Glasgow International 2021 has announced details of its ninth edition. Originally scheduled to open in April 2020, the festival will now take on a hybrid format comprising 38 exhibitions in 27 physical venues across the city, as well as a comprehensive online programme of exhibitions, podcasts, films, streamed talks and events.

The festival’s theme is “attention”: a topic that has shifted in emphasis over the past year, and the significance of which has, in many respects, become amplified. For further introduction, click here.

Visitors will encounter a Commissioned Programme of exhibitions taking place in many of the city’s most well-known venues. Alongside this runs the Across the City Programme, selected from proposals by artists, curators and producers who live and work in Glasgow.

Commissioned Programme highlights include:

New works and commissions by Jenkin van Zyl, Yuko Mohri, Ana Mazzei, Sarah Forrest, Nep Sidhu, and France-Lise McGurn.

A Glasgow International and Tramway co-commission, a new episode in Martine Syms’ ongoing video installation project SHE MAD (2015–), incorporating elements of the sitcom format and past TV series to explore “the sign of blackness in the public imagination.”

One of the most in-depth presentations to date of work by the late Scottish painter Carol Rhodes (b. Edinburgh, 1959; d. Glasgow, 2018), whose drawings, paintings and reference materials, many previously unseen, will be displayed at Kelvingrove.

A new film by Alberta Whittle, co-commissioned with Glasgow Sculpture Studios, which explores the colonial history of the Forth & Clyde canal and the role of waterways in the voluntary and involuntary movement of people. June 11–14.

A major new film commission by Georgina Starr, Quarantaine, continues Starr’s preoccupation with the otherworldly and the occult, as well as her longstanding interests in the visionary aspects of experimental cinema. The work is co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, the Hunterian and Leeds Art Gallery, with Art Fund support.

American artist Gretchen Bender’s Total Recall (1987) presented in Scotland for the first time. The 11-channel video installation, which predicted the “image saturation” of the coming decades, utilises 24 monitors and three projection screens.

Duncan Campbell’s new work, presented at Barrowland Ballroom, marks the culmination of years of research and involves a new approach to time-based work, encompassing animation, audio and sculpture.

GI and the Roberts Institute of Art co-present a hybrid programme of live and digital events including performance work by Paul Maheke, Nina Beier and Lina Lapelytė.

Across the City programme highlights include:

New work by photographer, media artist and researcher Ingrid Pollard at Glasgow Women’s Library, developed in response to its Lesbian Archive and Information Centre, the largest in the UK.

Tobacco Flower, a major body of new work by Jimmy Robert made especially for GI, which explores multiple traces left by Glasgow’s role within colonialism and engages directly with The Hunterian and its historical collections.

The first solo presentation in Scotland by the late Donald Rodney, whose work examines and critiques racialised identity and its socio-political consequences, at artist-run space Celine Gallery.

Many others including Soufiane Ababri at Studio Pavilion; Laura Aldridge at Kendall Koppe; Rabiya Choudhry, Raisa Kabir, Jasleen Kaur and Rae-Yen Song at The Deep End; Jacqueline Donachie at Govan Project Space; Sam Durant, presented by The Common Guild; Graham Fagen at Queens Park Railway Club; Luke Fowler and Eva Rothschild at The Modern Institute; Margaret Salmon at Chapter 13/The Pearce Institute.

The Digital Programme includes a newly commissioned film with Anne-Marie Copestake involving artists from across the programme in dialogue.