‘I’m carrying rage like a blood-filled egg’: best of Glasgow International

Setting the mood for this year’s Glasgow International is a show dedicated to David Wojnarowicz, installed inside a Georgian terrace so decayed you can peer through perforations in the building’s fabric. Paintings, photographs and video works are arranged around a reproduction of the cow’s-head mural he painted on the New York piers; on the top floor, deathbed photographs of his former lover Peter Hujar occupy an elegiac wall.

Fragments of an unfinished film play through a splintered ceiling and the soundtrack to Itsofomo (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) spills from a box TV: “I wake up every morning in this killing machine called America and I’m carrying this rage like a blood-filled egg.” A vape shop attached to Central station caught fire the day after my last visit, and on returning months later the station’s main entrance was blocked.

Many roads, pavements and buildings across the city are now cut off with hoardings, Heras fencing and scaffolding, leaving cultural landmarks inaccessible.

glasgow international, david wojnarowicz, peter hujar, georgian terrace, cow head, itsofomo, killing machine, central station, vape shop, scaffolding