Glasgow to Culross - Part 2. Kirkintilloch to Falkirk

At the end of last year I spent a few weekends running The Fife Pilgrim Way, a new long distance footpath from Culross to St Andrews. I enjoyed the challenge, particularly as it took me away from running my usual jogging routes again and again. So this year, to explore the rest of Central Scotland I plan to complete my run across Scotland, from the Ayrshire coast to the Fife coast at St Andrews.

This middle section takes me from the River Clyde in Glasgow to Culross on the banks of the River Forth.

Glasgow to Culross - Part 2 - Kirkintilloch to Falkirk

Last weekend I ran from Glasgow to Kirkintilloch along the tow path of the Forth and Clyde Canal. This week I continued upon my very literal cross country run, from Kirkintilloch to Falkirk. From Glasgow I hopped on the train at Queen Street, which takes about 10 minutes to get to Lenzie, and then jogged down to the centre of Kirkintilloch to rejoin the canal.

St Mary's Parish Church by the canal, Kirkintilloch

Kirkintilloch to Twechar

Soon leaving Kirkintilloch, the canal meanders through the countryside all the way to the River Carron at Grangemouth, just beyond Falkirk. The canal just out of Kirkintilloch is accompanied by the River Kelvin, which lies just to the north for about the next 5 miles. Beyond that can be seen the Campsies, a gently rolling range of hills that was formed from lava flows 300 million yeas ago. The Campsies have long been an easily reached rural escape for the people of Glasgow, and was where I first went camping with my school friends. The wee dusting of snow today is a hint of the Campsie Fells place in Scottish skiing history, where William Naismith made the first ever skiing expedition in Scotland, in 1890.

The River Kelvin and the Campsies, viewed from the Forth and Clyde Canal outside Kirkintilloch

The Forth and Clyde Canal was opened in 1790. It became a popular route for sea-going craft to get coast-to-coast, avoiding the treacherous seas around the north of Scotland. It was also used to transport cargo (woven cloth, timber, coal, pig iron, sandstone, and agricultural produce) across the country, and to and from sea ports, at a time when the roads were poor. With the arrival of the railways in the 1830s, and then over time improved road transport, the canal soon became an uneconomic way to travel.

Especially in Glasgow, there is still lots of evidence of the former industrial buildings that huddled by the canal, but coming along this way it is all now open countryside, a few former lock-keepers cottages and derelict buildings hinting at the former activity on the canal. The canal was closed to traffic in 1962 and when I used to live overlooking it in Maryhill in the 1970s it had basically become an open refuse tip. After much work it was re-opened to barges and boats in 2001 but there are ongoing battles still to maintain the funding to keep it open.

Derelict building beside the canal

Reaching Twechar I veered off to the right to take a short diversion to the local Roman fort. Twechar was a mining village. The first substantial pits here were dug in 1860 and mining continued until 1968. For at least 50 years much of the coal was transported away via the canal.

The Antonine Wall, marking the northernmost extent of the Roman Empire in Britain runs across Scotland from Old Kilpatrick in the west to Bo'ness in the east, and therefore runs alongside the canal for much of its route. Constructed around 142AD it was built, occupied and then abandoned by the Romans over a period of just 20 years. To the north of the wall was dug a ditch, 5 metres deep in parts, then the wall constructed with layers of turf on a stone foundation, with some possible wooden palisades on top. Along the length of the wall were built 17 major forts, plus additional "fortlets" which accommodated about 7000 men. South of the wall ran a military way, a road allowing soldiers and supplies to move swiftly along the wall. 

Bar Hill Fort at Twechar is the highest fort on the Antonine Wall, with impressive views east and west along the line of the wall. Although it is hard to imagine today the impact the arrival of the Roman garrison here had on the people living hereabouts, the buildings would have been unlike anything the locals had ever seen before. The headquarters building here, the principia, had rows of stone pillars and iron window grilles housing glass windows. These can all be seen at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. 

The principia at Bar Hill Fort, Twechar

Columns taken from Bar Hill Fort, now on display in Glasgow

The soldiers manning the fort at Bar Hill were initially Baetasian soldiers from Rhineland, and then later Hamian archers from western Syria. Among some of the archaeological finds were discovered north African style pottery, and it may be that some African soldiers had been recruited to the Baetasian ranks during their time fighting the Mauretanian War in modern day Morocco, before being transferred to modern day Twechar.

Gravestone of Salamanes

The gravestone above, now in the Hunterian Museum, was from Bar Hill. It is dedicated by a father to his fifteen year old son, Salamanes, a Semitic name, revealing the middle Eastern origins of this family. It is thought that his father was a merchant who had traveled here from his homeland to a civilian settlement adjoining the fort. Below is part of a gravestone from Bar Hill, a reclining man with what looks like a dog. 

Roman gravestone

The bath house at Bar Hill Fort is shown below, where soldiers would relax and play board games. Other objects from Bar Hill Fort that can be seen at The Hunterian are beautiful leather shoes from a man, woman and child (400 leather shoes have been found here on excavations), and a wine barrel with a bung hole in the side found in a rubbish pit, with its owner Januarius' name scrawled on the side. 

Bar Hill Fort bathouse

Roman shoes found at Bar Hill

Old wine barrel found in a rubbish pit at Bar Hill Fort

On an increasingly blustery February morning I imagined those shivering Baetasians or Hamians waking up for another day on patrol in this remote outpost of the Roman Empire as I jogged on east along the wall. Before getting back to the canal I followed a path from here that leads to Castle Hill, a rocky lump that was once home to an Iron Age fort 500-700 years before the Romans arrived. Getting back on track, I headed along the route of the Military Way, which lies just south of the Antonine Wall, and then via forestry roads to a path signposted for Auchinstarry. 

The Military Way leaving Bar Hill Fort, the Roman road behind their wall

Path down to Auchinstarry

Twechar to Bonnybridge

Getting back on the canal path I arrived at Auchinstarry which lies between Croy and Kilsyth. It is now home to a marina but it is also where Auchinstarry Quarry is found, a popular rock climbing spot. Just east from here on the canal was previously found Craigmarloch Basin. Now overgrown with weeds it is hard to spot, but from the 1890s until 1939 this was the terminus for pleasure cruises from Port Dundas in Glasgow. Steam ships such as the Fairy Queen and the Gipsy Queen. A tearoom here catered for the day-trippers, who could visit the putting green, play in the swingpark or take a picnic up the short walk to Croy Hill behind the tearoom. Nothing now remains, although plans are being submitted to try to restore the nearby canal stables, which date back to 1820.

Boats at Auchinstarry Marina

Pleasure boats at Craigmarloch Basin on the canal 100 years ago

I took a short diversion off to the left here to follow the River Kelvin to its source near the hamlet of Kelvinhead, 22 miles away from where the river joins the Clyde in Glasgow. Here it is little more than a babbling burn. I have no proof of the fact, but the Kelvinhead local community website claims that the village was the place where the first potatoes were grown in Scotland, the beginning of a long love affair between Scotland and the starchy tuber. 

Shortly after the Kelvin veers away from the canal we come to something that hasn't been passed on the canal since leaving Maryhill in Glasgow; a lock gate. The flat summit of the canal comes to an end here and we start to slowly descend towards Falkirk. The former lock-keeper's cottage, and stable block and inn across the canal have been converted here into private houses. 

The mighty River Kelvin near to its source, at Kelvinhead

Wyndford lock-keeper's cottage

Canal bird spotting. Cormorant, traffic cone, oyster-catchers and gulls.

Bonnybridge to Falkirk

Continuing east along the canal path you soon go under the M80 motorway near to the Castlecary arches, and with the handsomely named Bonny Water to the north of the canal instead of the River  Kelvin, we soon come into Bonnybridge. I had never been to Bonnybridge before, and unfortunately only knew it as the UFO-spotting capital of Scotland. Also I cannot help but pronounce its name in the style of "Stoneybridge" from the TV show Absolutely. A village has existed near the river crossing here for several centuries, but it was in the 19th century that it increased in size with people coming to work in the sawmill, paper mill and iron foundries that were being established.

In 1820 the last armed uprising on British soil took place, a year after the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. A week of strikes and unrest led to workers marching in Strathaven, and another group marched towards the Carron Ironworks in Falkirk, intent on seizing weapons. This group , armed with a handful of muskets and pistols and homemade pikes, were led by John Baird, a weaver from Condorrat, and Andrew Hardie a weaver from Townhead in Glasgow. Both men had been soldiers in the recent Napoleonic Wars. On the outskirts of  Bonnybridge this small group of men rested in a field, at a place called Bonnymuir. The radicals had been heavily infiltrated by spies and agents provocateurs and the government forces knew of their plans. At Bonnymuir a detachment of Hussars on horseback attacked them in a sabre charge. Realising that it was a fight they could not win, the Radicals surrendered. Several men were injured and rumours of others being killed circulated widely. The captured Radicals were taken through a tunnel under the Forth and Clyde Canal here and marched to imprisonment in Stirling. The "Battle of Bonnymuir" took place on 5th April 1820, almost exactly 200 years ago.

In the following months 88 people were tried for treason. Many were deported to Australia. James Wilson of Strathaven was executed in August 1820, and upon 8th September 1820 John Baird and Andrew Hardie were executed in Stirling. Hanged and then posthumously beheaded. A small plaque at Stirling Tolbooth, and a monument in Paisley commemorate their deaths.

Radical Pend, Bonnybridge

The passageway, or "pend", that the prisoners were taken through on their way to Stirling Castle was renamed "Radical Pend" in 1981, and a plaque above the arch was unveiled by Winnie Ewing to mark the occasion. It is one of the oldest tunnels under the canal still in use, constructed in 1780. After running through this I tried to find the hillside known as Bonnymuir. Unfortunately I ended up on the wrong side of the railway tracks here and had to take a circuitous route to it, but I got there in the end. It did let me run past some fields filled with Highland coos, and barnacle geese, which was nice.

Memorial stone to the Battle of Bonnymuir

Is this the Radical Dyke?

A memorial stone at the side of the B816 now marks the spot where the "Radicals took cover behind a 5 foot high dry-stane dyke...later known as The Radical Dyke". I wandered into the field trying to find that radical dyke. I don't know if I saw it, or just a pile of stones, but I am glad that Andrew Hardie and John Baird are not forgotten. I have seen James Kelman talk several times, at book launches and the like, and he almost inevitably manages to get the topic of conversation around to our lack of knowledge in this country of our working class radical history. In fact he has previously written a play about these events "Hardie and Baird - The Last Days". It surely is due a revival on the bicentenary of this Radical Rising, Scottish Uprising or Radical War. The events of that year go by many names but I would hope to see them investigated more fully and taught more widely.

Once I had found Bonnymuir I was so far away from the canal that I finished my run into Falkirk along the John Muir Way. This path goes from Helensburgh to Dunbar, John Muir's birthplace, and their website has lots of useful information on the various attractions along the route.

Finishing my day on the Antonine Wall I passed through Rough Castle. Little remains above ground from the excavations from the last century of the fort, but the rampart and ditch here are more obvious that at other parts of the wall. 

Antonine Wall at Rough Castle, near Bonnybridge

The site of Rough Castle, little of it remains at the site

Continuing along the path eastwards out of Rough Castle, after a short distance I arrived at the mighty feat of engineering known as the Falkirk Wheel. The world's only rotating boat lift takes vessels between the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal. Due to a maintenance issue I understand that the Union Canal is not navigable from here to Edinburgh at present, but plans are in place to repair it this year. In the meantime you can still take short boat trips up and down the Falkirk Wheel if you fancy.

The Union Canal where it connects to the Falkirk Wheel

Falkirk Wheel

Falkirk Wheel and visitor centre, viewed from the locks that lead to the Forth and Clyde canal

I am delighted that the canal network across Scotland has been re-opened, and provides green corridors for people to enjoy. At present it is a struggle to finance the necessary maintenance to keep the canal safe and navigable, but I think that it is of benefit to the common good and worth preserving. Maybe I am just biased because until I was 11 years old my bedroom window, looked down into the canal and Maryhill Road. Running along it today I enjoyed learning about the people that have worked, played, fought and rebelled along this quiet strip of greenery, and I have almost made it from Glasgow to the east coast now without stepping on tarmac for very long, or dodging any cars. Next for me is to find a route from Falkirk to Culross.

Antonine Wall at Watling Lodge, Falkirk

After a roll and square slice and a mug of coffee at the Falkirk Wheel visitor centre I jogged on to Falkirk High train station, passing another impressive bit of Antonine Wall at Watling Lodge, where the deep ditches of the wall are very obvious. One last Roman find to end on. At Bar Hill fort many statues to Silenus were found. He is usually depicted as an older man, a drinking companiion to Bacchus, and sometimes described as the god of drunkenness. It seems that he was a popular character with the soldiers. This wee statue of him below, which can be seen in The Hunterian Museum, describes him as having "an extended middle finger to ward off the evil eye." 

A 2000 year old statue from a Roman fort in Scotland that seems instantly recognisable.

The Turner Prize and Other Exhibitions in Glasgow

Art Galleries in Glasgow and the Turner Prize Exhibition

With the annual jamboree of the Turner Prize visiting Glasgow at present a few national newspapers have done "What to see in Glasgow" sections, which have been a wee bit on the unimaginative side I have to say. So I wanted to have a quick run around some of the galleries in Glasgow that I like to visit in order to encourage other people to go and have a wee look at them from time to time. As attractions go these Glasgow galleries generally have the advantage of regularly changing their exhibits, so that if there is nothing that you fancy when you visit, there'll be another one along soon. Also they are usually absolutely free to visit.

Glasgow has established a reputation for being home to some of the best and most imaginative contemporary artists in Britain, often referred to as the "Glasgow miracle". The galleries in the city, and their visitors, have been an important part of that.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Anybody wanting to find art in Glasgow should start at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum .

Main Hall at Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Alasdair Gray often talks about his childhood visits here starting him on his road to becoming an artist and like many people I can remember being brought here with my school class and being asked to pick an exhibit from the galleries and draw it for their regular competitions. The museum lies on Dumbarton Road in the west end of Glasgow. Opened in 1901 as The Palace of Fine Arts for the Glasgow International Exhibition of that year it has been an integral part of the city ever since It is where my great-uncle Andy who worked in the shipyards liked to take my mum for a day out and where I have spent many days with my own children. I really don't visit it as often as I used to since it re-opened after refurbishment in 2002, I knew the dusty old layout like the back of my hand and felt it lost a bit of character with the revamp. However it remains the most visited museum in the UK outside of London, a great advert for free entry to museums. 

As well as an impressive collection of French impressionists' paintings and Dutch and Flemish art there is a large collection of Scottish art on permanent display. This includes a small selection of works by the Scottish Colourists and a room of works by the Glasgow Boys, a loose alliance of about 20 artists from the 1880s. However many people come specifically to see one painting, Salvador Dali's Christ of St John's on the Cross. A controversial acquisition in 1952, at one time attacked in protest, it has proven to be a very astute purchase by then director, Tom Honeyman. I presume that any controversy over Dali's depiction of Christ has died down, as when I went to see it last week there was a nun sitting alongside me inspecting it.

Salvador Dali's Christ of St John on the Cross

Downstairs there is a temporary exhibition space, which charges an entry fee, currently for an exhibition on 19th century fashions.

Hunterian Art Gallery

Hunterian Art Gallery and Mackintosh House, Glasgow

Not far from Kelvingrove Art Gallery is found another fine collection of world class paintings. The University of Glasgow is home to the Hunterian, one of Scotland's oldest public museums, founded in 1908. The collection is currently displayed on two separate sites within the university, although part of it will soon be moving to a new space in nearby Kelvin Hall (opening summer 2016). It was founded with a bequest from 18th century anatomist Dr William Hunter and has many artifacts collected by him on display in the museum, which is housed in the main university building. Across University Avenue in a modern building beneath the high towers of the University Library is The Hunterian Art Gallery. 

Works by Joan Eardley in the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow

Behind the large metal doors designed by Eduardo Paolozzi  are paintings from the likes of Rubens and Rembrandt. The Glasgow Boys and Joan Eardley are well represented and there is a fabulous selection of works from the Scottish Colourists. This includes one of my favourite pictures in the world, Les Eus by JD Fergusson, a huge and joy-filled canvas painted about the same time as Matisse's Dance. 

Les Eus by JD Ferguson

Other highlights here are the extensive collection of works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the latter of which are on display in a recreation of his (now demolished) nearby house. There are also rotating temporary exhibitions here (currently on animals in the art of George Stubbs and others). In the upper floor there is another temporary exhibition space which houses an ever changing selection of displays which sometimes incur an entry fee, although the current one on Scottish archaeology is free.

The Common Guild 

The Common Guild, Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow

A lesser known gallery space in nearby Park Circus is The Common Guild. Home to a visual arts organisation you can browse through the art books in their library whilst visiting their exhibitions. They use the ground floor and first floor of a handsome Victorian town house as gallery space, usually open from Wednesdays to Sundays. Until 13th December they have an exhibition by German artist Thomas Demand called "Daily Show". As so many people record all sorts of images day to day, on phone cameras he has used a mobile phone camera to record undramatic scenes from daily life and produced large prints of them, from missing roof tiles in an office to clothes pegs on a line. As a camera phone addict myself I enjoyed seeing his take on this sort of thing. I must try harder with my efforts.

Glasgow Print Studio

Trongate 103

The next galleries are all housed in one block in the city centre at Trongate103. At the corner of Trongate and King Street can be found a building where you can see, amongst other things, the fantastical junk sculptures of Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre  (makers of the big mechanical clock in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh), the gallery space of Project Ability, a visual arts workshop for people with learning difficulties and the Glasgow Print Studio. Here a diverse and constantly changing range of exhibitions make it a place worth coming back to again and again. Having just finished with an exhibition of comicbook art from the world of Mark Millar, they now have on upstairs an exhibition of  etchings and monotypes by Ken Currie (until 18th October). He became known as one of the "New Glasgow Boys" along with fellow 1980s Glasgow Art School trained Adrian Wisniewski, Steven Campbell and Peter Howson.

Dead Finches, Kelvingrove, Ken Currie

There is a lot of death and darkness on show in Ken Currrie's prints, and known for portrait painting his portraits stand out in the exhibition. Amongst images of dead birds from North Uist I did like this one above of "Dead Finches, Kelvingrove" showing that the days of my primary school trips to draw from the Kelvingrove displays live on in this 2015 etching.

Iranian born Jila Peacock's paintings downstairs depicting scenes from the medieval Persian poem The Conference of the Birds were a colourful contrast to what's going on upstairs. Loved them.

Transmission Gallery

Also housed here at Trongate103 is Transmission Gallery. This gallery is often cited as one of the reasons the Glasgow art scene has blossomed in recent decades. Set up in 1983 by Glasgow Art School graduates it aims to encourage, support and exhibit young artists. If you are walking down to get a mushroom burger and some music at Mono, you might be tempted in by some strange offering in the big windows here. At present it looks like they are clearing up between exhibitions or from a Transmission party.


Street Level Photoworks

Next door to Transmission gallery is found Street Level Photoworks, a gallery for local and international art photography. Their current exhibition Surface Tension (until 8th November) shows the work of four artists. I was attracted to the pictures by Karen L Vaughan of east coast fishing villages from Angus to Pittenweem, presented as fragmentary panoramas. 

The Modern Institute

The Modern Institute, Glasgow

Just around the corner from the Tron Theatre on Osborne Street is The Modern Institute which presents a very varied selection of exhibitions from artists which they represent. Currently their ground floor exhibition space is showing works by Merseyside born Michael Wilkinson called Sorry Had To Done. As well as there being plenty of visual fun here, there were pieces that left me stroking my beard in contemplation. I liked the fluorescent strip light bulbs bound together as "fasces" and the huge tower of Lego beside "Dream a Garden", a pile of concrete rubble from a recently demolished tower block in the east end of Glasgow arranged into a neat rectangle. A former tower block resident myself I've watched my childhood home of grey concrete be reduced to rubble recently. I liked the whole range of ideas the title triggered off. 

SORRY HAD TO DONE by Michael Wilkinson, Modern Institute, Glasgow

The Modern Institute have another space across the road from the Briggait on Aird's Lane.

The Centre For Contemporary Arts (CCA)

CCA on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

The Centre For Contemporary Arts (CCA) on Sauchiehall Street occupies an old 'Greek' Thomson building and has exhibition space, a cinema, music venues, a vegetarian cafe, a bookshop and arty gift shop. It has been home to the Glasgow avant-garde since the 1970s when it was called the Third Eye Centre. In the late 70s my mum worked in the cafe whilst she was at college. During the school holidays their laid back approach to childcare meant that my brother and me spent a lot of time there when my mum was working: refilling the filter coffee machine, changing the big boxes in the milk fridge or just playing in the gallery spaces. It wasn't me that kicked over the lines of sawdust we didn't realise were an exhibition (that may have been my wee brother).

The Referendum Made Me Horny by In The Shadow of the Hand, at CCA, Glasgow

The current exhibition The Shock of Victory is a sad/ironic look at the world exactly a year after the Scottish independence referendum, including building an archive from the campaign. It is as unusual as you would expect from an exhibition here, but benefits from the viewer spending a bit of time reading the ideas behind the pieces. Symposia, talks and films run alongside the exhibition. Lovely place to have a beer, a coffee or a lunch.

Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow

When The Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow opened in the Royal Exchange Square in 1996 Douglas Gordon that year became the first Scottish artist to win the Turner Prize. Yet the modern Scottish artists of the time, who were successfully exhibiting their works around the world had any works on display in this gallery of modern art. No longer. With the Turner Prize exhibition visiting the city at present at the Tramway, the main hall of the gallery is at present given over to an exhibition of works made in the city since that time. Over twenty artists, including several former winners or nominees for the Turner Prize are on show, starting with the neon signs outside, by Ross Sinclair. I am glad to see such a comprehensive exhibition being put on, whilst some of the space in the museum is closed off for renovation. David Shrigley has some animations on show, paintings and sculptures by Martin Boyce, Toby Paterson Jim Lambie and others fill the hall.

Devils in the Making at GOMA, Glasgow

Upstairs there are exhibitions worth seeing including rarely seen works from the Glasgow Museums archive chosen by modern artists, including a lovely oil painting by Walter Sickert and a painting by Bridget Riley. On the top floor woman in art are highlighted in an engaging exhibition in collaboration with the Glasgow Women's Library.

Glasgow Sculpture Studios

Glasgow Sculpture Studios at The Whisky Bond building

On the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal lies The Whisky Bond building, now home to numerous studio spaces and the Glasgow Sculpture Studios. Their gallery on the ground floor is open Wednesday to Saturday, making it a wee place to stop off at on your way to get some shopping at SeeWoo or on your walk along the canal to see Partick Thistle. Currently they have some work by Nicolas Deshayes, Darling, Gutter, expanded foam around the hot water pipes of the room, making these blobby shapes also functioning radiators as it were.

Darling, Gutter by Nicolas Deshayes

Tramway

Enterence to the Tramway in Pollokshields, Glasgow

Okay, last but not least, I made it to the Tramway where the current Turner Prize exhibition is displayed. Originally a tram shed built in 1893 the building was made into the Glasgow Transport Musuem in the 1960s when Glasgow decided that trams were the transport of the past (Doh!). As my granny lived in Mosspark we came here regularly to see the vehicles that are now housed in the modern Riverside Museum designed by Zaha Hadid. Since 1988 this old industrial building has been an arts venue and now also home to Scottish Ballet. 

Turner Prize nominees 2015

The main hall at the Tramway has been broken up into large white cubes where the four nominees for this years prize show their stuff. There is a long and illustrious list of past winners and nominees on one wall of the exhibition, from Gilbert and George to Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread. Then Scottish based artists start to feature regularly like Martin Boyce who won in 2011 and David Shrigley and Ciara Phillips nominated in recent years. Ironically in the year the show is in Glasgow no locals are represented.

I arrived at the Tramway today a bit hungry and the food I got in the cafe was, to say the least, disappointing so I may have looked around the exhibition in a bit of a bad mood. However the exhibition didn't really lift my spirits much. Nicole Wermers spoke of people claiming public space for themselves by putting a coat on a chair, when I would have thought it is usually just that it would be otherwise too hot or a case of dumping it on the floor. To illustrate it with pelts of dead animals stripped of their coats just annoyed me. Then nothing winds me up more than people going on about the paranormal, so a roomful of it from Bonnie Camplin was never going to be for me. Janice Kerbel has some unaccompanied opera singers reciting her words, something I've seen Richard Youngs producing more effectively recently at  Counterflows festival in Glasgow without a nomination for an art prize. The final display is of a showroom/workshop of the Assemble collective about their work in working with a Liverpool housing re-development.

As a visual spectacle the Turner exhibition is a bit earnest and the logo emblazoned everywhere "Show Me Some Thing New" feels a bit at odds with the actual exhibits.

There are plenty of new, innovative, imaginative, thoughtful, fun, interesting exhibitions on in Glasgow just now. I haven't included some galleries which I didn't get to, or which didn't have an exhibition on the days this week I was wandering about such as the Collins Gallery, The Pipe Factory or David Dale Gallery. So go beyond the Turner exhibition to see if you can spot next year's nominees.

Rainy Day Indoor Distractions - Glasgow Exhibitions

House Style - Tramway

Lucy Skaer: Exit, Voice and Loyalty - Tramway

Release: The Koestler Exhibition for Scotland - Tramway

Jack Vettriano: A Retrospective - Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Roman Ondák: Some Thing - The Common Guild

Allan Ramsay: Portraits of the Enlightenment - Hunterian Art Gallery

Chris Johanson: Considering - The Modern Institute

Jeremy Deller: English Magic - The Modern Institute

So the weather is miserable in Glasgow this weekend, rivers of water running down the cold, grey streets. Yet again there is no Partick Thistle match on this Saturday afternoon and the weather has put me off casting an eye over a Juniors match, or even Albion Rovers vs Deveronvale in the Scottish Cup, which I half thought about for a couple of minutes. So what better distraction than a random stoat about some of the exhibitions on (indoors) in galleries around Glasgow this weekend.

Dragging the kids away from the warmth of the house we started at the Tramway, on the southside. The stuff on there is usually wacky enough to entertain the kids, even if the Hidden Garden out back was at risk of turning into a swamp today. In the first room we found House Style, a series of four short films commissions using material from the BFI institute archive. This has been plundered very effectively already by Public Service Broadcasting who are still touring with their album (Inform Educate Entertain). If you fancy trawling through this phenomenal archive, you can do it with a Glasgow library ticket at Bridgeton Library. The results on show here varied from the pompous (Travis Jeppesen's "I, An Object") to the entertaining and thought-provoking (Rob Kennedy's "What Are You Driving At?").

House Style - Tramway

Next door is a major exhibition by previous Turner Prize nominee, Lucy Skaer who plays with ideas of memory, representing or abstracting things from the real world. You enter via a recreation of the corridor she used to walk down on the way to her studio in New York. Afterwards these ideas are played out in film, print and sculpture - stretching from the worn steps of her childhood home to casts of pre-historic axeheads and images created from the Guardian newspaper's printing plates. My kids' favourite were the ceramics laid out on the floor of the exhibition space as a terracotta army.

Lucy Skaer - Tramway

Upstairs in the Tramway there is the return of the annual exhibition of artworks by inmates of Scotland's prisons, Release: The Koestler Exhibition for Scotland. This always presents an interesting and varied body of work including painting and drawings, sculpture, music, video and some excellent poetry.

The imagination and originality on display in the Tramway exhibitions was what we found completely absent in the basement of Kelvingrove Art Gallery, where Jack Vettriano: A Retrospective chunters on. So many of his images are very familiar from posters, tea towels and greetings cards but seeing room after room after room of them really brings home the banality of it all. They are also much smaller in the flesh than I expected. My 11 year old son, unbidden, asked "Why have all the ladies got hardly any clothes on?". Quite.  If you like the styling of Downtown Abbey, but think that the women are all a bit over-dressed, then this is the exhibition for you. The only painting which made me pause in front of it was a rather sheepish self-portrait. Beyond that I'd save your £5 and have a coffee and some scones upstairs.

An Allan Ramsay selfie

At the opposite end of the artistic spectrum, showing what it is possible to achieve when painting people, look no further than the Hunterian Art Gallery at Glasgow University. To mark the 300th anniversary of his birth, they have an exhibition of portraits by Allan Ramsay, entitled Portraits of the Enlightenment (I think that the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh also have an exhibition of his work on just now). Born in Edinburgh he travelled to London and Italy to learn his craft and became painter to the court of George III. The portraits on show here include a surprising number of women, painted as real and intelligent people with real stories to tell (and all of their clothes on) such as Flora MacDonald and Frances Boscawen. In that sense he also encapsulated the times, whether painting surgeon William Hunter, Jean-Jacques Rousseau or the Duke of Argyll. Each portrait makes you feel very much as if you are coming face to face with the real person, none moreso than in his self-portraits.

Roman Ondak

Still raining so it was time to head back towards town via Park Circus and The Common Guild. They have a free exhibition (and they often offer you tea and biscuits too) by Slovakian Roman Ondák there at present (titled "Some Thing"). Much like Lucy Skaer above, he plays with ideas of memory and interpreting reality as many of the pieces show paintings or drawing he did as a teenager 30 years ago, alongside (or interacting) with the original objects from the still life. We all enjoyed that one.

Then finally off to Parnie Street to The Modern Institute to see what they had on. Downstairs is a selection of paintings and constructions by American artist and musician Chris Johanson ("Considering"). Well, considering the fun, childlike style of it, I found it hard to get any humour or engagement with much of this stuff although I did quite like the flimsy structures down the middle of the room, Glasgow windows apparently.

What did keep me from dashing back into the deluge though was the small selection of stuff upstairs by Jeremy Deller ("English Magic"). Deller brought his inflatable, bouncy Stonehenge to Glasgow last year. The highlight here is the light hearted and shambolic "Procession", a film of a project he did through the streets of Manchester in 2009, a parade of the most odd, the most wonderful and the most normal local groups. All human life was there, from football mascots to "unrepentent smokers". Worth catching if you want to feel a warm glow. Like his Stonehenge bouncy castle, his stuff is fun and engaging, but has further depths, for example the simple signs on the wall presenting song lyrices in the style of fluorescent posters outside a church. Sean Ryder's words are funny seen like this, but you can also ponder whether musicians are taken as prophets, or whether churches extract the best lines from folk tales, presented full of portent, to tell a different story. Then heading home I kept going over other songs in my head, to pick out my texts. The best I managed was "Do the dog, not the donkey." Terry ch6 v1.


Sign by Jeremy Deller

 

In the end Albion Rovers won 1-0 and I did miss seeing a (Partick Thistle on loan player) Mark McGuigan goal there in Coatbridge. Ah, well. Another time.