The Compass Column

I wrote this column last week and it appeared in The Herald arts magazine yesterday.

This shows a detail from a painting by Steven Anderson.

WHEN Glasgow’s Compass Gallery was 21 years old, its late founder, Cyril Gerber, produced a book called The Compass Contribution to celebrate the not-for-profit gallery’s coming-of-age.
The book was published in 1990 during Glasgow’s reign as Cultural Capital of Europe. As well as dozens of images of work displayed in the basement gallery down the years, from Joan Eardley to John Bellany to Peter Howson and Alison Watt, it contained contributions from Gerber, as well as former (Glasgow) Herald art critics, Cordelia Oliver and Clare Henry.
Both these doyennes of the late 20th century Scottish art scene were united in their view that this tiny city centre basement gallery had been a trailblazer, offering a shop-window for established and up-and-coming artists who didn’t fit into the public gallery mould of the day.
The birthday book also tied in with a major exhibition called The Compass Contribution – 21 Years of Contemporary Art at Tramway, then a fledgling arts venue on the south side of the city.
Cyril died three years ago at the age of 94. Even in his last years he continued to be a towering figure in the art scene; still making trips into his beloved gallery and holding court as his daughter Jill took over the reins. Without much of the spadework carried out by Cyril, an art lover as well as an astute business operator, Britain’s premier contemporary art gong, The Turner Prize, might not be showing in Tramway today.
‘When Compass first opened,’ Cyril wrote in the 21st birthday book’s introduction, ‘Glasgow did not possess a single contemporary art gallery. There was plenty of good art then, as now. But few of the public were conscious of it. Anything abstract, expressionist, or surrealist in flavour, or in any way experimental had little chance of getting a good showing.’
Glasgow, he went on, needed ‘a regular gallery which could respond to the changing trends in art’ and ‘reflect what was happening in art schools across the country’. The Compass ethos, he declared, was that work was selected ‘by criteria other than saleability.’
That is what Glasgow got... an open, inclusive attitude to contemporary art which marked it out from other cities.
Gerber opened the Compass Gallery on 15 March 1969 with a large mixed show. There was work by post-war artists such as Jack Knox, Carole Gibbons and Philip Reeves. Bet Low and John Taylor, with whom Gerber had worked at the nearby New Charing Cross Gallery – an artist-run space – were also represented.
Gerber’s aim was always to encourage the appreciation of contemporary art. He wanted people to discuss it, handle it and maybe even acquire it. The owning-art aspect has been the bonus which kept the proverbial wolf from many an artist’s door over the 46 years the Compass Gallery has been in existence.
The Compass Christmas shows have always been like a snapshot of the Gerber philosophy, which is now being operated by Jill Gerber.
In this latest seasonal offering, which opened on Thursday night, there is work by long-established artists such as Lys Hansen, Will Maclean, Ian McKenzie Smith, David Martin and Barbara Rae, alongside work by mid-career artists like Kate Downie, Peter Thomson, and Adrian Wiszniewski.
There are also contributions from many young artists still on the nursery slopes of their careers. To wit, Emily Hill; one of the standout painters at Gray’s School of Art degree show earlier this year, and Gerard Chung a recent graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee.
Hill’s giant painting Me Vs You invokes a vivid long gone northern Irish summer when a badminton match in the back garden was the almost the only game in town. Chung’s tiny blue-speckled porcelain casts of crab shells are a thing of beauty which you want to turn round and round in your hand.
Catching and nurturing graduates early on has always been a Compass priority. Many of the artists who have showed with them for years; such as Glasgow School of Art (GSA)graduates, Alison Watt, Helen Flockhart and Alasdair Wallace, were spotted at their degree shows.
This new collection of work consists of paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and works on paper in all shapes and sizes. Ranging in prize from £80 to excess of £8000.
Walk off West Regent Street and down into this art cave and you’re sure to find some gems. It pays to take time to linger; making your way slowly to the famous ‘back room’, where a couple of wild Joan Eardley landscapes, painted into abstraction, routinely sit alongside a Peploe seascape, an Alison Watt portrait from the early 1990s – or even a perfect Geoff Squire life drawing. The connections are writ large on the Compass walls; Squire taught many generations of artists life drawing during his long career at GSA, including Watt.
There’s always new artists to discover and to savour. I was drawn to Steven Anderson’s work; particularly a tiny self-portrait and a larger figurative painting of a naked, almost featureless male figure.
In these new paintings, putty has been mixed into oil paint. This putty, made of whiting and linseed oil, makes the basic body of oil paint. These materials were also used by Joseph Lister 150 years ago at the nearby Glasgow Royal, in the development of antiseptic surgery. Anderson’s subject-matter has emerged from his research in anatomy and references photographs of the first brain surgery patients. It’s powerful work.
Another artist experimenting with paint is Peter Thomson, a well-kent Compass painter, known for his surreal narrative oil paintings which tell many stories within four sides.
His starkly intricate self-portrait in watercolour is like a map of his life.
As always, there’s so much more to navigate in this Christmas cracker of a show. Give yourself a present and step inside.

The Christmas Show 2015, Compass Gallery, 178 West Regent Street, Glasgow, G2 4RL, 0141 221 6370; www.compassgallery.co.uk Until 30 January, 2016