Kenny Hunter

Tonight I attended the opening of the Heritage Centre and the new Pavilion Art Centre at the House for an Art Lover. Situated within former stables which have been transformed into an educational facility to showcase the history of Bellahouston and surrounding areas.

The Heritage Centre begins with the history of early Govan moving through to the expansion of industry and shipbuilding for which Govan and the Clyde is so richly famous.

A documentary exhibition displays the range of architecture, public monuments and sculpture of the area, as well as the development of the river as a port and commercial artery to the city of Glasgow.

One room is dedicated to the innovative British Empire Exhibition of 1938 that includes a newly commissioned animated fly-through by Glasgow School of Art's Digital Design Studio.

The new artists' studio pavilion has been influenced by Mackintosh's love of Japanese design and by the painting studios at Glasgow School of Art, where he studied.

It will be used by selected artists to create and show public artworks. I could not make up my mind whether to use this portrait of Kenny or this interesting shot of the skeleton inside the Pavilion.

Kenny Hunter is the current artist in residence and his Generation show, which is part of a nationwide exhibition celebrating 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland, is the first in the new facilities.

He said: "These are auspicious times for House for an Art Lover, with bold new initiatives and projects taking place within both Generation and the Commonwealth Games. I am looking forward to being part of it."

Kenny Hunter (b. Edinburgh, 1962) lives and works in Glasgow. Hunter is best-known for his for his sculptural works but over the past few years the artist has created a number of text-based images inspired by writers such as Baudelaire, Marx and Goethe.

Common to Hunter’s approach in both his two- and three-dimensional works is a dual interest in tradition and modernity. His works are a response to the contemporary world, exploring cultural changes within our modern urban environment and their relationships to social and artistic legacies of the past.

Kenny Hunter has exhibited extensively abroad and in the U.K. including solo exhibitions at Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh, 2000), Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow, 2003), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2006) and Tramway (Glasgow, 2008).

Hunter has also created a number of high profile public art commissions including Youth with split apple (2005) for Kings College, Aberdeen and Citizen Firefighter (2001) outside Glasgow’s Central Station. Forthcoming commissions include a 7ft high bronze sculpture of a mouse for the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum (a nod to one of the poet’s most famous works To A Mouse) and I Goat which was announced as the winner of the inaugural Spitalfields Sculpture Prize earlier this year.