Watch this space for updates of where her wonderful photographs may be enjoyed.

Thank you to all who have visited, written in our visitor books and appreciated her work (and Joe’s in having her talents recognised after so many forgotten years).

The office for the Hidden Lane and Hive which is in the old Gallery premises is open 1100 – 1700 Tuesday to Friday.

Good news. The Hidden Lane Gallery is open again.

We are now located in the Hidden Lane itself (straight ahead then on left when you get through the pend).

You’ll spot our wonderful windows!

The Gallery will be a home for the much loved photographic work of Margaret Watkins – classics upstairs and rotating themed exhibitions of her photography in our downstairs space.

Swing by and say ‘hello’.

On June 25th 2021Glasgow’s Street Level Photoworks hosted a great ‘Close Up’ session with Joe Mulholland and Di Chroma’s Anne Morin, the curator of a recent, beautiful tour of our much loved photographs round Europe.

If you missed it you can catch it here.

Africa is blessed to have art as a vital force that positively enhances its image and adds to her GDP.  African artists were well respected in their communities and most had other occupations but evoke happiness and other emotions to their communities through their art.  Art uses were varied, from celebration of birth, life, death, religion, decoration, royal recording, documentation of important occasions etc.

We are delighted to collaborate with  Johfrim Art & Design to showcase modern-day African artists whose ancestors produced masterpieces on show in museums and important collections around the world.

Like their forefathers they are mostly influenced by nature, communities, spirituality, and life around them.  The world is more global, but our African artists are telling their stories through their art.  Their contribution is countering some of the accepted negative impressions of Africa.

EXPRESSIONS will run until 31st March 2020

Downstairs we had Alasdair Gray’s giclees on show again. Another popular opportunity to access Alasdair’s much loved art in its more accessible limited run signed print form.

In the main gallery we had beaded works from Haiti by Jean Baptiste Jean Joseph, and were reshowing some of Haitian Frankétienne’s wonderful paintings and eighteen of Russian artist Bazhena Kutergina’s original drawings.

Jean Baptiste Jean Joseph was born in 1967 in La Vallé Bainet and was raised in Croix-des-Bouquets, a community known for its metal artisans in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. At a young age Jean Baptiste developed a  passion folk art and textiles. Following his passion for beadwork, he worked in a small factory where he honed his skills by sewing pearls and beads onto wedding dresses. Then in 1991, thanks to a small loan from a friend, Jean Baptiste opened Isidor Gallery in Croix-des-Bouquets

Fast forward two decades, and Jean Baptiste’s beadwork is known world-wide. Besides his famous vodou flags, Jean Baptiste and his fellow artisans make purses, bags, vodou dolls, and various other handicrafts.

Original drawings by Russian artist Bazhena Kutergina

Bazhena Kutergina was born in St Petersburg, Russia. She graduated from St Petersburg State Academy of Art and Design (equivalent to a Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree).

Bazhena worked as an artist at a blown glass factory in St Petersburg, Russia from 2001 to 2014 where she worked predominantly with blown glass created for exhibitions and Russian art galleries. In 2012-2013 she was invited to take part in TV and radio programs about art glass.  Now she works as a glass and ceramics conservator at the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

Paintings by Frankétienne

Frankétienne started to paint in 1970, and has exhibited regularly throughout his career. In the early stages his work was influenced by American artists particularly Jackson Pollock, but by the early 1980s he had developed his own distinctive and authentic style, which combines figurative forms with abstract structures. Frank writes in French and Creole. His was the first novel written in Creole in the sometimes troubled Caribbean republic that broke away from France in 1803, defeating Napoleon’s armies a dozen years before Waterloo.

This was the second exhibition of Frank’s work, the previous one in 2014 was shared with his contemporary, Alasdair Gray.

Paul Harris was an award-winning correspondent covering some of the bloodiest conflicts in words and photographs. This exhibition chronicles his time in the former Yugolslavia when local ethnic tensions broke out developing into a most brutal civil war.

His pictures and words tell the true stories of the horrors which were being played down by most countries throughout the world. Bombed houses and mass graves  – but the real horror is seeing life going on as normal within shouting distance of crimes against humanity.

This show was put together by his wife, Sulee to bring truths that most have forgotten back into the public domain.

The exhibition ran until the end of September 2019.

We welcomed them to the Gallery in April/May 2019 with around 100 wonderful paintings including works by Peter Howson, Ross Muir, Alexander Millar, Frank McFadden, Laetitia Guilbaud, Moe Rocksmoore and Iain Faulkner.

The charity has deep links with Uganda and has built a School for Creative Arts in Uganda. This school and vocational centre allows vulnerable young people, who would otherwise never have the opportunity to develop creative talents, a chance to build up their skill base, enhance their prospects and provide many hours of enjoyable tutoring and performances.

In partnership with the Gallery and McTears auctioneers the online auction was live from April 22^nd through until May 12^th and raised an incredible £17,000.

This year Starchild held the auction in memory of a dear friend Bruce Finnie. Bruce owned By Distinction Art, Byres Road and supported Art for Africa from the beginning.

It has been estimated that some 90% of African art is housed outside of the continent.

Owner of the Hidden Lane Gallery, Joe has made the decision to return his own collection (sourced mainly from the Glasgow auction rooms) to the museum in Bamako, Mali (and to the museum in Port au Prince, Haiti).

Classic Margaret Watkins
From Tuesday 14th August

This exhibition has been put together to show the wonderful range in both subject and treatment, of the work of Margaret Watkins. She lived for 40 years in Glasgow in the seventeen-room dark and dreary house from which her mother had married in 1881. Margaret was born in 1884 and after a business disaster for her father she moved ultimately to New York in her early 20s and took up photography around that time. She attended the renowned Clarence White School of Photography and after a few years was taken on to the staff. She taught many known photographers including Paul Outerbridge and Margaret Bourke White. Others were credited with bringing their cameras into their kitchens. She taught many of these people who were later credited with this innovation. In New York she was at the top of her profession, editing the prestigious annual publication for Pictorial Photographers of America and working with Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz. In 1928, after a professional and personal upset with Clarence White’ widow, she came to Glasgow, intending to stay and ‘do Europe’ for a year or two. Forty-one years later she died in Glasgow with her bags still packed to return to New York.

Prior to her death in 1969 she gave a present to her neighbour, gallery proprietor Joe Mulholland, a large box wrapped in brown paper, tied and sealed with ceiling wax, but with one condition: he was not to open it until after her death. In her years as a recluse in Glasgow, she never once mentioned photography, the field in which she had excelled. For almost 50 years Joe Mulholland has worked to establish her position in the history of photography and as a great artist. A major exhibition in the National Gallery of Canada in 2012 gave her the accolade that had eluded her in her lifetime. She is now represented in many major international public collections and her work has appeared in dozens of books.

As well as the major works on show made by her in New York, there is a selection from her work in Glasgow, London and especially Paris and Russia.

A wonderful opportunity to explore the arts of Africa, in all their breath-taking diversity.

The exhibition ran from February until Early August 2018.

Opening to the public from January 27, with a preview evening on Friday 26th, ‘African Artefacts: The Final Selection’ will showcase a fascinating range of sculpture, masks and everyday objects from sub-Saharan Africa. A wonderful opportunity to explore the arts of Africa, in all their breath-taking diversity. We hope you will make it along for a look over the next few months.

The Gallery will be closed from 11th January until the evening of the 26th (the office for the Hidden Lane and Hive will remain open).