Adrian Searle's reviews in the Guardian are always a good read. Yesterday he reviewed Glasgow's first International Art Fair and the following caught my attention...

'Glasgow is the only city in Britain that has a strong enough community of resident artists to approach an international standing independent of London. Most other cities in the UK are places where artists come from, but which, if they are ambitious, they leave as soon as possible. This is not cosmopolitan snobbery, but a fact of life. One can be a novelist anywhere, but artists need a community of like-minded souls, a structure for showing and earning a living, and a good enough reason to stay. During the 1990s, Glasgow precariously achieved the right microclimate for such a situation to be possible. In part, this was the result of the liveliness of Glasgow School of Art, cheap rents and the existence of sympathetic and artist-run spaces, such as Transmission, where work could be shown. For reasons that remain opaque to me, Edinburgh is not nearly so interesting.'

It would be great if Liverpool could do the same. I can't really see it though, not for a very long time anyway. The Biennials and 2008 help but its not enough, artists need more public support, preferably by buying their works.

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