'Finn Robinson'

The GSA Graduate Residency Award began in 2022, funded by Friends of GSA. Saltspace was invited to preview the GSA Ba(Hons) Degree Show and shortlisted 11 different artists from Painting & Printmaking, Sculpture & Environmental Art and Photography. Each shortlisted graduate was given a free year long graduate membership and invited to submit a proposal for a three week funded residency with SaltSpace to take place in 2022/23 in our new studios at Dornoch Street and a chance to present their work in an exhibition at SaltSpace gallery. 

Finn Robinson from Painting & Printmaking was the successful winner of the award and the first GSA Graduate Award recipient. Finn was given a three week residency at our Dornoch Street studios and funding to work towards an exhibition at Saltspace Gallery later in the year.

FINN ROBINSON:

Finn Robinson (b.2000, Inverness) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2022 with a First-Class Honours Degree in Painting & Printmaking. Following a successful degree show, he was awarded the SaltSpace Graduate Residency Award and was selected for the RSA New Contemporaries 2024 exhibition. Since graduating, he has exhibited across Scotland, most recently at the Society of Scottish Artists 130 Year anniversary exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy, and has upcoming shows in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London.

Finn's recent work has become an amalgamation of personal experience, online culture, and art history collaged together in paint; "I draw mostly unrelated moments together and try to imagine narratives emerging. In the paintings, unknown boys from social media morph into companions and grow their own identities, landscapes from the place I call home become twisted and uncanny, and my identity becomes appropriated through self-design and imitation. Ultimately, I see my recent work as an attempt to start unravelling the mess I have created myself within."

"The work presented in this exhibition illustrates a deeply personal world where unrelated moments are tangled together with truths, lies, and Instagram thirst traps. Narratives spiral from large-scale paintings into smaller paper-based works, and familiar strangers contained within books introduce themselves to expose an algorithmic niche. The strangers re-invent themselves for the scrutinising eye of social media algorithms and as I mindlessly scroll my way from Dante to Calvin Klein, they grow identities to become my companions. By borrowing classical scenes from historical paintings and daydreaming my way into autobiographical contexts, each work is layered and complex in its references pursuing an artificial sense of self and an overwhelming desire to belong."