Glasgow events in April

With the April showers comes one of the most anticipated Glasgow events, the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art.Phew. What a title! Glasgow City Council runs the GI Festival, which runs through until May with an exceptional programme of exhibitions, seminars & talks across more than 30 venues. It regularly attracts over 25,000 visitors and firmly establishes Glasgow as a leading destination for international art fans. There's an official site which details what's on this year, but you're likely to see the cream of international and local exhibitions involving surreal things like the use of vaseline, tissue & polythene to explore gender, psychoanalysis and psychology (I'm sure it all makes sense somehow!...), or a wild array of sculptures and visual art films from across the globe that'll get you talking for yonks afterwards.

Around the same time you'll have the chance to visit another example of the Glasgow events geared towards culture, Scotland's National Art Fair at George Square, with more than 40 galleries exhibiting work from over 1000 established artists & cutting edge talents, all of which will be available to buy if you have some spare greens to part with. It normally pulls in around 16,000 visitors, with about £1.1 million worth of art work sold, from 50 quid sculptures to spanking new paintings for thousands of pounds. So it's a pretty big deal really, as it's now referred to as the UK's most prestigious contemporary art fair outside of London, attracting the cream of Europe, and reflects just how much of a name Glasgow has made of itself in global visual art circles. I'd recommend heading to George Square for a look if you'll be here. Tickets & a 4 day pass are pretty cheap, although kids under 10 go free if you think they'll be up for it. There's a cafe & bar and you can also arrange guided tours if you're like me and have absolutely no idea about art but just like to have a look! I've been told that there's no better place to get a taste of what's going on in the art world today, so it'll likely be a worthwhile pitstop to make. If anything, you'll enjoy watching me asking every single person who comes in if they'd like to pay a few bucks for my pencil drawing of a house (still haven't got rid of it...).

...Also worth a mention is Triptych, a cool little music festival that embraces diverse genres like Indie, Jazz, Neo-Classical, Reggae and Dance. It certainly makes for a colourful month of Glasgow events, and without doubt you'll hear more about it when you're here.