Glasgow artist's bold move to stage exhibitions in her West End home

Lift Others Up, a collection of bold, colourful paintings by celebrated artists Rowena Comrie, Sarah Kudirka and Alison McWhirter, is being staged in a new ‘sometimes space’ for art and music in the city.

It also happens to be Sarah’s front room.

“It was a bit of a 'why not?' moment for me, to be honest,” explains Sarah, who lives in the West End with her husband and son.

“I am an artist and I have an urge to originate things, plant new ideas then see what happens.

“When I first saw the ornate, high-ceilinged, ground-floor room, I knew it would make a fine exhibition space and kind of staked my claim.”

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She adds, smiling: “Others with different interests might have envisaged it as a cinema room, the place for a pool table or home gym….I wanted to fill it with art and music and friends.”

KUDIRKA is not an all-year-round gallery, Sarah is keen to stress, nor is it for hire. “It is part of our private home and sometimes will simply be a space for our family to use,” she says. “All visitors will be our personal guests, not just visitor numbers.”

Sarah has been a practising artist for more than 30 years. She moved to Glasgow from London seven years ago.

For the first few annual shows at KUDIRKA – which will always be around midsummer, when the light in her north-facing flat as at its best - she intends to focus on women artists, like herself, working without gallery or dealer representation.

“It is not a vanity project,” she says. “Except for this first exhibition I will probably not show my own work at KUDIRKA.

“I see that mature women (in particular but not exclusively those who have taken time out to have children) often come to success later in life, but also find it hard to navigate the institutional biases of collectors and major collections.

“The launch show for our space emerged from discussions about just that with Rowena and Alison who, like me, have strong connections to the West End of Glasgow.

"I was glad of their support for getting this idea off the ground and grateful to work with friends whose confidence in my ability to pull off this new thing from scratch has been invaluable.”

Sarah has no wish to run a gallery or be an art dealer, she explains.

“My studio down at The Briggait is where I want to be most days, making paintings - but that is not what this is,” she adds.

“It is a flexible room in our home big enough to invite guests into, a place where intriguing, fun and beautiful things can happen.

“If we ever want to host an acoustic gig or a discussion group, a book launch, a drawing club, a charity auction or a workshop, we can in this space.”

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It is not the first time Sarah and her husband Peter have opened up their home to artists and musicians.

“Before we had our son, we loved hosting wee band gigs and we even had a charity comedy night with Mark Steel in the sitting room of our then high-rise apartment in London,” she adds, with a laugh.

“And at that time, for a few years when I was Global Artist Inhouse (the best job I ever invented for myself) for the international engineering firm Arup, I founded an in-real-life creative social events series called The Penguin Pool that was hosted all over the world.”

Sarah managed the delivery of 23 one-off events run sequentially in 15 cities worldwide, over a 21-month period.

“ Each one was unique and about a different set of ideas,” she says. “I believe in the power of getting people together in a room and making the space for extraordinary things to happen.”

There is no funding in place for KUDIRKA, nor is it a commercial enterprise, she adds, but the next three years of midsummer shows are already planned.

“I'd love to be able to plan for the next five to ten years, but let's just see how long we can manage running just on goodwill and shoestring budgets,” she says.

The title of the first show, Lift Others Up, timed to coincide with the West End Festival, sums up what Sarah is aiming to do with the new artspace.

“A generosity towards our artist and musician friends is the ethos at the heart of KUDIRKA,” she explains.

“However long we may be able to run it for, we hope it will bring more creative friends into our circle, by word of mouth and as our reputation for doing good things here grows. I am positive it is worth doing.”

Lift Others Up runs until June 23, visitors by appointment only (via @kudirka_ok on Instagram or by texting 07779 043307), with two open days on June 8 and 15, from 12 to 4pm, at KUDIRKA, 22 Cleveden Gardens in the West End.