Creative Things To Do In Glasgow : Jennie Bates Exhibition At Glasgow Print Studio
If you’re visiting Glasgow this February, step inside Glasgow Print Studio and spend time with Seats of Learning, a quietly powerful exhibition by Jennie Bates.
At the centre of the show is something we’ve all seen, the stackable, moulded plastic chair. The kind that fills school halls, lecture theatres, exam rooms. Cheap. Practical. Wipe-clean. Institutional.
Bates takes this everyday object and transforms it through intuitive mono-print techniques into screen prints that feel like diagrams but refuse to explain themselves. They hint at structure, but resist being didactic. The works map stages of her own educational journey while questioning the idea of linear “progress”.
Jennie Bates, Continuum, 2025, screenprint, 75 x 58.5 cm, 29 1/2 x 23 in
Developed during a year-long fellowship at Birmingham School of Art, the body of work contrasts two opposing forces:
The rigidity of institutional settings
The personal freedom that knowledge can unlock
Bates reflects on navigating systems, their spoken and unspoken rules and the alienation that can come with them. But crucially, she does it with playfulness. There’s humour in the awkwardness. Curiosity in the discomfort.
Glasgow has always been a city that values learning, debate, and reinvention. From its historic institutions to its DIY creative communities, education here isn’t just formal, it’s lived.
Plan Your Visit
Where: Glasgow Print Studio
When: 6 – 28 February 2026
Cost: Free entry
Time Needed: 30–45 minutes
Pair it with a coffee nearby, a wander through the city centre, and maybe your own reflections on the seats you’ve occupied and the ones you’ve chosen to leave.
Glasgow Roots. Movement, Mindset, Rhythm.
