Landscape as a work of fiction (working title)

‘Landscape as a work of fiction’ (working title) is an ongoing series of photographs paired with text descriptions. The photographs are all taken in the landscape surrounding the artists’ home. All the texts are produced, collaboratively, by the artist and a Generative Pre-trained Transformer Artificial Intelligence. A strictly objective description, for each image, is fed into the GPT-AI. This process is repeated and refined until a text emerges that accurately describes the photograph, but with a subjective response independent of the artist. The photographs will be produced as framed prints, approximately 20”x16”, and accompanied by text labels (A5). Exhibition site and date yet to be identified. An online version of this, as a work in progress, can be viewed at the following link: http://www.alancurrall.com/index.php/research-and-unshown-work/hill/ This work relates back to ‘Exits and Entrances’, 2020 (Output ID: 7978) in which the poetic response of a human collaborator introduced a mythological reading of photographs entirely independent of the artist

Hertie Querty

Group exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow. Two of my video works, recently purchased for the City of Glasgow collection, were selected for this show

Reflections on family portrait with self-portrait, 2018

Performance to video made for the exhibition, Cabinet Interventions at Pollok House, Glasgow, Scotland. This exhibition was the concluding event to series of artists' residencies at the National Trust for Scotland property, Pollok House over the Summer and Autumn of 2017. 'Reflections on family portrait with self-portrait' is a response to a residency spent within a large country house, richly adorned with portraits of the family who used to own it, the Stirling-Maxwell's of Pollok, along side a notable collection of portraits of the Spanish Habsburg family. This work deals with themes of vanity, privilege, representation, family history and the putative possibility of time-travel. It invokes a dialogue between autobiographical details of the artist, his home and genealogy, and the many historical portraits and mirrors adorning the walls of Pollok House

SOUTH OF NO NORTH: Approaches to art and performance

Group exhibition curated by Ben Harman, Director, Stills: Centre for Photography, Edinburgh at Siobhan Davies Studios, London. Featuring work by the following artists: Ruth Barker, Alan Currall, Romany Dear, Anthony Schrag and Fred Daniels. Alan Currall's video work, How I would probably do it (2004), a four minute monologue of self-reflexive running commentary on how best to proceed with an ambiguous physical task, is being presented alongside Head (2004), an audio monologue of a male voice detailing the attributes of an ideal body

Ideas in Things

Group Exhibition, curated by Dean Hughes, featuring work by the following artists: David Blackaller Juan Cruz Alan Currall Sian Robinson Davie

Silent dog whistles

This is a sculptural work in two parts: 'Silent dog whistle' and 'Silent dog whistle ("oak")'. This work emerged from a period of research around ideas of the relative consciousness and relative value systems between species, as a way of examining those that are pertinent to us. The resultant form for this work comprises two rotten sticks of 18 inches and 6 inches in length, which have been chewed by a dog and then polished to a very fine finish. These are presented atop two plinths on bespoke, heat-polished, clear acrylic stands

Welcome and Apologies / Congratulations and Goodbye

This is a two part, performance to camera, video work. Focussing on the expressive capacity of the close-up face and it's potential to be misread, I delivered fragmented blandishments that slide in and out sync with the performed emotion. This work was made for the exhibition, 'Semi' at Rhubaba in Edinburgh (September-October 2012). It was subsequently included in the exhibitions 'James Bell' at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (April-May 2013) and 'Ideas in Things' at Maria Stenfors, London (June-July 2014)

The Carrot Stick Scenario

This work developed out of thinking around ideas of animal and human consciousness, the perceived differences between them, and the forms of communication that exist within and across their different value economies. This audio-video installation was created for an exhibition at Liars of The Earth, an occasional project space hosted in the studio of artist Chad McCail. The work comprises three video streams and surround-sound audio. In one video I use a close-up face shot to deliver a short monologue, proclaiming an absurd definition for the ontological value of both 'stick' and 'carrot'. To one the left hand side of this, another video shows a hand holding a small stick aloft in front of a moorland landscape. To the right hand side the opposite hand holds a slice of carrot in front of a similar landscape. At each conclusion of the looping monologue, a dog leaps suddenly into view and snatches away the stick or the carrot. This is accompanied by alternately encouraging and chastising utterances coming from the four audio monitors space around the exhibition space

Dod dog agog above the Sea of Fog

Dod dog agog above the Sea of Fog, 2023. consists of four C-Type Photographs, three at 700 x 500mm and one at 600 x 400mm. The larger prints are displayed in black aluminium frames, with no mount, and the smaller in an unpainted oak frame, with a 100mm ivory coloured window mount border. This work was shown at the exhibition, “To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees”, curated by Johnnie Wales at Sogo Gallery, Glasgow, 19 October - 7 December 2023

Unwrapped

Exhibition at Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. The Future Ferens Group, working in collaboration with the Ferens collection curators selected from works gifted by the Contemporary Art Society in recent years.This exhibition included one of my works. I was also invited to give a gallery talk as part of this project