An Unexpected Journey Through Family History and Art.
From Florence Street to Tramway and discovering Norman Gilbert
Walking Back into Family History
In January 2023 I went to the Gorbals with a very specific purpose. I was trying to locate Florence Street, where my dad, George Campbell Rush, was born, and to stand in the area where my granda, and his parents before him, had lived. This was not a grand heritage trail, just a quiet attempt to place my family story back onto real streets, with no expectation of what else I might find along the way.
Walking the area made the past feel close. Tenement footprints, street alignments and surviving buildings hinted at lives once lived densely and side by side. It was during this walk that I crossed Albert Bridge and began to understand something I had never fully grasped before: just how near the River Clyde my dad, my granda and generations of the Rush family had lived.
Crossing the Clyde
The river was no longer an abstract feature on a map but a defining presence. The Clyde shaped work, movement and daily life, and suddenly my family history had a physical dimension. Distances shortened. Connections sharpened. What had once been names and addresses became geography you could feel under your feet.
Discovering Tramway, Pollokshields
Tramway is not in the Gorbals, but in Pollokshields on Glasgow’s southside. Housed in a former tram depot, the building retains its vast industrial scale while functioning today as a major contemporary arts venue. Its original purpose, a place of transport and movement, still feels embedded in the space.
When I visited, Tramway was buzzing with life. Families, conversations and activity filled the building, and the atmosphere felt open and welcoming rather than hushed or exclusive. It felt rooted in the surrounding communities, not removed from them. I hadn’t planned to spend time there, but once inside, I stayed.
A Free Exhibition: Norman Gilbert
Inside Tramway I encountered a free exhibition dedicated to the artist Norman Gilbert. I hadn’t known his work before, but it immediately felt like a step back in time, not in a nostalgic sense, but in its close attention to ordinary domestic life.
Norman Gilbert lived from 1926 to 2019 and spent over sixty years living and working on Glasgow’s southside. His studio was based in the family home on Shields Road. While the exhibition does not state that his roots, his life and work were firmly embedded in the southside communities, close to the river and the streets I had been walking that day.
Painting Everyday Life – Norman Gilbert
Gilbert’s paintings focus on intimate domestic scenes of his wife Pat, their four children and an extended circle of family and friends. His work is characterised by bold, inventive colour palettes and intricate patterns that sit side by side in exuberant but carefully balanced compositions.
His paintings explore the boundaries between figure, object and space. Fabrics, interiors, clothing and bodies interlock, reflecting the way life and art overlapped in his working process. Gilbert described his approach as one where each colour and shape enhances every other, until the whole painting feels resolved and at peace.
Time Passing on the Canvas
One of the most powerful aspects of Gilbert’s work is how it quietly records the passage of time. His children appear as they grow up, form relationships and have children of their own. His wife Pat is painted throughout her life. Pat died in 2016 following a stroke related to her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. In her final days, Norman made a series of intimate drawings of her while she lay in hospital. These drawings are now recognised as a powerful reflection on end-of-life, caregiving and the couple’s long life together.
In later years, when people were no longer available to sit for him, Gilbert turned his attention to his home, garden and interiors. He continued painting into his nineties, producing highly detailed works of plants and domestic spaces. Some of his final paintings were completed at the age of ninety-two.
The exhibition also showed black and white studies, many of which are striking works in their own right, alongside textiles, furniture and objects from his studio. These materials are now being archived, acknowledging both the artist and the space in which he worked for most of his life.
An Old School and an Unanswered Question
Leaving Tramway, I continued walking and noticed an old school building, Adelphi Terrace Public School, with separate entrances marked for boys and girls. It stopped me in my tracks. Did my granda attend a school like this? Did he pass through one of those doors?
I don’t know the answer, and I don’t need to. The old school, placed my family story firmly within the social fabric of the area, where education, discipline and daily routines shaped lives in ways that still echo.
A Street with Two Names
I first heard that Florence Street had once been known as Rose Street in a YouTube video, and it prompted me to look into it further. Following that, I asked for clarification and found that historical maps , blogs and local records support a street name change around the turn of the 20th century, during a period of redevelopment in the Gorbals.
Granda – George Campbell Rush (furthest left)
Dad – George Campbell Rush (2nd left)
Layers of Place
What began as a search for Florence Street became something wider. The Gorbals, the Clyde, Tramway and Norman Gilbert’s work all connected through proximity, memory and lived experience. Spaces once defined by labour and industry are now places of reflection, creativity and community.
That day reminded that all who came before me and the places they called home helped shape me.
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