We head down to Wasps in the East End of Glasgow where a silent auction is taking place for table tennis rackets, featuring art designed by creatives from Scotland to West Africa.
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00:00So Topspin's the third in a series of exhibitions that we've done here in Glasgow
00:04which tie in with the Drumchapel Table Tennis Club and Table Tennis Scotland.
00:08The first one we've done in 2019, the second one was 2022, that was spin and backspin
00:13and this exhibition's Topspin which is the third in a series.
00:16It's a charitable auction and a charitable table tennis exhibition that all proceeds go to the Drumchapel Table Tennis Club.
00:22I got a phone call from Luke through Table Tennis Scotland saying he was looking for bats
00:27and I says, OK, the man you're looking for, he says, 40.
00:30I went, OK, what's your budget? He says, I haven't got a budget.
00:33What do you mean you've not got a budget? He says, I'm going to paint them all, we're going to do a SAT project.
00:37I'm like, OK, leave it with me. So he gave me his number.
00:41A couple of days later, I'm like, how am I going to get 40 bats?
00:44And it just clicked on me. I teach in all these primary schools and the kids just pull all the rubbers off.
00:49So I found 40 bats in like two days. So that was the start of it and it's just carried on from then.
00:55I'll point out it wasn't child labour though, just so that we don't get in trouble.
01:00And so when we did the first one, we just put out a kind of small kind of call to action.
01:04Would anyone be interested in this? And we were kind of inundated with not just like illustrators and artists from different backgrounds,
01:10but different, I suppose, levels as well in terms of like kind of recent graduates right through to establish artists and creatives.
01:17After we did that, when the second one came along, we'd obviously had a little bit of background.
01:21People knew where it was. So when we brought out Backspin again, I think we probably increased that to kind of plus 50, kind of 55 or so.
01:28And then this year we were able to get 63 artists involved, but not just from the UK, but internationally as well.
01:33So we never had an idea how much we were going to get donated, but we'll get five kids going to the European Championships
01:40and it's going to cost them ÂŁ1,000 each. We're fundraising for them. So part of that will go to part of that.
01:45And there are no so many grants anymore. After the Commonwealth Games, everything kind of slowed down a bit.
01:50So if we do work like this, it's really beneficial to the club.
01:53Definitely. And as you say, Terry, younger players, like when it comes to kind of self-funding,
01:57especially at a certain age and different families and backgrounds, it is quite hard to kind of be able to send,
02:01if it should have been championships or different championships, even just down south and stuff, it's quite an ask, you know.
02:06Yeah. So for the overall exhibition, what we've done is we've asked artists to interpret the paddle based on three words
02:11that were connected with table tennis and the drum chapel club itself.
02:14We went with momentum, legacy and impact. And it's fantastic to see obviously all the kind of different interpretations
02:19that each artist has done and not just obviously what they've done, but the different artists involved
02:24all have different skills and backgrounds as well. So we've got people like Frank Whiteley,
02:28you know, the prestigious comic book artist here in Glasgow and internationally, of course.
02:33We have Robert Kelsey, who is an esteemed landscape painter. We've got street artists from Lagos, West Africa,
02:39who are involved as well, right through to artists here in the UK from, you know, Conso and Global,
02:44right through to Toby Patterson, BEMS. It's quite a list of people. And as I say, every paddle is exceptional.
02:51Every paddle has got its own special thing and the different styles and materials that people have used,
02:55they're always so interesting to see as well.