Scottish Art Practice and Counter-Culture (1945-present
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This document provides an outline for a course on contemporary Scottish art practice from 1945 to the present. It discusses key topics like identity, heritage, representation, nationalism, and counter-culture practices in Scotland. The course objectives are to examine culture, identity, heritage, and how they relate to nationalism, parochialism, and devolution. The outline also briefly explores some things commonly associated with Scottish identity that were not originally Scottish, like whisky, porridge, bagpipes, kilts, tartan, and haggis.
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Scottish Art Practice and Counter-Culture (1945-present
- 1. Contemporary Scottish Art Practice (1945-present) Week 1: Introduction to Scottish Art and Counter-Culture Practices Deborah Jackson deborah.jackson@ed.ac.uk
- 2. Alasdair Gray Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties (1964)
- 3. ‘Over the counter’ Culture • Explore the historical and commercial aspects that relate to how Scotland is portrayed, by herself in most cases, and perceived, in particular by those who are not indigenous to Scotland. • What is ‘Scotland?’ and more controversially – „why bother with Scotland specifically?‟ • What does it mean to be a nation in an era of globalisation? Objectives: William Crozier Edinburgh from Salisbury Crags (c. 1927)
- 4. •Culture •Identity •Heritage •Representation How they are connected to: •Nationalism •Parochialism •Devolution Dominant and prevailing notions of Scottish:
- 5. • Consider what heritage is, and think about how this can and does feed our crudely fashioned notions of identity • Look at the importance, both cultural and economic, of heritage in Scotland • Think about the inherent ‘problem’ of Scottish heritage • Look at some recent appropriations of heritage Outline: Martin Creed Work No. 560 (Everything is going to be alright) (2006)
- 6. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place
- 7. Whisky Whisky originates from China and arrived in Ireland long before arriving in Scotland. The name coming from the Irish translation of the Latin for „water of life‟. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place
- 8. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place Porridge Porridge has actually been found in the stomachs of 5,000 year old Neolithic bog bodies in Scandinavia. Dating it many many years before it was first tasted in Scotland.
- 9. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place Bagpipes Bagpipes were invented in Central Asia and are so ancient they are even mentioned in the Old Testament and in the Greek poetry of the 4th century BC. It was probably the Romans that first brought them to Britain.
- 10. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place Kilt The kilt was actually invented by the Irish and it took its name from Denmark (kilte op: tuck up)
- 11. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place Tartan The elaborate system of clan tartans only came about from the early parts of the 19th century. The fact is that, although originally Scottish, all Highland dress was banned after the 1745 rebellion. It wasn‟t until English garrison regiments started to design their own in the early 19th century that the craze started again.
- 12. A brief look at some of the things associated with Scotland that were not even Scottish in the first place Haggis Haggis was actually a Greek sausage in ancient times. It is even mentioned in „The Clouds‟ by Aristophanes in 423BC. http://socyberty.com/society/scottish-stereotypes-that-arent-even-scottish/
- 13. “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps, instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished historical fact…we should think, instead of identity as a “production,” which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation” Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation in Framework 36 (1989): 68-81 Identity
- 14. “I was aware of the fact that identity is an invention from the very beginning, long before I understood any of this theoretically. Identity is formed at the unstable point where the „unspeakable‟ stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture.” Stuart Hall Identity
- 15. • In addition to identity coming from specific historical experiences, Hall writes, “I believe it is an immensely important gain when one recognizes that all identity is constructed across difference and begins to live with the politics of difference.” • When people use the term “identity” or place themselves within a pre-existing “identity group” that they are working off of an imagined and constructed set of ideas – a fiction. This is not to say that these fictions of identity don‟t have real, tangible effects on our lives. • Hall goes on to state how a “recognition of difference, of the impossibility of „identity‟ in its fully unified meaning, does, of course, transform our sense of what politics is about” Identity
- 16. Identity
- 17. Heritage “Heritage is a thoroughly modern concept… We have constructed heritage because we have a cultural need to do so in our modern age. Heritage is a condition of the late twentieth century… the extraordinary phenomenon through which the past is opened not only to reconstruction but invention.” McCrone, D. et al, Scotland the Brand: the making of Scottish Heritage (Edinburgh, 1995), pg.1
- 18. What is heritage? • Not history (and for some, history‟s polar opposite) • Both material (listed buildings, protected landscapes, precious objects) and conceptual (shared memory, myth, beliefs about the past) • A way of shaping the available past to the needs of the present • An officially defined, policed and protected national construct (Historic Scotland, Scottish National Trust, etc.) • The shared inheritance from the past
- 19. What is heritage? • A carefully selective engagement with the past • A way of making the past coherent, manageable and meaningful • A comparatively recent form of leisure pursuit and culture • Something asserted as belonging uniquely to „us‟, but which in practice is often used by „them‟
- 20. Heritage conservation Glasgow design firm „Timorous Beastie‟ were commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival to create an Edinburgh toile
- 22. The importance (cultural and economic) of heritage in Scotland
- 23. The importance (cultural and economic) of heritage in Scotland “To put it simply, the whole idea of heritage has its origins in nineteenth-century Scotland and the revolution in the writing of history brought about by Sir Walter Scott… We might even argue that Scotland suffers from too much heritage rather than too little…” McCrone, D. et al, Scotland the Brand: the making of Scottish Heritage (Edinburgh, 1995), pg. 4
- 24. The importance (cultural and economic) of heritage in Scotland Henry Raeburn, Sir Walter Scott (1822) “ O Caledonia! stern and wild/Meet nurse for a poetic child!/ Land of brown heath and shaggy wood/ Land of the mountain and the flood!” Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)
- 25. The importance (cultural and economic) of heritage in Scotland It is vital to understand Scott‟s importance not simply as the creator of a dominant modern idea(l) of a specifically Scottish history and heritage, but also as a important influence over modern understandings of history and heritage per se („The past is a foreign country‟). Henry Raeburn, Portrait of Colonel Alasdair Mcdonnell of Glengarry (1812)
- 26. The importance (cultural and economic) of heritage in Scotland Key tropes in Scott’s historical thought: • Romantic regret • Inevitability of „Progress‟ • Evidence of/artefacts from the past are always on the verge of total extinction • Past = diversity, identity • Present = homogeneity, anonymity • History as spectacle • The benefits of progress always just outweigh the disadvantages (no turning back) Horatio McCulloch, Glencoe (1864)
- 27. Edwin Landseer, The Monarch of the Glen (c. 1850) The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage
- 30. The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage Irrelevance “[The classic tourist image of Scotland as Highland] is a view of Scotland that is highly selective in three senses. First, it portrays landscapes of highland and rural areas that are inhabited by only a tiny fraction of the Scottish population. Secondly, it depicts a society with a social and occupational structure that is quite different from elsewhere in Scotland. Finally, it shows a country that masquerades as being timeless and unchanging. In all three senses, there is precious little attempt to show the „other Scotland‟ that is the demographic and economic heart of the nation. Indeed, the rest of the nation remains nigh-invisible as part of the enterprise of selling Scotland.” Gold, J. R. & Gold, M., Imagining Scotland: Tradition, Representation and Promotion in Scottish Tourism Since 1750 (Scholar Press, 1995), pg. 7
- 31. “In the spring of 1953 the Hollywood producer Arthur Freed paid a visit to Scotland. When we met in Edinburgh he told me he wanted to find a village in the Highlands which could look unchanged with its inhabitants just awakened after the passage of a hundred years… He insisted on seeing Brig-O‟-Doon [in the Ayrshire town of Alloway], although I assured him it had nothing to do with the Highlands. Then Arthur Freed went back to Hollywood and declared: „I went to Scotland but I could find nothing that looked like Scotland‟. He was, of course, preparing to produce Brigadoon which has become the archetypical film of a bogus Scotland.” Forsyth Hardy, Scotland in Film (Edinburgh: EUP, 1990), pg. 1. The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage
- 32. The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage •Of course, most developed nations have images and stereotypes they construct and conserve for touristic purposes. •Some argue, however, that what makes Scotland distinctive is that the best- known image of the country is as a space waiting explicitly for tourist discovery (as in Brigadoon). There are, the argument goes, no alternatives for the natives…
- 33. The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage “Despite the frequent assertions of tourists… that they want to see „real‟ life, they usually do not. Instead they are in search of a culturally created ideal of an attraction…” Grenier Haldane, K., Tourism and Identity in Scotland 1770-1914: Creating Caledonia (Aldershot, 2005), pg. 216.
- 34. The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage “Indeed it sometimes seems at times as if Scotland exists only as heritage: what singles it out for distinction is the trappings of its past while its modernity seems to make it little different from elsewhere… If Scotland is heritage-rich, then that could be because it has a past but not a present or a future.” McCrone, D. et al, Scotland - The Brand: The Making of Scottish Heritage (Edinburgh, 1995), pp. 5-6.
- 35. The „problem‟ of Scottish heritage Cobbles on the Royal Mile „Fat Bastard‟ from Austin Powers movie
- 36. We hate Coca Cola We Hate Fanta too (it's shite) Were the Tartan Army And we drink Irn Bru Domestic appropriations of heritage
- 37. Nationalism
- 38. Why does 'difference' matter? Stuart Hall (1997) "The Spectacle of the 'Other'," in Stuart Hall (Ed.) Representations. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage and The Open University, pp. 223-279 The anthropological argument posits that each culture gives meaning by classifying things. Classification means emphasizing the difference, meaning that when you classify something there is a principle according to which you decide it is different or similar - so it has to go into this class of things. The idea here is that difference is created by those principles of classifications (those things which you highlight as central to defining). Though it makes it look like those principles are 'natural', 'logical' and 'immutable', they are in fact social conventions Nationalism
- 39. • The irony is that the commodification, presentation and organisation of Scotland as a pre-modern wilderness for an international tourist audience is dependent on the achievement of modernity in a whole range of fields • In other words, you have to be really up-to-date to present yourself so effectively as backward The importance (cultural and economic) of heritage in Scotland
- 40. Representation Semiotics and content analysis are the main methods of formal analysis of representation • Representation always involves the construction of reality • All texts, however 'realistic' they may seem to be, are constructed representations rather than simply transparent 'reflections', recordings, transcriptions or reproductions of a pre-existing reality • Representations which become familiar through constant re-use come to feel natural and unmediated
- 41. REPRESENTATION IS NOT NEUTRAL; IT IS AN ACT OF POWER IN OUR CULTURE. Craig Owens, 1992
- 42. The study of representation is concerned with the way in which representations are made to seem „natural‟. Systems of representation are the means by which the concerns of ideologies are framed; such systems „position‟ their subjects. Representation
- 43. Still from the film „Trainspotting‟ (1996) directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel „Trainspotting‟ by Irvine Welsh. Identity
- 44. Nationalism
- 45. 1999: A Scottish Parliament is re-instated after 292 years, following the devolution of powers from London through the Scotland Act, 1997. Nationalism
- 46. Rob Roy (1995) Braveheart (1995) Nationalism
- 47. Consider the extent to which within the field of everyday culture, and especially in film and tv, the stereotype has become an instrument for new modes of self representation which „talk back‟ against those forces which are perceived as having previously utilised this device as a strategy for knowledge and control. Mc Robbie, A. (2005) The Uses of Cultural Studies, Sage Publications, London Domestic appropriations of heritage
- 48. Domestic appropriations of heritage Nab C. Nesbitt Chewin the Fat
- 49. Representation
- 50. The counterculture that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s left a lasting impact • What led to the rise of the counterculture? • What was life like in the counterculture? • How did mainstream society react to the counterculture? • What legacy did the counterculture leave behind? Counterculture
- 51. What is the Counter Culture? The culture adopted by many teenage baby boomers Rejected • The Establishment • The values of previous generation (over 30) • Those that represented power, authority, status quo Generation gap • Different value, fears, attitudes • Communicated discontent through music and the arts Ivor Cutler
- 52. 1950s teenagers questioned traditional values, challenged authority, and experimented with non-conformist lifestyles Where did the countercultur e come from?
- 53. Prestwick Airport, Scotland (1960)
- 54. Scotland’s Radical Youth – 1960s Scotland: Ban the Bomb and anti-Vietnam Movement
- 55. Edinburgh’s 57 Gallery (est. 1957) was a pioneer in artist-run initiatives and was the result of action taken by artists in order to gain exposure and to control the conditions and meaning of their activities. Scottish Art Scene
- 56. “Open all hours, blending Left literature, the Beats, the new Absurdists, it attracted a clientele whose Scottish consciousness might repel them from London, the ‘imperial capital’, but attract them towards Paris, and New York, free of the effeteness of English cultures”. (Fountain, N. 1988, p.14)
- 64. MacDiarmid was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century.
- 66. The seminal temporary artistic intervention at Edinburgh College of Art Strategy: Get Arts
Notes de l'éditeur
- This course provides an opportunity to explore contemporary art practice in Scotland since 1945 to the present. It is examined from the vantage point of post-Devolution and in particular, analyses the contribution of counter-cultural, alternative, and artist-run practice in creating current art practice.
- This lecture is in two sections:The first section aims to equip you with the background to begin to consider whether the concepts nationalism, identity, and heritage are relevant to contemporary artists in Scotland?
- This section I have called, over the counter, culture. The idea is that Scotland, not unlike most nations, is branded, mainly in order to export the nebulous concept of Scottishness to an international market.So the objectives of this section is to furnish you with some background, in particular the historical and commercial aspects which relate to how Scotland is portrayed, by herself in most cases, and perceived, in particular by those who are not indigenous to Scotland. This lecture specifically addresses:I would also like you to consider: What is ‘Scotland?’ and more controversially – ‘why bother with Scotland specifically?’This is certainly a timely debate given the forthcoming Scottish referendum on Scottish independence on 18th September 2014.Leading on from this we will also analyse thehazards embedded in any (contemporary) manifestation of nationalism and the complex layers of national identity which make up modern Scotland. Central to this is the question; what does it mean to be a nation in an era of globalisation.
- I will also introduce some terms which will re-occur throughout the various sessions.For example, the term ‘Scottish National Identity’ contains two very diverse concepts that of ‘nation’ and ‘identity’, therefore, we have to understand that national identity can encompass a number of different factors and that identity can be ever changing. Culturally Scotland can be shown as a nation/having national identity by its collective history, literature and traditions. Historical information is important because it confirms the root from which Scottish national identity stems. We look at how ideas of heritage problematise identities.Dominant and prevailing notions of Scottish:CultureIdentityHeritageRepresentationHow they are connected to:NationalismParochialismDevolution
- will consider what heritage is, and think about how this can and does feed our crudely fashioned notions of identity.will look at the importance, both cultural and economic, of heritage in Scotland.will then think about the inherent ‘problem’ of Scottish heritage.we’ll take a look at some recent appropriations of heritage.
- I am going to briefly introduce the Scottish counterculture and some of the key players in the Scottish post war periodThe counterculture that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s left a lasting impact What is the Counter Culture?What led to the rise of the counterculture? What was life like in the counterculture?How did mainstream society react to the counterculture?What legacy did the counterculture leave behind?
- So lets begin by establishing the foundations for the Scottish Counter culture, by asking…What is the counter culture?Culture adopted by many teenage baby boomersRejected “The Establishment”middleclass values of previous generation (over 30)People that represented power, authority, status quoGeneration gapDifferent value, fears, attitudesCommunicated discontent through music and the arts
- Where did the counterculture come from?Rebellion against the dominant culture was not new. 1950s teenagers questioned traditional values, challenged authority, and experimented with non-conformist lifestyles.Birth of the teenager. The word Teenager was created in the 1950’sdue to the tremendous population of those in this age category and because teenagers started gaining more independence and freedoms. Teenagers were able to buy more things like food, clothes and music because of an increase in spending money.Teenagers were also becoming more independent in the type of music they preferred to listen to, no more listening to what their parents liked, teens flocked to the new music of the decade, which was rock and roll. Growing up as a teenager prior to World War II, teenagers were expected to take life seriously. Males were expected to join the military or go out and get a job in order to help bring in money for their family or to take care of their future family.Females were taught how to take care of the household and prepare themselves to be a dutiful wife and take care of children. Marriage and preparing for a family, more than education or a career, was seen as a definite in the lives of teenagers. Also, teens had very little economic freedom, independence, and input into decision making prior to WWII.
- However, in the 1950’s, expectations changed for the teenager. The economy started booming and families experienced a great deal of economic power, freedom and independence, including teenagers.New medians were created like television and AM radio that attracted teenagers. Also they were able to attend high school dances, create clothing trends, dance fads, and hairstyles to name a few.Things were starting to change. In the 1950’s, teenagers where more inclined and encouraged to attend college, find a skill, and seek a successful career. Their parents had more than likely gone through the depression and a number of wars, and now wanted something more for their children. This resulted in teenagers receiving spending money and having more time to socialize with other teenagers. Of course, this newly found independence would often result in conflict between the parents and the child.The media played on these emotions and often portrayed teenagers as juvenile delinquents. Peers easily influence teenagers, often at that stage in life what peers think and do becomes more important than what parents think and say.Perhaps, some would say looking at society in general that the first indication or act of teenage rebellion began in the 1950’s.Before the 1950’s, teenagers listened to the music of their parents, but when rock and roll came on the scene teens swarmed to it. Even though teens were able to purchase rock and roll records because they were receiving extra spending money, their parents were opposed to rock and roll music, they despised it, and thought of it as corrupting their children.This sometimes caused friction, it seemed as if teenagers were becoming more rebellious, defensive, and at times, disrespectful, and that listening to rock and roll was the root cause of all this rebellion.However, this belief was often exaggerated because parents didn’t understand the newfound independence and freedom that they never experienced. Yet, rock and roll was something new and parents thought it was shocking and terrible. They felt if their children were listening to this dreadful music that the end must be right around the corner.Later on this clash became known as the generation gap.
- The 1960s were turbulent times: threat of nuclear war, racial discrimination and segregation, the Vietnam War, and environmental pollution.Cold War: the feeling that nuclear destruction was imminent (This sense of threat of the coming global obliteration reached fever pitch in 1963 with the Cuban missile crisis and the stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union). But years before this crisis, Britain had seen an opposition mobilised against nuclear weapons which culminated in the formation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Particularly in Scotland where British nuclear-armed submarines were based.
- Scottish Art SceneEdinburgh’s 57 Gallery (est. 1957) was a pioneer in ARIs and was the result of action taken by artists in order to gain exposure and to control the conditions and meaning of their activities. The 57 Gallery was the first of a succession of key ARIs in Scotland, which were initiated by a wave of artists who were intent on transforming the hegemonic cultural value systems. This first-wave of ARIs included the Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh (est. 1966), Glasgow League of Artists, Glasgow (est. 1971), Third Eye Centre, Glasgow (est. 1975), Forebank, Dundee (est. 1976), 369 Gallery, Edinburgh (est. 1978), Transmission, Glasgow (1983), and Collective gallery, Edinburgh (est. 1984). The founding of The 57 Gallery was part of a consensus among artists for the need to collectively form their own organisations, which was provoked by the fact that they were being rejected and neglected by established institutions, such as the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA).
- Haynes was one of the central players in the counterculture movement; he was one of the founding members of the International Times alongside Tom McGrath who later became the first director of the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow. The Paperback Bookshop became a centre for the avant-garde with readings and events and anarchistic happenings in the middle of a very conservative, Calvinistic capital of Scotland. It became the focus for the radical and the literati of the city. Writing in an anthology of the underground press, Nigel Fountain described Haynes’ bookshop as:Open all hours, blending Left literature, the Beats, the new Absurdists, it attracted a clientele whose Scottish consciousness might repel them from London, the ‘imperial capital’, but attract them towards Paris, and New York, free of the effeteness of English cultures. (Fountain, N. 1988, p.14)
- Jim Haynes’ activities were significant in transforming the cultural climate of Edinburgh. In 1959 Haynes independently opened the Paperback Bookshop in Charles Street that initiated the events that were to culminate in the formation of the Traverse Theatre (est. 1963) and the Demarco Gallery (est. 1966). Haynes, advancing the Paperback Revolution, opened the Paperback Bookshop next to the University of Edinburgh. Its opening was significant, it was the first paperback-only bookshop in the UK and sold radical books, some of which, for instance Henry Miller’s Tropics Of Cancer, were illegal due to censorship laws, and most notable as D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover for which the publishers were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959.
- Along with his associate Haynes, Richard Demarco became involved in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which at that time was helping to foster the idea of a counterculture. The Paperback Bookshop co-hosted many bohemian gatherings and staging performances, happenings and exhibitions. These early productions led to the establishment of the Traverse Theatre Club based at 369 High Street in 1961. The Traverse Theatre was a landmark for cultural advance and provided a link with work being done outside Scotland in the visual arts. Together with The 57 Gallery, the Paperback Bookshop and the Traverse Theatre were instrumental in breaking down what was a very stratified society. These various pockets of counterculture forced individuals into contact, coalition, and confrontation and created a dynamic of interaction
- Alexander Moffat and John Bellany, who had both studied in the Painting Department of Edinburgh College of Art, were involved in interventions that questioned the authority, prestige and status of the established institutions and actively sought to reposition the role of the artist within a wider social context.
- In 1964 they led protests against Royal Scottish Academy (RSA), which at that time was the unappealing pinnacle of artistic reputation in Scotland. Their outspoken attacks were levelled both against the effects of cloying anecdotage that was everywhere prevalent, and their rejection, for too long a time, by the RSA. Fuelled by both a Socialist agenda and the lack of Scottish representation at the official Edinburgh International Festival they held an open-air exhibition of their cerebral paintings that demonstrated their allegiance to Socialist Realism as both a method and attitude.
- The politico-cultural agenda of Moffat and Bellany’s Open Air Exhibition – The Mound was outlined in an accompanying pamphlet Rocket, an angry, political literary visual arts publication, written by the late poet and proselytiser Alan Bold. In a strategic way Moffat, Bellany and their coevals were attempting to stop the Scottish art world from being so exclusive.
- Moffat and fellow social realists wanted to paint large-scale figurative works that they thought would connect more directly with a wider public than the easel paintings they associated with the establishment. Not daunted by the lack of offers on this front, during the 1963, 1964 and 1965 Edinburgh Festivals Moffat and John Bellany exhibited their paintings on the railings of the RSA in protest against its conservatism:
- At that time the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, seen here with SandyMoffat, represented a crucial line of resistance for many Nationalists that sought Scotland’s cultural, and political, independence.
- He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century. Unusually for a first generation modernist, he was a communist; unusually for a communist, however, he was a committed Scottish nationalist.
- Alexander MoffatPoets' Pub (1980)features the poets Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, Christopher Murray Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid), Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Edwin Morgan, Robert Garioch, Alan Bold and John A. Tonge.
- the seminal temporary artistic intervention at Edinburgh College of Art Strategy: Get Arts, which ran for three weeks in the summer of 1970 as part of the official Edinburgh International Festival. Strategy: Get Arts was an ambitious exhibition organised by Richard Demarco in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. The exhibition brought to Scotland, and so on to the international stage, the work of 35 Dusseldorf based artists, including Gerhard Richter, SigmarPolke, Blinky Palermo, and Joseph Beuys whose work Demarco first experienced in the spring of 1968 at the opening of the Documenta IV in Kassel. Strategy: Get Arts presented an expansive range of work encompassing installation, performance, film and sculpture.
- Strategy: Get Arts occasioned the first of much collaboration between Demarco and Beuys. The latters extensive contribution to the exhibition included his installation of The Pack in a corridor of the college. It consisted of twenty-four sledges equipped with ‘survival kits’ (comprising Beuys’ trademark animal fat, felt and a torch) cascading from the back of a German Volkswagen van resembling a pack of dogs. In addition he provided the climactic note to activities in Edinburgh College of Art life drawing rooms with a performance of his Scottish Symphony Celtic Kinloch Rannoch for eight hours each day for seven consecutive days. This signalled the start of a long-standing relationship with both Demarco and Scotland. Beuys’ visits to Scotland over the next ten years, eight in total, not only impacted on the contemporary art scene that experienced his art but also greatly influenced the direction of his life’s work.
- The Third Eye Centre was directed by the Italo-Scot musician, poet and playwright Tom McGrath founding editor of the underground magazine InternationalTimes in 1966. McGrath’s return to Scotland was a great catalyst for a burgeoning transmedia approach to art practice, one that combined radical politics, media and performance to startling effect.
- Demonstrate a shift from representations of Scotland associated with the Kailyard school…The Kailyard school of Scottish fiction was developed about the 1890s as a reaction against what was seen as increasingly coarse writing representing Scottish life complete with all its blemishes. It has been considered to be an overly sentimental representation of rural life, cleansed of real problems and issues that affected the people.To the 1960s counterculture, which can be evidenced in for example Scottish International, which was established in 1968, emerged as a pioneering arts magazine in a ‘comparatively impoverished cultural situation.’ It was primarily a medium for critical discourse posited on the notion of internationalism. It was a quarterly review of the arts that set the work of Scottish artists, architects, orchestras and theatres in an international context of both critical and creative work. Scottish International was concerned not only with developments within the arts but also with their context, the social and political changes that were gathering momentum.
- Just because people share a similar birthplace and address doesn’t mean that they have anything in common. Identity isn’t tied up with this, it has as much to do with other factors (sex, class, race, sporting affiliations, religion, favourite food, musical tastes, etc.) I’m not saying that things like the kailyard are embarrasing, quite the opposite – it’s just that they are very powerful myths up for grabs to be manipulated by anyone if they see fit. They can just as well be ignored. Many of the artists who are living in Scotland aren’t Scottish and thus justifiably have no interest in such matters. Obviously art made in Scotland simply doesn’t have to be seen in a national context, indeed it seldom is. The very idea is disturbing to most people who remember the rise of ultra-right nationalism in the late 70s, a period when late modernist internationalism was perceived to on its deathbed.