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I continued my research into the different media available for printing the exhibition works by visiting The House for an Art Lover situated in the beautiful landscape of Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. The park is well known in Glasgow and further afield as it hosted the Empire Exhibition in 1938 and more recently the visit of Pope John Paul in 1982. In present times The House for an Art Lover along with the neighbouring Art Park is its major visitor attraction.
The House for an Art Lover was originally the title for a competition set by a German design magazine "Zeitschrift fur Innendekoration" in 1901 to design "a grand house in a thoroughly modern style suitable for a lover of the arts". The Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh entered the competition and submitted plans for the construction with the help his new wife the design artist Margaret MacDonald. Although Mackintosh did not win the competition his submission was considered outstanding and helped cement his reputation as an exiting and innovative designer. His plans for The House for an Art Lover were never used within his lifetime however he included some of the features in his subsequent commission The Hillhouse in Helensburgh.
The construction of The House for an Art Lover based on the plans submitted by Mackintosh was conceived in the 1980's by the Glasgow Engineer Graham Roxburgh. After hitting funding difficulties the project was rescued by Duguld Cameron, then Director of the Glasgow School of Art, who suggested incorporating part of the activities of the Art School into the building. The construction did not begin until 1989 and was completed in 1996 with many contemporary artists and craftspeople contributing to the project, creating a permanent exhibition of decorative furnished rooms. The building is also home to the Digital Design Studio, a department of Glasgow School of Art.
The students at the Design Studio have constructed a 3D exhibition to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Empire Exhibition and it was their display of prints on mdf and acrylic media that I wanted to study. Now that I have seen printing on these media at close quarters and seen the stunning impact that the backlit acrylic print can achieve I will be researching these techniques further.
Altogether it was a very enjoyable and inspirational day as well as informative. Interestingly I noted that the concept for the design of the house resonates with that of the residency - an amalgamation of the historic with contemporary art.