After Glass is a research project by Rachel McBrinn and Alison Scott, funded by the Creative Scotland Open Project Fund and in partnership with St Andrews Botanic Garden.
The project culminated in an exhibition with the Travelling Gallery in Spring 2025, featuring essay film 'After Glass' that presents the figure of ‘the glasshouse’ as a structure intrinsically linked to power and privilege — employed to display, preserve, contain & eradicate particular species and narratives. The film weaves together archival and found footage with the artists' own research imagery produced on a year-long residency with St Andrews Botanic Garden in 2024, a period during which the garden decommissioned their public glasshouses.
Documentation of ‘The Glass Class’ voice recording workshops, Jan-Feb 2025, St Andrews Botanic Garden. Photography by Aaron McCarthy.
The film is driven by a scripted voiceover recorded by participants of workshops at St Andrews Botanic Garden, recorded in the space that formerly housed boilers for the heated glasshouses. Moving from scene to scene, and collaging together many references, the narrative constellates around a piece of archival footage showing the film rushes from an STV report of a beauty pageant held at Kibble Palace, Glasgow c.1970, sponsored by the milk board. The semi-fictionalised storytelling expands from the historical record into the space of imagination, drawing out echoes that appear across the time and place of the film.
The exhibition also included a new text in response to Alison and Rachel’s project by Glasgow based writer Hussein Mitha. Titled ‘Glass Before Its Time’, the text explores the latent possibilities of glass architecture, providing a wider historical context and considering the botanical glasshouse as a particular cultural and political expression.
Events and screenings:
2025 in which the root precedes the plant, Market Gallery, Glasgow, 3 June
2025 After Glass, exhibition with the Travelling Gallery, March-May
2025 The Glass Class! Voice recording workshops, St. Andrews Botanic Garden, 31 Jan & 10 Feb
2024 Artists in Residence Screening Event, St. Andrews Botanic Garden, 14 Sep
2024 Artists in Residence Sharing Event, St. Andrews Botanic Garden, 7 June
