FROM THE BIG SPLASH TO THE LAST SPLASH: 2023–2026

Origins and Future

I graduated from Drawing and Painting in Glasgow in 2000. While my early work was rooted in a more traditional painterly language, my practice has since expanded to include drawing, assemblage, and installation.

I work predominantly these days with recycled materials to construct scaled replicas of familiar objects. This material-led, DIY approach informs how I curate. Rather than imposing a fixed conceptual framework, I’m interested in creating conditions for dialogue, experimentation, and collaboration—treating exhibitions as active, evolving structures rather than resolved statements.

This position was affirmed through a 2023 exhibition at Iota, which brought together artists from different generations and practices. Although I initially had concerns about the juxtapositions, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The show was described as fun, accessible, and generous. At the third exhibition, Space Junk, artist Kevin Harman remarked, “This is how shows used to be.”

I recognise that exhibitions rarely unfold as planned. You don’t always secure the artists or works you imagine, but learning to trust the artists—and their process—has become central to my curatorial practice. The exhibitions reflect that ethos, bringing together a cross-generational group ranging from established artists to former tutors and peers.

The themes are always intentionally broad, functioning as an artist curation rather than a heavily mediated curatorial framework. In alignment with my ethos, the aim is to support risk-taking and experimentation beyond the norms of each artist’s individual practice.

While I’m conscious that this approach may need to be challenged at some point in the future, I remain committed to the value of simply bringing artists together. In an increasingly divided cultural landscape, that act alone feels purposeful.

Toby Messenger

December 2025

Forward to:

From the Big Splash to the Last Splash Glasgow @ iota, Glasgow (September 2023)

‘When I wrote about the first exhibition (at London's Terrace Gallery) in this series of joint shows curated by the Glasgow-based artist Toby Messenger, I said that artists need each other. The central thesis of that first show was the conviction that the work of a curator is not just to bring artworks together for the delight or education of the viewer, but to create and encourage relationships and perhaps even new collaborations between the artists themselves.

This show brings some of those same works and artists to Glasgow and also includes new artists and new work, some of it directly inspired by the connections fostered in London. What started as a largely unconscious activity of assembling images online that “caught the eye" is turning into a loose but meaningful community of practice including artists at every stage of their careers and development.

As viewers, we are so rarely encouraged to think about what it means to mount a show: the seemingly endless emails, the logistics of shipping and insurance and wrapping and unwrapping, the physical challenge of hanging, the production of a catalogue, the costs, the conversations, the stresses, and the joy when it all finally comes together. 

In Messenger we see a curator that is less the self-appointed guardian or bearer of culture and much more a co-participant in the emergence of meaning. His role is, in the words of Kate Fowle, “more flexible and therefore also more vulnerable". Here then, to paraphrase Szeeman, is an enthusiast, an administrator, an author of introductions, a postal depot regular, a van driver, a hanger, and a contributor.

Like Toby, many of us are also occupied by that most informal process of art collecting: bookmarking Instagram posts, perhaps saving favourite images to our phones. Unlike Toby, we might never think about how the act of viewing those images together creates connections and meaning, or the impact on artists when we view their work next to the work of others. This show is an opportunity to do just that.’

Dr. Catherine Owen

References

Fowle, K. (2007). Who cares? Understanding the role of the curator today. Cautionary tales: Critical curating, 10-19.

Szeemann, H "Does Art Need Directors?" in ed. Carin Kuoni, Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art (New York:

Independent Curator's International, 2001), p. 167.