Glasgow International 2026 Review: Want and Need
Alexander Leissle, ArtReview
June 2026
What is on show at Kinning Park as part of GI is The Subtle Body, an exhibition uniting the works of the late Scots artist Katy Dove (1970–2015), whose abstract and performance work explored a rather hippyish nexus between free-association and meditation, and Lygia Clark (1920–88), the Brazilian figurehead of the Neo-Concrete movement, which looked to connect abstraction with a by turns gendered and sensuous experience. Clark is represented by documentation of performances such as Living Structures (1969), in which participants would find ways to move around and between each other while connected to those others via a messy web of elastic bands. The physical contortion required to do that is both comedic and exhausting to witness, but also evidence of the artist’s interest in the practice of ‘cathexis’ – a psychoanalytic term for the investment and expulsion of emotional and physical energy. Dove is represented by abstract paintings, diaries and video documentation including Make a Shape (2008), in which children from a local primary school in Wellhouse play in the light of abstract watercolour animations projected onto a white wall. It’s all asking you to think about what art might do for – rather than show to – its audiences. […]