AN artist is being evicted from her city studio in a row over swearing, it is claimed.
Sculptor Penny Anderson says she was served the legal notice to quit her premises after swearing at maintenance staff in a dispute over access that left her stuck outside while suffering chronic MS symptoms.
She moved in to the site in December last year after winning funding from Creative Scotland that’s aimed at supporting disabled people in the arts. Now she has until the end of the month to clear out and has hit out at the charity behind the decision.
Wasps (Workshop & Artists Studio Provision Scotland) is one of the largest studio providers in the UK and has around 900 artists and creative organisations across its 20 Scottish sites.
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These run from the Borders to Shetland and last week it emerged that the organisation will add the former Granton Station into its portfolio after its lease was approved by Edinburgh City Council.
Anderson makes sculpture and installations from her space in South Block, Glasgow, a 50,000 square foot complex with room for 96 artists in the city’s Trongate area. She says she wants to stay there but has been ordered to leave by the end of the month as a result of a dispute that saw her swear at staff. Anderson said she’d called a maintenance worker a “dickhead” and asked “what the f*ck” after she was stuck outside when the lock on her door was changed without her knowledge.
The artist, who has multiple sclerosis (MS), says her symptoms were so bad that day she was experiencing vision loss and needed to access the space to sit down and recuperate, and that she later apologised. Symptoms associated with MS are, the NHS says, “unpredictable” and include fatigue, problems thinking, sight impairment, mobility problems and pain. It subsequently emerged a new key had been placed underneath another tenant’s doormat.
Wasps has declined to comment about the matter, but Anderson’s tenant record was updated to state that she “has been abusive verbally, by email and in phone messages to staff and a contractor”, adding: “Please treat with caution.”
Anderson, currently working towards a number of exhibitions, says she’d initially complained when she found her unit unlocked and learned workmen had been in without her knowledge on two occasions before the lock change.
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She told the Sunday National she’d uttered the offending words in “frantic” exchanges but says asking “what the f*ck is going on?” was a “perfectly valid question” at the time. She said: “I don’t think I said anything they hadn’t heard before – Glasgow has been called the UK’s sweariest city. It’s an art studio, not a convent.
“I keep my life in my studio and I pay for a private space. In studios people could be lifedrawing, have headphones on so they can’t hear anything, or it could be naked painting Wednesday, you can’t just have people walking in without notice.
"Likewise, you shouldn’t be locked out without notice to a space you pay for. My disability hasn’t been considered here and I have been badly affected by the stress.”
A Wasps spokesperson said: “Wasps is unable to comment on individual cases regarding a tenancy with a third party, including any notice to terminate served, as in this case. The tenant has been advised that at this stage they should contact Wasps’ solicitor with any further requests.”
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