Dirty museum

A visual essay consisting of uncaptioned images which recover an item of past auto-ethnographic reflection. The images originate from only one roll of 35 mm B+W film which in 1991 documented the derelict fabric of a pre-restored emotive site in Irish national memory. In Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin the leaders of the Easter 1916 uprising were executed by firing squad. The essay describes author’s failed attempts to engage with the site beyond its solemn facticity

Monuments to the period we live in

John Latham’s (1921 – 2006) ‘monuments to the period we live in’ are two partially protected groups of oil shale ‘bings’ (Norse: heaps). These were initially the voluminous waste by-product of Scotland’s energy production industries, reconceived within a synthesis of methods originally developed by the Artist Placement Group (APG) 1965 – 89 and allied to concepts within the manifesto of auto-destructive art (Metzger, 1965) and the proclivities of Latham’s renowned but often controversial practice. This chapter explains the methodology of Latham’s reimagination of the site he renamed Niddrie Woman (1975-6) and why it has resonance. In doing so the essay looks forward to how the future conservation of these remarkable forms as sculptural monuments is increasingly dependent on their assessment as ‘hotspots’ of biodiversity. The academic context builds on archival items within the Artist Placement Group Archive at Tate Britain’s Hyman Kreitman Research Centre, Richardson (2012), Walker (1976, 1994) and curatorial research (Hudek, 2012), and onsite environmental research (Harvie, 2005)

‘Stones Hard’ and a ‘Sea like Glass’: Orwell’s island pastoral

This case study considers the northern island environment in which George Orwell lived during the immediate post-war period prior to the final completion of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), as observed in his diaries. His existence in the remote northern edge of the island of Jura at the advent of, in his own phrase, the Cold War, has received surprisingly little critical examination. There are few attempts to connect his experience while there, including a syntheses of his island and other related incidents in images within the novel itself. This chapter therefore re-examines biographies of Orwell and relevant critical texts, combined with observations from site visits to the remote house ‘‘Barnhill’’ which he rented from late May 1946 towards the end of his life. As Orwell’s ideal pastoral environment has been little attended to within versions of the writer’s life, the central question remains, why Orwell had seemingly absented himself from the earlier spheres of cultural influence and the fierce zones of action which he reported on within a vast journalistic output

Artists' ‘embedded reinterpretation’ in museums and sites of heritage

Artists’ ‘embedded reinterpretation’ results in responsive artwork, consciously made and sited in proximity to existing artworks or artefacts, the latter acting as a source. The methodology provides a practice-based means of broad thematic, conceptual, contextual or environmental critique which goes beyond approaches which emphasise purely formal resonances between artefacts. How embedded reinterpretation produces dramatic juxtapositions in space and time is also important as its range of methods have a retrospective and prospective foci. This also holds implications and anticipations for an existing body of cultural history if applied through the practice of interventions in museums. This article concludes with two such curatorial case studies and a prospective project. Artist’s embedded reinterpretation can be considered as a challenge to notions of periodisation, more importantly it develops creative reciprocity and affiliation, to enable imaginative disruption in ordered environments

Wet paint: Visual culture in a changing Britain – a round table debate

Political decisions and debates regarding the interregional and interna- tional partnerships that constitute Great Britain, including those over Scottish Independence, EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) and proposed legislation on an ‘in/out’ referendum on British membership of the European Union, have contributed to, and intensified, the examin- ation of Britain’s institutions, as well as its national emblems and arche- types. In light of such a dynamic situation, Visual Culture in Britain has asked representatives of British universities, the museum sector and research centres to respond to the idea of a changing Britain through the prism of British art and visual culture, using cogent examples wherever possible, and to outline their observations, understandings and positions within this rapidly developing context

Talking about a Christine Borland sculpture: Effective empathy in contemporary anatomy art (and an emerging counterpart in medical training?)

This Introduction and interview discusses the poetical and empathic insights that are a key to the effectiveness of contemporary artist Christine Borland’s practice and its relevance to the medical humanities, visual art research and medical students’ training. It takes place in a context of intensive interest in reciprocity and conversation as well as expert exchange between the fields of Medicine and Contemporary Arts. The interview develops an understanding of medical research and the application of its historical resources and contemporary practice-based research in contemporary art gallery exhibitions. Artists tend not to follow prescriptive programmes towards new historical knowledge, however, a desire to form productive relationships between history and contemporary art practice does reveal practical advantages. Borland’s research also includes investigations in anatomy, medical practices and conservation

In spite of history”: Painfully acquired insights in the corresponding states of Scottish and Irish contemporary art

This article discusses themes of national identity as inhabited by Scottish and Irish critical art-texts, exemplar artworks and art institutional conditions. The article works against an idea of ‘measured difference’ as centric, Ireland and Scotland are European peripheries with shared legacies that present complex narratives of origin and settlement, migration and diaspora. The first of four sections, The Shared Archive, discusses the resources which support research into Scottish and Irish art, particularly extolling national archives, and considers new interpretative methods and their application in Scotland and Irish contemporary art discourses. This continues in the second section, History Makers, which highlights national identity as expressed in Irish and Scottish contemporary art. The third section, Interludes weaves together observations by the Scottish-born author during a number of visits to Ireland. As this article’s polemic is partly informed by the painfully acquired political and economic insights derived from the prelude and aftermath of the 2014 Independence Referendum in Scotland and the catastrophic failure of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ model in Republic of Ireland, the fourth section, Future State?, argues for a renewed cultural policy supporting better living and working conditions of contemporary artists in Scotland by utilising similar research and arguments recently made in Ireland

Glasgow 1990: A ‘before and after’ in the Visual Arts of a European Capital of Culture

Glasgow 1990: A ‘before and after’ in the Visual Arts of a European Capital of Cultur

‘On the move between shore and shore’: Scotland and Ireland’s history-makers, artists and the ‘Future State’

‘On the move between shore and shore’: Scotland and Ireland’s history-makers, artists and the ‘Future State

Broken north [conference presentation]

This paper touches on ideas of wilderness in the North and in particular visiting artists and writers. There’s a connection with my earlier article on Scottish landscape Contemporary Scottish Art and the Landscape of Abandonment for Visual Culture in Britain. That article discussed how a north directed journey towards an empty landscape is a common theme in contemporary visual art, not just in Scottish art, and one imbued with an intangible sense of an abandoned landscape. What I didn’t say then was while there is always the opportunity of a further North. For the Northern visitor the ideal is that the North offers up a place of personal arrival which has no ‘beyond’, i.e. a place one need not go beyond, and that seemingly what needs to be left behind can be left behind