Glasgow Sculpture Studios

KELVINHAUGH Street, in Glasgow's Yorkhill, is one of those indeterminate areas thrown up by urban regeneration. An area once busy with warehouses and workshops is changing. There are student flats, modern apartments under construction and the perpetual hiss of the Clydeside Expressway in the background. Here, one of Glasgow's more remarkable artistic communities has made a new home.

Founded 20 years ago, Glasgow Sculpture Studios began as a loose collective of around a dozen artists seeking space to work. Now, as traditional skills become more scarce and art education more likely to concentrate on computers than grinding machines, it is a vital community where artists of all hues can access workshop facilities, technicians and peer group support.

The complex, supported by the Scottish Arts Council, boasts 42 studios, three project areas, production facilities, a library and exhibition spaces. Among the artists who work there is Nathan Coley, shortlisted last year for the Turner Prize, and Claire Barclay, making preparations for a major solo show at the Fruitmarket Gallery.

I've come to see a new show by Glasgow duo Beagles and Ramsay, who were recently awarded a three-month residency here. But I also want to peek behind the scenes. David Watt, director of GSS, describes it as an "art factory" and I'm here to see the shop floor.

Beagles and Ramsay have carved out a niche of comic despair about the state we're in. If their new show is called 'Good Teeth', their body of work has been obsessed with bad diet and poor dental hygiene.

Over the years their work has been a relentless parody of consumer and celebrity culture, featuring increasingly complex self-portraits of the artists as anything from ventriloquist's dummies to limp sex toys. Their new show consists of neon text and a vast glittering sculpture. Halfway between a golden Buddha and a Lego robot, this seated deity seems to suggest that in the era of the credit crunch the glittering future once suggested by our gadget-obsessed culture has not quite materialised.

Step into the workshop and you're plunged into an environment that is rather more gritty than glittery. Individual studios, carved out of plasterboard and timber frames, are warm, but there's no escaping the fact that production takes place in a vast hangar-like space that is freezing cold.

In the plaster area, artist David Shrigley, clad in a blue boiler suit, is making a cup of tea. A giant cup of tea. He's making the plaster mould of a teacup for a comical sculpture that will soon be shown in Zurich.

Shrigley has been a member of GSS for 12 years, during which he has been acknowledged as one of Britain's best-loved artists. Once upon a time he would sneak into a city centre studio at night, creating the unpleasant fumes of resin casting under cover of darkness. Now he can do so in a space designed to be safe for the purpose.

He says GSS is the only practical solution for an artist who wants to "make stuff", but it's also about a peer group. "It's good to have a lot of people around to talk to, and to court opinion," he says. "Of course, every time I do listen to other people, I always realise that I should never listen to other people," he jokes.

Around the building artists are hard at work. Long-time studio holder and active board member Andy Miller looks like he is building a rather decrepit doll's house. In fact, taped to his workbench is a photo of abandoned construction work in Iceland. The spectre of the recession is never far away, both practically and artistically.

Artists may be at the front line of the freeze, yet the atmosphere here suggests they are likely to be more adaptable and resilient than most of us.

• Until February 28, 2009