Glasgow 2026 Festival proud partner in major European debut of Australian South Sea Islander artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby

The opening of Liquid Land marks the debut European solo exhibition by Australian South Sea Islander artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby, a major new commission by Glasgow International, the city’s biennial festival of contemporary art, supported by Glasgow 2026 Festival and Henry Moore Foundation, and one of the major partner events of Glasgow 2026 Festival.

Created in response to the architectural and social history of Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, the exhibition presents new site-specific installations and sculptural works. Exploring histories of the lesser discussed Pacific slave trade and tracing relationships across the Pacific, Australia, and wider global contexts through the visual motif of “blackbirding” - the coercive labour trade that forcibly displaced Pacific Islanders in the nineteenth century, post the abolition of slavery - these works illuminate the transnational systems that sustained industries of exploitation and the enduring legacies of enslavement. 

At the exhibition's heart is a full-scale recreation of the artist’s first ancestral home in Australia, originally built by her Ni-Vanuatu forebears. A home placed within the lavish townhouse of Glasgow’s wealthy sugar and tobacco merchant, William Cuninghame of Lainshaw who had it built in 1780.

Togo-Brisby's comparatively modest structure is a vessel for lived memory, honouring lineages often obscured or erased by colonial record-keeping, placing their voice and presence in the house of their enslavers, and speaking to descendants of enslaved peoples whose histories remain undocumented. 

The exhibition is now open as part of Glasgow International with Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, in Gallery One, 111 Queen Street, Royal Exchange Square, G1 3AH and will then run for the full duration of Glasgow 2026 Festival to 9 August 2026 and then beyond up to 6 September.

To find out more about the Glasgow 2026 Festival, visit glasgow2026festival.com