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Contents
Introduction ....................................................... 3
The New Easterhouse Mosaic ........................ 4-6
The Mosaics of Easterhouse The drawings........ 7-13
The Mosaics of Easterhouse A field guide......... 14-17
The Easterhouse Mosaic Archive.................... 18-20
The New Easterhouse Mosaic Mick Peter......... 21-23
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Introduction
The original Easterhouse mosaic (1983-2004) was a celebrated community artwork and an
important part of East Glasgow's cultural heritage, lost when it was taken down in 2004. In 2010,
Glasgow based artist, Alex Frost was asked, by Platform the arts organisation within The Bridge,
Easterhouse, to consider using this mosaic as a starting point for his first permanent public
artwork. He initiated this project by spending some time researching the Easterhouse Mosaic,
hoping to learn from its example.
The result of this research was ‘The Old & New Easterhouse Mosaic (and everything in between)’,
an ambitious new project that included 'The New Easterhouse Mosaic', a permanent mural outside
The Bridge; a series of wax crayon on paper rubbings from over 60 existing mosaics in the area; a
field guide to these mosaics and an archive dedicated to the old mosaic.
'The New Easterhouse Mosaic' now acts as a sign for The Bridge. It is unashamedly decorative but
it also refers to The Bridge's many post-industrial functions (swimming pool, theatre, dance and
music venue, library, cafe and F.E. college). Within the design of the new mosaic are facial profiles
of people who use the building as well as water-jet cut symbols that refer to SMS communications.
The series of rubbings taken from mosaics found within the area represent a unique and
overlooked heritage while also plotting the social landscape of the area. These mosaic rubbings
were taken in schools, fire stations, police stations, health centres, community centres, a church and
shopping centre.
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The New Easterhouse Mosaic A 25 metre long mosaic mural, made from both polished and natural finished porcelain tiles.
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The Mosaics of Easterhouse The drawings Rubbings taken from a selection of the 60 + community mosaics located within the Easterhouse area.
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The Mosaics of Easterhouse (Ashcraig School), 2012
120 x 170 cm, wax crayon on paper mounted onto linen.
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From mosaics created by the
Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse (F.A.R.E),
Territorial history schools project.
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The Mosaics of Easterhouse (F.A.R.E), 2012
120 x 110 cm, wax crayon on paper mounted onto linen.
The Mosaics of Easterhouse (Sandaig Primary School), 2012
140 x 260 cm, wax crayon on paper mounted onto linen.
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Detail: The Mosaics of Easterhouse (Sunnyside Primary), 2012
140 x 140 cm, wax crayon on paper mounted onto linen.
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The Mosaics of Easterhouse (St Clare's Church), 2012
110 x 140 cm, wax crayon on paper mounted onto linen.
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The Mosaics of Easterhouse A field guide
A catalogue of all the community mosaics located within Easterhouse.
St Clare's Church - 14 x Stations of the cross.
Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse (FARE) - 2 panels and 1 table top.
Cranhill Primary, Easterhouse Police Station, Oakwood Primary,
Easterhouse Fire Station, St Benedict's Primary - 1 x panel each.
Sandaig Primary - 2 x panels.
Lochend Community High School - 12 x panels.
Sandaig Nursery - 1 large panel.
St Maria Goretti Primary - 2 x panels.
Sunnyside Primary 1 x 11 exterior panels.
St Rose of Lima Primary - 2 x panels.
Easterhouse Health Centre - 1 x panel.
Ashcraig School - 4 x panels.
Ruchazie Community Centre - 1 x exterior panel.
Shandwick Square Shopping Centre - 3 x panels.
(all mosaic panels are indoors unless labelled otherwise).
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The Easterhouse Mosaic Archive
Newspaper articles, catalogues and plans relating to the original Easterhouse Mosaic (1983 - 2004).
Photographs of the original Easterhouse Mosaic (1983 - 2004).
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'The Easterhouse Mosaic' brochure, 1983.
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The New Easterhouse Mosaic
Mick Peter
According to Anthony Caro in the Department for the Environment’s handbook Art for Architecture,
an artwork that fails to deal with site and context is ‘plop sculpture’ (1). Plop sculpture appears from
nowhere and the communities that have had it dumped on them are supposed to embrace their
new local landmark. Glasgow has suffered its fair share of plop sculpture and as a post-industrial
city, perhaps, a far greater amount of dismal ‘plopitecture’. One would be hard to pressed however
to find something more apposite to Easterhouse’s lacklustre housing of the eighties than the
original Easterhouse Mosaic. Alan Kane, who had been working with a Youth Opportunities
scheme in the area since 1980, had started to make mosaic panels in a local school. The reaction to
the first completed parts of the wall being positive, the local community, under the auspices of the
Easterhouse Festival Committee, put out a job description for a supervisor on a mosaic. Brian Kelly,
Tommy Lydon, Willie Hamilton and George Massey applied individually but indicated that it was
a job for more than one artist. Sensibly they were all offered the job, with the addition of Allan
Kane (2). Taking three years from inception to completion, the mosaic was inaugurated in June 1984
(3).
The mosaic’s fame spread after it was completed, becoming part of the discourse
surrounding community art practice. Alongside David Harding’s work as Glenrothes ‘town artist’
and the startlingly trailblazing work done by the Craigmillar Festival Committee in Edinburgh,
evoked so effectively in Helen Crummy’s book Let The People Sing (5), it was an exemplar for
commissioning art in an urban context. Harding even recalls it being discussed at Towards A
People’s Art, a conference in Chicago (4). The project was originally intended to be a catalyst for even
wider ranging environmental improvements. That these ambitions were never realised says much
about socially divisive policymaking in Britain in the 1980s. While a great deal of the housing
remains, The Easterhouse mosaic wall has since been ‘decommissioned’, to use the appropriate
euphemism. The remaining fragments currently reside in polystyrene lined trays in a former school
building site now annexed to a local housing association. Those who worked on it probably didn’t
imagine that they would be candidates for admission into an art equivalent of architecture’s
exclusive ‘rubble club’ today.
Working alongside the now quasi-archaeological remains of the original mosaic, Alex Frost
has managed to integrate the deep-rooted histories associated with it without compromising his
own concepts. His activity in making The New Easterhouse Mosaic connects his practice with the
collective ‘architectural memory’ of the area, situating it intellectually and geographically. The
original mosaic included a profile head in the form of a phrenology chart (at a time when the Prime
Minister was a suitable candidate for having her head examined) as well as everything from benefit
cards to Karl Marx in a toga. Profile heads in various pastel shades, derived from photographs of
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people visiting The Bridge (6), constitute the core imagery of Frost’s work. They are emblems of a
community and emblematic of the success of The Bridge in playing a role in its life. At the same
time the identities of the profiles, and perhaps the potential linguistic play on the word ‘profile’, are
examples of the guessing games that Frost likes to spin around his work.
Frost’s use of what now seems the stubbornly unfashionable medium of mosaic, allows for
rhetorical possibilities and a ‘doublement’ both pictorially and textually. His is an image that
announces its ‘constructedness’ by playfully exposing its compositional artifice. The large shattered
tile pieces serve to amplify the activity of mosaic manufacture and its histories rather than simply
suggesting the illusion of dimensionality. Scattered over the heads are jet cut tiles of non-numerical
and non-alphabetical symbols. It connects to the idea of a sign or a billboard, though in this case a
sign whose characters have slipped and scattered. It’s a deliberately destabilising combination of
imagery that connects with what Frost calls the original mosaic’s ‘accidental postmodernism’ (7) but
with a crucial difference, its dialectical interplay between creation and critique is something that
can be part of how ‘public art’ might evolve. The very open-endedness of the possible
interpretations that this engenders can make contact with our time in ways that the original work
might not.
Framing his work further are his borrowings from conservation methods. He has devised a
way to record Easterhouse’s numerous mosaics by taking monochrome rubbings and pooling them
for an exhibition at Platform. Found in widely contrasting locations in the locality, as well as
exhibiting various models of authorship, levels of skill and scale, the paper versions of these works
become part of another one of his engaging guessing games. They create a map of the creative
surface of the area where partly recognisable emblems and texts emerge through the coloured
crayon impressions.
Some of the largest rubbings are from the Stations of the Cross at St Clare’s church, Lochend .
These smalti (8) mosaics were made in collaboration with The Glasgow School of Art, a role that is
mirrored in the commissioning process of Frost’s new work. His job description as commissioned
artist however, is a role he has chosen to consider as part of his response. By playing with what has
become a community art vernacular, Frost’s work manages to quote ‘craft’ processes whilst
preserving the complexity associated with his gallery-based practice. It is a practice defined by an
enquiry in sculptural language and sculpture as language. These stylistic gearshifts and moments
of authorial duplicity generate a pictorial language to look at and look at again. This act of looking
or reading mirrors an analogy in the introduction to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
‘What you are looking at is a series of dried-ink marks on paper. But you have long ago learned to
forget this and look upon them simply as words’ (9). The aspiration for Frost’s mosaic is that its
pictorial language can begin to be unlocked by an act of forgetting. By laying the original mosaic to
rest the new work can be seen as a part of Easterhouse’s narrative and a commentary on the public
art tradition in Scotland. As Brian Kelly says, ‘you make a public art work and its value and success
is measured by how little it belongs to you’ (10).
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1. Petherbridge, D. ed. (1987) Art for Architecture. London: HMSO Publications. p.98
2. Kelly, B. Interviewed by: Brownrigg, J. (9th March 2012)
3. Petherbridge, D. ed. (1987) Art for Architecture. London: HMSO Publications. p.28
4. Harding, D. (1995) Memories and Vagaries: The Development of Social Art Practices in Scotland from the 60s to the
90s [Internet]. Available from < http://www.davidharding.net/?page_id=15 > [Accessed 1st March, 2012]
5. Crummy H. (1992) Let the People Sing. Craigmillar: Craigmillar Communiversity Press.
6. Platform is the arts centre at the heart of the award-winning Bridge complex. The Bridge also comprises
John Wheatley College and Glasgow Life’s swimming pool and library.
7. Frost, A. Interviewed by: Peter, M. (7th March 2012)
8. Humby, R. [Internet]. Available from http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/glossary/smalti.shtml [Accessed 5th
April, 2012]
9. Joyce, J. ([1916] 1966) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Heinemann Books. p. xi
10. Kelly, B. Interviewed by: Brownrigg, J. (9th March 2012)
About the Artist
Alex Frost was born in London, he lives and works in Glasgow. He studied at Glasgow School of Art (MFA,
1998) and Staffordshire University (BA, 1995). Recent projects include exhibitions at Gallery of Modern Art,
Glasgow and Trinty Museum, New York. Recent solo shows include 'The Connoisseurs' Dundee
Contemporary Arts; 'Adults' Milton Keynes Gallery; 'BBQ' Artsway and 'Compassion Fatigue' Sorcha Dallas,
Glasgow.
www.alexfrost.com
Photo credits
page 4: Alan Dimmick, Ruth Clark.
page 5: Alan Dimmick.
page 6: Ruth Clark, Alan Dimmick.
page 8: Ruth Clark.
pages 9 - 13: Alan Dimmick.
pages 18 -19: Courtesy of Glasgow East Arts Company.
page 20: Evening Time, June 12 1985.
All images courtesy of Alex Frost and Glasgow East Arts Company, 2012.