Instant Whip

Instant Whip is a collaboration between Dr Helena Britt (GSA), curatorial practice Panel and Fraser Taylor, working in partnership with GSA Archives and Collections, Reid Gallery and open-access screen printing studio Print Clan. The exhibition centres upon Taylor’s developing practice, highlighting, through selected material from the archive, how previous work has informed new ideas and collaborations. It also gives insight into personal networks, perspectives, and influences on his evolving career – with a distinct focus on Glasgow. Against the disruptive socio-political context and economic gloom of the time, homosexuality was legalised, access to art schools opened up, and there was a youthful aspiration to be different from previous generations. Friendships, dressing up and going out defined Taylor’s art school experiences and his regular haunts, the Vic Café, Nico’s and the Rock Garden in Glasgow were important spaces for artists, designers, musicians, and hairdressers working in the city.

Exploring recurring links to Glasgow as a centre of creativity, Instant Whip borrows its title from an independent Scottish magazine published in 1981, featuring GSA’s annual fashion show and ‘the latest in art, fashion and music.’ Drawing on such energy and newly flourishing sub-cultures, artefacts from the archive are arranged by theme and presented for the first time collectively alongside private loans and newly commissioned works. Revisiting ideas, images and methods of making, Instant Whip reveals more than an artist’s practice; it tells stories about the explosion of style and subcultural expression in the 1980s, honouring and celebrating the crossover between textiles, fashion, art, design and music in popular culture that defined this decade.