Drinks, darts, DJs and drag queens: the artwork that represents a fully-functioning bar – with the artist pulling the pints | art

‘T“The art world has a real problem with making things too conceptual, too complex, and using weird terminology. It alienates people,” says Traki McLeod. So, for his latest show, Utopia, the 32-year-old from Glasgow decided to create something a little more welcoming and familiar: a pub.

Custom-designed from scratch, the gallery is a fully functioning wine bar. McLeod will pull pints for gamblers, there’s a dart board where you can target images of Thatcher or Trump, and visitors can explore his multi-media artwork, which includes printmaking, sculpture and sound, and swing by to watch drag acts, DJs and panel discussions.

“I’ve got a fruit machine that spits out chocolate bars,” he says. “This is a commentary on how these machines drain the pockets of the working class for their own gain. While in this business, everyone is a winner.”

Utopia is set at Factory International’s Aviva Studios in Manchester, commissioned by its young curatorial team. Addressing themes of nostalgia, class, identity and gentrification, it is also an ode to pubs and working men’s clubs as vital community centres.

“I grew up in places like this,” McLeod says. “All our family events were there – weddings, birthdays, funerals. It’s where all the arguments happened. The spaces were cheap and cheerful but supportive of character and comfort. I’m trying to bring back the feeling of togetherness that we’re lacking at the moment.”

McLeod — whose nickname Trackie is based on his tendency, when he was younger, to bring out a new tracksuit to wear when the party was over on the second day — is having a very busy career. After two successful exhibitions, Fruit (2024) and Fruit II (2025), he now also has Soft Play in Charleston on Lewes through mid-April, where he has recreated an outdoor play park in the gallery space. He says he explores “the awkward transition from childhood to adolescence.” “When you’re playing as an adult in these places — like drinking and vandalizing — but you’re still really a kid.”

Macleod struggled at school and was unconnected with the art curriculum and its focus on “dead painters,” but one day a former student came to give a lecture. “He looked and sounded like me,” he recalls. “He talked about Andy Warhol and Basquiat and Keith Haring. That was my introduction to art that wasn’t necessarily just drawing. It was a real turning point.”

He still fails at art: he is dyslexic and struggles with essays. But “by chance” he ended up in college studying design, and then at university, trying to find his calling. “I’ve been getting rid of this for a long time,” he says. “The path wasn’t linear. There were a lot of ups and downs.”

By the time Fruit — which featured an entire car painted with Burberry and a dovecote installed in the gallery — he felt he had hit his stride; Mixing Scottish patter, pop culture, graphic design, 2000s nostalgia and explorations of class. “It all came together,” he says.

This also coincided with MacLeod exploring his personal life in more depth. He was already looking at toxic masculinity, and began to intersect with his own experiences growing up gay in Glasgow. In one piece — funny and silly, but also powerful and quietly poignant — he formulates a long list of things that are considered gay at school, including using gel pens, reading and crossing your legs. “It was just putting it that way that I realized: Hell, that was ridiculous,” he says. “The things I would do to change myself to try to cope with that time.”

Macleod remains in Glasgow, avoiding the madness of London, which he feels is “oversaturated”. He is still not represented in a gallery and is part of the DIY scene. Despite his growing success, he had previously had to finance his own exhibitions to achieve them, sleeping on sofas at friends’ homes. For all the talk about representation, diversity, and inclusion in the arts, this was not his experience as a working-class artist.

“A lot of these galleries say they’re advocating for underrepresented voices, but they often don’t,” he says. “They don’t practice what they preach. They’re just rich people with limited life experience, pumping money to rich people with limited life experience. The art world thrives on nepotism, privilege, and the mommy-and-daddy bank. There is definitely a glass ceiling for working-class artists.”

It’s been tough for McLeod, but doing things on his own terms seems to be paying off and he now welcomes people to swing by Utopia for a pint and a chat. “I don’t have the answers, but I’m living proof that you can chart your own path, and it’s possible,” he says. “But we need more working-class voices, more queer voices, more POC voices, because that makes art more interesting.”