 2024. Cotton bag, artificial hair — the original work. Photo courtesy BHSAD.