East End Open
Horsepower Gallery, Glasgow, 10 - 26 July 2026
Mike Hill, Samantha Wilson, Filip Velkovski, Madeline Mackay, olesya ilenok, Sofya Mikhaylova, Kimberley Bright, Cora Weiss, Iona Jones, Rebecca Laverty, Oscar Marcus Boyle & medb
The East End Open is our first open call exhibition, bringing together work by artists living and working across the east end of Glasgow.
In the game sleeping lions, players lie down on the floor with their eyes shut and pretend to sleep. They must remain completely still. If a player is caught moving, they are out of the game. I have this hazy childhood memory of my dad explaining to me that the reason we were told to play sleeping lions was to trick us into being quiet. I think about this now when, as an adult, I sometimes need to pretend to be sleeping in order to trick my body into falling asleep.
In Samantha Wilson's Rest in Limbo, the figures are resting but they are not at peace. Pressed elbow to elbow, they struggle to get comfortable. Only their closed eyes suggest sleep. From behind the doors of an altarpiece, the woman in Sofya Mikhaylova’s Secret Gift meets our gaze. She reclines like the Venus of Urbino. The lounging figure in Madeline Mackay's animation is perfectly still as flesh moves independently across her abdomen. She is host to activity she seems to play no part in. In Oscar Marcus Boyle’s Staircase Descending a Nude, the figure is tense, prone beneath the weight of an ambling staircase.
These sleeping lions are overlooked by MIKE HILL LOVES YOU: a replica of the sign that has been above the entrance to this building for over 20 years. In the next room, the works turn towards you in their own ways.
Filip Velkovski’s embroideries read like artefacts from another world. Their dreamlike scenes are entered mid-action, where the meaning of gestures cannot be known. In Hand of Chance, a hand rises up into our world or perhaps it sinks down into waters below. Iona Jones’s hand is suspended from the ceiling. It is a fragile construction of chicken bones, tin, copper and varnish, rotating in place like a shop window display.
The hands in Rebecca Laverty’s My Secret hold out an offering. Kimberly Bright’s Which Sentient Blob Are You Today? also offers something out – not to take, but to choose between. The blobs are precious objects in their own right. In Cora Weiss's painting, it is us who have been selected. Their starling stares us down, red eyes like blob no. 6. The bird becomes the watcher.
Looking down to Olesya Ilenok’s A message to our descendants, we find we have been under another eye the entire time. It is at once tombstone and oracle, search engine and slab. It offers no question, only a command: ask anything.
Exhibition text by Sarah Palmer, 2026.
