Visual Identity

Preparations continue this week for the forthcoming CCA exhibition ‘What We Have Done, What We Are about to Do’ with items being drawn out and earmarked as possible pieces for public display.  The aim of the exhibition is to provide a progress report on our research and the archival process rather than document a linear narrative of the activity at the Third Eye Centre in the 1970s.  We are therefore attempting to select items that may be agents for activating discussion around significant events and individuals and have a potential to deepen understandings of the background and motivations behind the setting up of the Third Eye Centre.

It is proving a challenge to consider which items will visually ‘work’ in a gallery context, whilst also providing interest and purpose beyond their aesthetic.  From the first Third Eye Centre logo and headed paper, hand drawn posters for poetry readings towards a new logo and rebranding in the late 1980s the development of the Third Eye Centre’s aesthetic language is illustrated through posters and ephemera. These items reflect not only the changing social tastes but the development of the Centre’s artistic direction, policies and staffing.

This poster from one of the Third Eye Centre’s first major project exhibitions with local community is an early example of this varied visual identity.

Image Credit: Third Eye/CCA archive

Cordelia Oliver

Newspaper cuttings compiled by art citric and commentator Cordelia Oliver from her time writing for Manchester Guardian are proving an insightful source for our current research on the Third Eye Centre as well as providing useful background colour on the atmosphere of contemporary art culture spanning from the 1960’s to the 1980’s.

Image Credit: The George & Cordelia Oliver Collection at the Glasgow School of Art

Oliver played a key role in the set up and running of the Third Eye Centre as a member of the Directors Committee and active participant serving on the Third Eye Visual Arts Sub-Committee.  As a supporter of the centre she frequently wrote reviews of its programme, however not all necessarily full of praise as it seems she did not allow her proximity to cloud her judgement.  An extract here from an interview with founding Director Tom McGrath on his ambitions for the newly opened centre in 1975 is one particular prize for our research from this fastidiously complete yet personal collection of writing.

“When it set out on its new venture neither [Scottish Arts] Council nor Glasgow committee had any clear idea of how to shape the thing [Glasgow Art Centre].  So Tom McGrath has enjoyed the widest possible brief simply to make it work.  What does he have in mind for Third Eye, as it is now called?...’You ask what I mean to do at Third Eye? Everything I see that seems valid, ‘Put into Place and let it happen’: I think I’ll have that quotation put above the door.  The interesting thing is the coexistence of different cultures, even different approaches to the same culture.  At Blysthwood Square [previous site of Scottish Arts Council Glasgow Gallery and offices] we had art shows, concerts of baroque music, poetry readings, jazz, folk, and they all had completely different audiences.  I’d like to see some cross-fertilisation.  Third Eye may well settle in with one particular audience, but not till after I’ve left it...Let’s say I’m interested in a breakdown between compartments in the arts.  I’m interested in an international present and a local situation.  I can’t see the outcome – that’s what makes it so exciting.’”

By Cordelia Oliver from Arts Guardian, Manchester Guardian, February 1975.

Visitors and Visiting

The GSA Archives and Collections Centre has been busy these last couple of weeks with artists participating in the forthcoming CCA exhibition ‘What We Have Done, What We Are About To Do’ conducting research in the Third Eye Centre archive material, and it is becoming increasingly evident of the wealth of various and often deviant information from a linear history that the material provides.

 While some of these visitors may directly reference material found within the archive, others will also explore broader discussions on the role of archives within contemporary art practice and institutions.  

We have been out visiting too, and similar discussions, specifically curatorial intention in dissemination of archives, were prevalent during the recent Whitechapel event ‘Curating the Archive’.

We also visited Flat Time House, which holds a unique collection of the personal papers and work in the former studio of John Latham, an artist who networks with the Third Eye Centre through Better Books and the Artist Placement Group.  Significant evidence of direct communication between Latham and the Third Eye Centre is yet to be uncovered, but as detailed research on the first few years of the Third Eye Centre continues for the exhibition, we look forward to uncovering more tangible articles such as this carbon copy of a letter from Tom McGrath to Latham, the original of which amazingly is still currently held at Flat Time House. 

third eye video tapes

Tom McGrath was as good as his word. Shortly after returning from the Netherlands a video camera was purchased and recording began almost immediately. One early tape documents a walk around the potential site for the new arts centre - at that time a closed down and empty space. By luck, a mirror in the foyer catches McGrath filming and his wife, who carried the power pack for the camera (portable was defined slightly differently in the early days of video).

Throughout the 1970s the camera was used to document various activities in the art spaces  - both the Blythswood Square Arts Council Gallery and, more extensively, the Third Eye Centre in Sauchiehall Street. Given the social and community interests that lay at the heart of the Centre's activities, there is also substantial footage of life in the city that now may have historical and social value.

The tapes were eventually handed to Scottish Screen by Jak Milroy and later placed in the care of Malcolm Dickson at Street Level Photoworks. The AHRC award to GSA has provided funds for their digitisation which is now complete under the supervision of Rewind in Dundee.

Tom McGrath and the Rotterdam Arts Foundation

As the archive becomes searchable through the index it's beginning to throw real light on the origins of the Third Eye Centre and the research conducted by Tom McGrath when he was shaping the institution. As he had spent much of the 1960s in London it seemed safe to assume that proto-art centres such as Jim Hayne's Art Lab in Covent Garden had a vital influence on his thinking. While this may be the case, the archive points to other locations and much more explicit dialogue about the future direction of the Third Eye. Following a research trip to the Netherlands, McGrath writes to Felix Valk at the Rotterdam Arts Foundation:

15^th March 1973

Safely back in Glasgow, I am now trying to do something about my visit to Rotterdam.

First, let me thank you for your hospitality while we were there, and all of your interesting though and explanation. I learned a tremendous amount from it all, and will probably be taking over some of your ideas in total, e.g. I might well have a toy-making exhibition here too. 

I am getting a basic video unit within the next two weeks and will be able to make and play back ½” black and white material. Rob Breen has details of your equipment, and I will make sure that my own is compatible with yours.

In this case, would it be possible for me to use some of the video material you have in Rotterdam? Would there be a hiring charge for it and how would it be transported from Rotterdam to Glasgow. Would it be safest to have someone actually take it from one place to the other?

The other possibility was with regard to the colour video tapes made by American artists that you showed us during our visit. The Fine Arts Society of Glasgow University are interested in helping run programmes of video in Glasgow and, through them, I would be able to get 2” American colour video re-processed to ½”, thereby making it useable here. I am not sure if the material you showed us was 2” and would be grateful if you would let me know about this. What kind of financial arrangement would there be in this case?

Will you be interested in tapes in exchange once we get things going here? It really is a completely new field here, and none of the artists have used video before, so it will probably take some time before we start producing our own art video, but we should soon be able to produce video records of poetry readings, art events and the like, and I will give you details of these as they emerge. It would be a good way for us to keep in touch with events in each other’s countries. Let me know what you think….

...The other idea which I would like your thought on: During our visit you mentioned a Rotterdam artist who was heavily involved in drugs. There has been a lot of drug use by creative people in this country too, and I am sure it has had both positive and negative results in their personalities and their work. I wonder if it would be possible for us to carry out a two-country survey (or even two-city survey if this is more manageable) on drugs and creativity, and the use of drugs. We could then publish this as a joint Rotterdam/Glasgow venture/ What do you think.

This letter is interesting as it reveals a more continental influence on the Third Eye. It also marks a key moment in the development of video art in Scotland that can be traced through other material in the archive. One of the satisfying aspects of video art is the way in which founding moments of the medium can be more easily identified as they are linked to the specific, and relatively recent, development of technology or the purchase of equipment. McGrath's letter to Valk seems to mark one of those moments.

Noteworthy

Having now indexed almost all of the one hundred and three boxes of Third Eye Centre archive material, I’m still frequently surprised by unusual and intriguing items hidden amongst the administrative paper work and correspondence. 

Some of this more formal correspondence is often between exhibiting artists and the programming team at the centre regarding the details and arrangements for their exhibition, but can feature more irreverent exchanges in memo's and notes such as this 1976 personalised postcard from Scotland’s first Makar, Edwin Morgan.

Image Credit: Third Eye/CCA Archive

Morgan was a regular feature of the Third Eye Centre’s publishing and literary activities, from oral readings in the first months of the centre in 1975 to a special evening of birthday performances in 1985 with Tom Leonard, Tom, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead. Many of the publications published by the Third Eye Centre of Edwin Morgan are currently available at the GSA Library, including the rare Star Gate: Science Fiction Poems.

Illustrating Publications

Within the boxes of Third Eye Centre archive material I have been discovering an intriguing quantity of catalogues produced to accompany almost every exhibition at the centre. 

Often amongst the paperwork are handwritten notes, proofs and correspondence with the artists, contributors and printers, offering real insight into the development of even the slimmest and simplest of catalogues.   Some exhibitions such as 'It's all writ out for you' a retrospective of Scottie Wilson in 1986, demanded more significant publications.  In this case, a collaboration with the established publishers Thames and Hudson to produce a nationally distributed book and touring exhibition.

Long before and after this support of a large publishing house, The Third Eye Centre has encouraged and produced a remarkable body of creative writing, poetry and Artists’ book through its publishing activity.

It is illustrated through the material in the archive and reading the publications that this activity was not an ‘add on’ in addition to its visual arts programme, but very much a part of it as the centre developed projects with significant Scottish authors and poets such as Edwin Morgan and Hamish Whyte as well as French concrete poet Henri Chopin.  The Last Book of the Rich Alphabetical Hours of Henri Chopin publication and exhibition in 1984 visualised the poets work, and is one amongst many similar visual and literary collaborations in the Third Eye Centres programme including Seven Poets (1981) Noise and Smoky Breath (1983) and Behind The Lines (1989).

Image Credit: Third Eye Centre/CCA Archive, Illustration by Willie Rodger

Until this material is made fully accessible, the Glasgow School of Art Library houses many of these catalogues and publications for reference and research.