In the last 25 years in Scotland, we seem to have grown this extraordinary pool of talent
that beats everything else in the world; you know like, we’re one of the absolute leaders
of contemporary art.
All of the artists are sincerely trying to communicate with the world. There’s no one
trying to bamboozle you, that’s one of the things that you really see about the arts in
Scotland that the work is generous.
It’s the landscape we understand, we feel we have a right to talk about it. So we see
Scotland as being our kind of palate.
Every day I come through here and it’s still like “ok, they actually, they did this,
did they really do this?” but yeah these are the places that I spend large amounts
of my life *laughs* for better or for worse.
I think a lot of our work is to do with storytelling really, I think we enjoy narrative.
As more and more of us live in towns and cities and suburbs we have less and less connection with
those kinds of rhythms and all of those kind of wee narratives that are spun out with another species.
You can see these other models for living; you know living with very little means,
living in a really fragile habitat, you know they’re surviving and we found that endlessly inspirational
It’s been said before many times but Glasgow basically bombed itself, didn’t need the
Luftwaffe. But then that said, you get these amazing views, its cathedral like spaces.
What excites me about Glasgow’s urban environment is the fact that it’s a city that is in
a perpetual state of flux. I love it because it doesn’t seem to know how to finish itself.
Looking at this one sort of snapshot image, you can read what’s happened here over the
last hundred and twenty plus years; the way that the city’s developed and the way we
go about constructing places to exist in, you know the way we mess it up and try again
and good things are lost but then good things come out of that process as well.
Glasgow itself held a sort of fascination because you go the rock garden and you can
see the guys that you know like Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
or James King and the Lone Wolves, like having a pint
and somehow you could access that world and that was really
fascinating for me that world of music and people deciding what kind of haircut they
were going to have, what kind of jacket they were going to wear on Saturday night. And
then of course the art school, getting there and being there was just, everything you sort
of hoped it would be and that was down to the people that I met, it was an extraordinary
time and everyone seemed sort of amazing and I think most of them were.
The breadth and scope of contemporary art in Scotland shows that we are a nation that
are proud of ourselves and are proud of our ability to take risks and be creative.
If you go to London or if you go to New York, go to Berlin people know about what’s happening
in Scotland, or what has been happening and what’s happening now. It’s not dead, it’s
not this idea that you know things were great when people were doing the environmental course
at Glasgow School of Art; its much bigger than that, people understand that its artists
from Dundee, artists from Aberdeen all representing the talent that we have.
I think my interest in national identities started when I was living in Edinburgh and
really being surrounded by a kind of touristic vision of Scotland.
I think Scotland’s a great place to be,
in the sense that it’s very supportive of emerging artists, supportive
of artists who are recent graduates so I felt on leaving that you’re almost kind of entering
a whole other community of graduates, people from Dundee, Glasgow, Aberdeen and a sense
of there being a community outside of college as well that was almost as supportive as what
you get within.
Transmission gallery is an artist run gallery in the East end of Glasgow. In the merchant city.
I got involved with it through friends of mine when I was at art school. People were
quite excited about it because it was artist run so it was their space. To have a place
that is yours that you can put on exhibitions, invite other artists and you were able to
do exchanges and residences. They’re really important part of the ecology of what I would
see as a healthy arts scene, that there’s people that come and people that go and you’re
able to formulate those relationships and have a place where that outcome is seen.
I think what’s been really important is the different kinds of opportunities created
that retain artists after they’ve graduated and you’ll often find that through a
grassroot, artist-led organisation or through studios.
These kind of things make a real difference
and it means that people tend to stay on rather than go to the main centres or kind of move
down to London. I think that’s one of the things that’s made Scotland a place for
artists to continue staying and working in.
We can make stories about Scotland what are universal stories and we can make those stories
with some authenticity because we’re actually here and we live it
and it’s interesting because these friends in New York,
they keep saying “well, to make it in the art world,
you’ve got to go to New York, you’ve got to be in New York, you know, what you doing
living in Dundee?” but we were the ones that was having the big show in New York and
they never had a big show in New York so it’s quite interesting you know; you don’t need
to be anywhere else.