48 hours at Glasgow International

Begin at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) where you can explore the debut European solo exhibition from Jasmine Togo-Brisby - Liquid Land. This major exhibition explores histories of enslavement and tracing relationships across the Pacific, Australia, and wider global contexts.

While you are here, grab a copy of the festival’s Programme Guide with handy maps to help keep you on track.

From here, wander towards the Trongate and one of the Festival’s busiest locations, Trongate 103.

Here you can explore three artist-led and independent spaces at the core of Glasgow’s internationally recognised scene – Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow Print Studio and Project Ability. From James Gladwell’s cross-stitched drawings at Project Ability to Aqsa Arif’s Beneath the Ivory is Molten Brown, Ayesha Jones’s The Backbone, and Andrew Cranston and Lorna Robertson’s exploration of the tensions between printmaking and painting, there is a broad and beautiful range of genres of contemporary art and responses to our world.

After lunch drifting south towards the Clyde make time to stop at the Festival’s hub at The Briggait where there is a stunning range of limited editions commissioned by the festival available for sale.

The grand space of the Clydeside Hall at The Briggait is where you can find Tropical Hardware, an exhibition of new sculptural and installation work by Turner Prize 2026 shortlisted artist Tanoa Sasraku.

Across the road at The Modern Institute, Cathy Wilkes’ exhibition brings together new sculptures and paintings.

From here you can span the river and travel southside to 5 Florence Street, a festival hotspot with exhibitions across the former school’s meandering floors. From Joanna Piotrowska’s experiments with photography’s expanded field through collage, textile and the sculptural possibilities of image-making, to Luke Fowler’s new film work, A Sensation Never Yet Known and a group exhibition curated by 16 Collective taking the River Clyde as a critical geography, this is an expansive space for physical and mental exploration.

With The Modern Institute’s spot in Carlton Place and the Patricia Fleming Gallery nearby your afternoon will be filled with provoking work be that of artist, writer and activist David Wojnarowicz or the unsettled sense of self and sense of disconnection from place brought about by Korean artist Sooun Kim.

Your morning would be well started by grabbing a Hebridean-roasted coffee at Hinba on Dumbarton Road, just a stone’s throw from your first venue, Kelvin Hall.

Fuelled up, begin your immersion at the festival’s pop-up spaces in iconic Heritage Wing of Kelvin Hall where two major artists have significant presentations.

Entering the cavernous industrial the grandeur and atmosphere of this space are immediately grabbing.

The first exhibition you will come to is Kate Cooper’s Screen Bodies. This is a new work explores the relationship between bodily affect and the ways ideas of fascism have found form in the everyday.

Rehana Zaman’s Plantation fills the rear hall with an exploration of land use, labour and environmental collapse through the experiences of agricultural workers and presents two new films within an immersive sculptural landscape.

Take a moment to saunter up through the beautiful Kelvingrove Park as you make your way to The Hunterian, University of Glasgow where Naeem Mohaiemen’s Through a Mirror Darkly revisits the turbulent 1970s – a decade of hopeful rebellions and catastrophic disappointments.

In the afternoon find your way to the southside, where towards Queen’s Park you can find several venues including Tramway.

Tramway is one of Glasgow’s key year-round contemporary art venues, a former industrial tram depot reimagined as a vast, flexible space for ambitious exhibitions, performance and interdisciplinary work.

A visit at any point in the festival allows you to encounter Glasgow-based Jericho Mars’ new exhibition My heart is drenched in blood! My heart is drenched in blood! And Rae-Yen Song’s •~TUA~• 大眼 •~MAK~• which transforms the vast Tramway gallery into a spectral, watery abyss.

The festival also presents performance-based work by Daina Ashbee and Jamie Crewe across the first and middle weekend, explore the website for more information.

From Tramway it is a short walk to Offline which presents Michelle Williams Gamaker’s Strange Evidence – a genre-bending body horror film noir focusing on 1930s screen star Merle Oberon. And from there Cento on Albert Road where Bettina’s Finite Structures examines the work of Bettina Grossman, a conceptual artist who lived and worked in the Chelsea Hotel from 1972 until her death in 2021.

With Queen’s Park over the road, hopefully a sit in the sunshine with space to digest the huge variety of work and perspectives experienced over the weekend is the perfect way to finish.