Turner prize star Susan Philipsz comes from a long line of innovative artists and musicians with Glaswegian roots
Douglas Gordon, who in 1996 became the first Glaswegian artist to win the Turner prize, was once asked what he had been taught at Glasgow School of Art. His reply was simple. "To sing," he said. "Not how to sing, but simply to sing."
Those words now seem prophetic. On Monday night, Susan Philipsz, another artist born and raised in Glasgow – although now based in Berlin – followed in Gordon's footsteps. Philipsz was nominated for the Turner for her sound installation Lowlands (2010), which consisted of recordings of the artist singing a 16th-century lament for a drowned lover, originally played beneath three bridges on Glasgow's River Clyde before being transposed to Tate Britain.
Since 1996, no fewer than 10 artists associated with Glasgow have been nominated for the Turner, including Christine Borland (1997), Martin Creed (2001), Jim Lambie and Simon Starling (both 2005), Nathan Coley (2007), Cathy Wilkes (2008), Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright (both 2009). Of these, five won: Gordon, Creed, Starling, Wright and Philipsz. It's a reflection of the way in which Glasgow has emerged from post-industrial decline to become the UK's main art centre after London, with a reputation for producing innovative and highly acclaimed artists and musicians.
But there's more to it than simply that. Many of the best-known artists from Glasgow emerged from the Environmental Art Department at the city's art school (where, as it happens, I also teach). Students were encouraged to produce art outside studios and galleries ("with or through people", in the words of the course description). Crucially, they were also expected to seek permission to install their work in the public domain, breeding both confidence and an abiding interest in context and site-specific work. Those interests were evident in their post-graduation projects, notably the 1991 Windfall exhibition, organised by Douglas Gordon, Martin Boyce, Nathan Coley and others in the disused Seaman's Mission by the Clyde, and positively reviewed in the inaugural issue of Frieze magazine. The obvious parallel is with Goldsmiths College, London, and you might compare Windfall and the 1988 Docklands exhibition Freeze, which precipitated the beginning of the YBA phenomenon.
That comparison only goes so far, however. Collectors of contemporary art in Glasgow are few and far between, and the city certainly has no equal to London gallerist and collector Charles Saatchi, so often credited with creating much of the hype around the YBAs. The establishment of The Modern Institute by Will Bradley, Charles Esche and Toby Webster in 1998 and more recently, the young commercial galleries Sorcha Dallas and Mary Mary has changed that situation to a certain extent, but Glasgow remains a city in which many artists make work that they do not expect to sell. Much of the most notable art that has emerged from the city since the early 90s has been deliberately non-permanent, short-term and ephemeral, and made on very tight budgets. Without the relentless enthusiasm of people mounting exhibitions, playing gigs and throwing parties in tenement flats, pub basements and disused buildings, none of it would have happened at all.
Philipsz's Lowlands, which was commissioned for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, underlined the importance of live music in generating a sense of community in Glasgow. The three adjacent Clyde bridges where Philipsz's work was installed were built during the late 19th and early 20th century, when Glasgow was the workshop of the world and the fourth largest city in Europe, after London, Paris and Berlin. At this time folk traditions flourished in the worker's inns, taverns and shebeens around the city's Bridgegate, Saltmarket and Gallowgate – where bars like The Victoria and The Scotia are still active gathering places for folk singers and musicians today. Indeed, last year's Turner prize winner, painter Richard Wright, supported his work during the 80s and early 90s by playing banjo and guitar at numerous ceilidhs and gigs around the city – and now plays in alt-pop band Correcto with Franz Ferdinand's Paul Thomson.
Wright is by no means unusual amongst his peers. Many of Glasgow's best-known artists are also musicians, such as Jim Lambie, who was once in a band called the Boy Hairdressers and still moonlights as a DJ. Cathy Wilkes performed with all-women collective Elizabeth Go, and 2008 Jarman prize winner Luke Fowler plays in experimental band Rude Pravo. Most of the city's best-known bands, including Franz Ferdinand and The Phantom Band, have members who trained at Glasgow School of Art.
The city's art and music scenes have grown in tandem because, as Glasgow-based writer Nicola White, put it in a 1995 essay, "Parties matter. They are part of the glue that holds any artistic community together, compensation for pursuing what is, at heart, a very solitary line of work." When Douglas Gordon took to the rostrum in 1996 to accept the Turner prize, his first thought was to thank his family and the people he called "the Scotia Nostra". Susan Philipsz, too, dedicated her award to her family and friends, saying "this is for you". She couldn't have put it better.
• Sarah Lowndes is the author of Social Sculpture: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene (2010)