Debjani Banerjee: Jalsaghar CCA, Glasgow ★★★☆☆ Katie Downie: Conversations with Joan Glasgow Women’s Library ★★★★☆ Duggie Fields: Less is less, more or less (From the Archives) Modern Institute, Glasgow ★★★★☆ Jeremy Deller Modern Institute, Glasgow ★★★☆☆ News that two of Scotland’s leading contemporary art spaces face an uncertain future is grave tidings indeed. CCA in Glasgow is to close temporarily in December to “concentrate on restructuring”. And, following Creative Scotland’s announcement of a three-month delay to its decisions on multi-year funding, Dundee Contemporary Arts issued a statement saying they are “running out of ways to maintain our activity at its current level”.
After years of barely keeping its head above water, Scotland’s arts sector is badly in need of some investment and some stability. Meanwhile, artists keep doing what they do, and CCA is showing work by Edinburgh-based Debjani Banerjee . Recently, the gallery has hosted a range of artists from diverse cultural backgrounds who have drawn on their own traditions to create contemporary art which has a distinctive flavour.
Banerjee invites us into a world of South Asian stories, beliefs, decoration and music. Jalsaghar is Bengali for Music Room (and also the name of a Satyajit Ray film from 1958), and the first of the two galleries is transformed into a space for listening, relaxing, contemplating. Visitors are invited to take their shoes off, walk.