Painting Merchant City
The Merchant City in Glasgow’s east end continued its process of ‘regeneration’ throughout 2007; complete with swanky new bars, shops, businesses, and a good dose of council funding; which have all helped to see the area’s art and cultural scene flourish. Events in September’s Merchant City festival were more-often-than-not sold out with record numbers of attendees, and in December large chunks of the east end were illuminated as part of Radiance Glasgow, a festival of public light installations.
Sam Bates, an Australian living in Glasgow, has been a part of the Merchant City’s success story last year. After replying to an advert in the Evening Times seeking “street artists”, he was commissioned to paint murals in Wilson Street and Candleriggs. We spoke to Sam to ask about his work painting Merchant City; and I should point out that since we recorded this interview at the end of last year, Sam has been commissioned to paint nine murals of sportsmen and women on the Kingston Bridge.
Q: How did you get the commission to do the art? What was the spec.?
A: Originally, I answered an advert in the Evening Times asking for ‘Street Artists’ to take part in a mural on Wilson St. The Council ran a competition and chose two artists to take part, which was myself and another artist from Glasgow (The large-scale characters are by myself and the street scenes by the other). And after the Wilson Street mural was such a success with both the general public and local businesses and as a deterrent to vandalism, the Merchant City Initiative and Townscape Heritage then commissioned me to extend the work onto Candleriggs. My brief was to come up with a design based on celebrating the vibrant arts and culture scene in the Merchant City.
Q: You must have been pretty happy?
Yeah I was. I’m originally from a small town called Nowra in Australia near the City of Wollongong where there is a legal wall to practice your graffiti in the centre of town and many legal places to paint in the surrounding areas. So to come to a city which has no legal places to paint at all, yet to get a job painting a huge wall in the middle of the city was a great opportunity.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your background, especially your history with in Glasgow?
A: I came to the UK as a tourist 5 years ago and settled in Glasgow soon after I met my Scottish girlfriend. We spend alot of time in Australia and other parts of Scotland, although the West End of Glasgow is where we live and where my business is based. I’ve been doing graffiti since I was a kid, painting in my home town. I didn’t have alot of influences where I grew up, so I mainly developed my style through cartoons and life drawing.
Q: How did you choose which iconic parts of the city, and themes, to use?
The Council wanted to keep the design within the Merchant City theme with a focus on the Arts and Culture of Glasgow due to the increasing involvement the merchant City is playing in housing arts venues, workshops and studios. So I ended up selecting a number of dramatic well known locations in and around the Merchant City, and included images of people involved in different arts activities, including visual arts, dance, theatre, music and photography.
Q: What was the actual painting experience like; how long did it take? Any good stories from while you were doing the work?
A: I started the Candleriggs hoarding in April and due to terrible weather conditions and an unscheduled trip back to Australia didn’t complete it until August. I got loads of “Vandal!”, “Quick! It’s the Police!” and various other comments yelled to me throughout the time and many people refusing to accept that I didn’t need their help, but the general response from the public was amazingly positive, with pretty much every second person that passed stopping to ask what it was all about, although with all the interruptions I think it took an extra fortnight to complete! There was this one guy who commented on the grey-scale theme throughout the Candleriggs wall. I told him the wall was actually green and he looked shocked! I think he only just realized then that he was colour blind…
Q: Have you seen Kelburn Castle in Largs? It’s a 13th Century castle which was recently painted by Brazilian street art team Os Gemeos.
A: I haven’t actually seen the castle in person, although I’ve seen photos. It was a fantastic idea and great for the general view of aerosol art in Scotland, although it would have been nice to see some local talent on the actual castle too.
Q: So what is next for Sam Bates the artist?
I’ve just finished some work for the Radiance Festival and Winterfest Glasgow and I’m just about to start on an art work under the Kingston Bridge in relation to the 2014 Commonwealth Games. There are quite a few other projects still in the design stages for early next year also… I’ve only painted a handful of canvases in the past 12 months, so it’d be nice to concentrate on these for a while too, and find some exhibition spaces.
A big thank you goes out to Sam Bates for taking part in the interview. We hope that Glasgow City Council continue to put their overstuffed wallets to good use and give Sam more work to do.
Photo credits (t-b): 1, 6 by Scott Christie, 2 by gertie_du, 3 by headphonaught, 4 by paddimir, 5 by tomory.
Posted in Art & Interviews by Martin Skivington on January 14, 2008.
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