'Gary Rough Glasgow' (The Guardian, 10/09/2011)
Gary Rough’s mixedmedia art is deceptively spontaneous. His cutout texts and scrawled intimacies resemble less the tired mannerisms of urban tagging than the erotic reveries once etched into toilet walls or the heartfelt romanticisms carved into tree bark. His art is one of collaged and doodled mischief, as disarmingly honest as it tends to be apparently irreverent, but it’s all painstakingly presented. Rough draws us in with his aesthetic daftness, then twists the emotional screw. It’s funny, touching stuff.