Glasgow artist Trackie McLeod serves up Glasgow in the 90s nostalgia for new exhibition

Glasgow East End community and arts organisation Strange Field announces YER DINNER’S READY, a nostalgic evening of cuisine, performance and installation.

Co-curated by Trackie McLeod and Programme Director Jenny Tipton, the night features new work from Glasgow based artists Len Goetzee, Durty Beanz, and McLeod on August 31 from 7-11pm.

The second event in Strange Field’s new performance series, YER DINNER’S READY transports you to a simpler time of after school TV dinners and Nokia 3310 polyphonic ringtones, Teletext, and Lynx Africa.

 McLeod presents a collection of video works spanning ten years that celebrate the importance of Glasgow in his work and recurring theme of nostalgia, welcoming you to French Street for a night of unexpected sensory immersion and installation. This event follows his recent collaboration with Scottish indie band The Snuts on an advertising campaign for their UK No. 2 album ‘Millennials’, and a series of political art billboards posted around Glasgow supported by Jack Arts/Build Hollywood.

Len Goetzee brings to the table a series of brand new performances, inspired by jingles of times gone by, with hints of Crazy Frog and Toys ‘R’ Us transporting us to our inner child, while examining a trans methodology of collapse and dispossession. Music, voice, and the written word excavate a past enmeshed with the non-human and the more than human in Goetzee’s work, encouraging binaries to break down and temporalities to become twisted; an anti-propulsive practice reversing into queer resistance and old futures.

From chippy teas to tuck shop treats, Durty Beanz (DB) will punctuate the evening's proceedings with a six-course culinary centrepiece performance exploring the relationships between memory, flavour and identity (both personal and shared).

DB are an Action Research Group based in Glasgow. Established in 2019, the group produce a diverse range of outputs operating at the intersection of contemporary art practice and digital anthropology. Their goal is to playfully interrogate the shifting status of the things we eat, specifically in relation to global food inequalities, climate crisis and cultural identities.

Music throughout the night will be provided by McLeod and frequent Strange Field collaborator Dirt Brooks. The event is ticketed at £35 each, with a percentage of the proceeds going to LGBT Youth Scotland with a six-course dinner and one welcome drink included in the admission price and vegan and vegetarian options available.

YER DINNER’S READY sits in the middle of Strange Field’s first ever programme of major exhibitions and events held at French Street. The programme, which operates alongside its regular community events and open-source programmes which are also held at The Pipe Factory in Calton, includes a series of large scale solo exhibitions from early-career and under-represented artists such as Philip Ewe and Morwenna Kearsley and experimental performance events.

Strange Field’s Dalmarnock space has already been filled with  William Joys’ Agenda, film installation Flywheel from Harriet Rickard, and most recently the Heritage & Community Exhibition showcasing the photography of Chris Leslie and examining the legacy of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games ten years on in the community Strange Field now calls home.

This 2024/25 exhibition and events programme is designed to test the limits of the French Street exhibition space and provide artists a rare opportunity to operate at a large scale with a budget not often available to artist-led organisations. This programme has been made possible through support from The National Lottery through Creative Scotland, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The National Lottery Community Fund and The William Grant Foundation.

On top of these announced major exhibitions and performance events, plans for late 2024 and into 2025 include innovative talks and events on the concepts of intersectional radical care and governance, further large-scale exhibitions, and more events that place the Calton and Dalmarnock communities at the centre of what Strange Field do.

Trackie McLeod said: “With the amazing continued support of Strange Field, we look forward to bringing you an evening of nostalgia, nonsense and nineties nosh.”

Jenny Tipton, Programme Director for Strange Field, said: “This second event in our performance series is an ambitious collaboration that supports three exciting artists based in Glasgow to create new work and turn our space into an immersive dining experience - something we’ve not done before and are very much looking forward to making with Trackie, Len and Durty Beanz!”