Scottish Independents
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The document provides information about various art galleries, exhibitions, and artists that were influential in the development of art in Scotland from the 1960s through the early 2000s. It mentions grassroots initiatives like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and galleries like Richard Demarco Gallery. Several artists are named along with descriptions of some of their works, such as Stan Bell's 1975 SAC Mural and David Hall's 1971 TV interruptions. Cultural centers mentioned include Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Arts, and WASPS.
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Scottish Independents
- 16. Scottish Realism (1971) SAC touring exhibition curated by the poet Alan Bold. The importance of Rocket magazine should be noted here, in particular issue 8 which featured Alan Bold’s manifesto on Scottish Realism.
- 17. Alexander Moffat Poets' Pub (1980) features the poets Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, Christopher Murray Grieve, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Edwin Morgan, Robert Garioch, Alan Bold and John A. Tonge.
- 19. February 1975
- 22. New 57 situated at 105 Rose Street, Edinburgh from 1965-73
- 25. 57 is comparable to the example set by grass-roots cultural initiatives like the Festival Fringe (founded 1947) and run in parallel with other radical developments such as Jim Haynes Paperback Bookshop (opened 1959), Traverse Theatre (founded 1963), Richard Demarco Gallery (founded 1966), Edinburgh Arts (founded 1972) and WASPS (Workshop and Artists Studio Provision, Scotland founded 1977).
- 26. Lawrence Weiner at Transmission and Fruitmarket Early 1990s
- 30. Stephen Murray and Luke Collins - Seek ye ur Questing Beast at Intermedia, Glasgow.
- 35. Repro Tableau 7th August - 29th August 2004
- 36. Keith MacIsaac Bridgeness (2004) Digital Projection 24 mins
- 46. Tom McGrath, poet and playwright. Founding Editor of International Times (1966), author of The Hardman (1977) and Director Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre (1974-77).
- 49. May 1975
- 51. Out of the Blue, Bongo Club, founded 1994, New Street, Edinburgh
- 62. Orange Juice – Poor Old Soul Postcard Records Glasgow 1981 Strawberry Switchblade Spaghetti Factory Glasgow 1981
- 65. Feast of Silenus 20th May 2004 OLIVER EAST - FOUR BRICKS AND A GROUND SHEET documentation: marker pen on 7 ground sheets
- 70. Stan Bell Hex , (1975) SAC Mural George’s Cross, Glasgow Ronnie Forbes Domestic Interior (1974) Acrylic on canvas 152 x 183cm From Recent TV Series Collins Gallery, Glasgow 1974.
- 71. David Hall TV Interruptions (1971) Ten unannounced broadcasts on Scottish Television in August and September 1971.
- 72. Beltane Fire Festival May Day, Calton Hill, Edinburgh Re-initiated in 1988 by Angus Farquhar Farquhar was a member of the interventionist use of images, film video in Test Department 1980s NVA 1990s
- 73. Peter McCaughey Wave (1993) Installation 3000cm x 4000cm Ten synchronised video projectors project images onto screens hung in windows of Tmax Mill in Glasgow. The event took place eight hours after demolition of Queen Elizabeth Tower Blocks. Images from the demolition were rapidly remixed and included in an event.
- 75. David Sherry Carrying a Bucket of Water Around for a Week
- 76. Kate Owens Gates-of-Ades, Edinburgh Art Festival (2005)
- 79. 21 Lismore Crescent, Edinburgh EH8 7DL By Bus Bus No. 4, 15, 26, 44 from St. Andrews square Bus No. 5 from the Bridges Get off the stop after Meadowbank Stadium called Meadowbank House
- 87. Andy Knowles
- 92. Tommy Grace: Installation View: Ambush at Lover's Rock Aurora
- 95. Daniel McOnnell
- 101. Creative Scotland?
Notas do Editor
- How do we understand what constitutes ‘Britain’ today?
- The British Isles are home to 5 Nations (Scotland, England, Wales and NI) and two States (UK and Eire). The largest of the states, the UK, has 4 parliaments, (a UK National Parliament and three devolved parliaments).
- [Britain? British?] This is something that’s particularly contentious in the UK right now – arguably we are reaching a crisis point. This is generated by two related pressures: Devolution is inflationary, it generates demand for more autonomy. If for New Labour modernisers, cultural devolution has been the route to economic revolution - it is a route that has inevitably created a groundswell for further constitutional reforms. Neo-liberalism is the sworn enemy of large nation states. The crisis for ‘Britain’ is worsened by the fact that the largest of the nations, England, does not have a parliament (there are no ESPs) to enable it to participate in the process of downsizing taking place elsewhere in the UK. The other 3 member nations of the Union, do and thus are able to negotiate their own paths more flexibly. [Scotland? Scottish] The crisis is not simply a result of neo-nationalism since the national imaginaries of the 4 nations are themselves contested internally. If the economic rationale for the existence of the UK and the British imaginary prove to be unconvincing, we have to contend with the fact that there may no longer be any ‘British Art’.
- The devolution of the ACGB has pre-empted the dissolution of a unified ‘British’ national imaginary within the UK. This unifying role is now one that the British Council plays (abroad). There is no ‘UK’ as far as the administration and discussion of culture is concerned – cultural policy is entirely devolved from Westminster to Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff and the English Regions. This has been the case in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales since back in the 1960s – pre-empting political devolution by over three decades. The national Arts Councils have helped to create the economic conditions in which independent artistic microclimates have grown. Each nation has the the means to built a distinctive and appropriate infrastructure and a sustainable independent art scene. The Arts Councils are autonomous and answer to their respective devolved parliaments (ACE to Westminster) and thus to different political ideologies/national imaginaries (especially in Scotland where the SNP are in power). There is a fully federal system in play here. Note, that England not only has its own Arts Council, but that it has 7 regionally devolved bodies relating, more or less, to its Regions and their population density.
- This particular brand of federalism is a marker of neo-medievalism – of micro-geographies becoming more important than grand narratives such as ‘Britishness’ or ‘Englishness’. Smaller societies answer to global goals – the national becomes secondary to the pursuit of wealth and happiness. [come back to this] Because of the impact of neo-medievalism , the discourses of Britishness continue to surface, but do so in very confused ways! For example, the federal structure and thus the national imaginaries of the Arts Councils in the UK is not always communicated as clearly or coherently as it could be.
- The UK is represented at Venice in the British Pavillion.
- Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are also there.
- An Arnoldian exploitation of community and customs as a centrifugal unifying force cannot make Britain mean what it once did – this has to clearly understood and embraced. (see Arnold, 1869 and Gordon Brown, below).
- It is crucial to adopt a narratological approach to grasp what is distinctive and imperative about Gray and Byrne’s practices. Both artists approach the production of art in the same way as they approach the writing of fiction since their visions of Scotland must be imagined before they can be realized. If the nation is an imaginary community then creating an image of Scotland as it could be rather than simply as it appears to be was paramount. It is therefore highly significant that these artists have consistently conceived of themselves as implied authors which is to say that the trope of the artist as it appears in their work is a shadow of the ‘real’ artist, a fiction that narrates the works in question into being and which often features within them reminding us that we are viewing a fiction. Both artists make extensive use of visual overdetermination, baroque pictorial devices that we might usefully think of as pastiching extravagant purple prose while nevertheless harbouring utopian aspirations. This, again, fundamentally separates these artists from the drive for authenticity that dominated, in different ways, both abstract and Realist painting in Scotland during the 50s, 60s and, as we shall see, the 70s.
- We can see comparable narratives of urban entrapment at play in Gray’s early works produced while he was still a student, including noir-esque period pieces such as Night Street Self Portrait (1953) and Clergyman with Ominous Street Scene (1952) which reveal the flourishing of Gray’s idiosyncratic imagination. Such works are sketches of sorts for Gray’s Unthank, a dystopic city modelled on Glasgow that features in his novel Lanark (1981). Gray’s alter-ego is Duncan Thaw who, in Lanark , vainly attempts to paint the story of Genesis in Cowlairs Parish Kirk. “Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music-hall song and a few bad novels” bemoans Thaw. “That’s all we’ve given the world outside. That’s all we’ve given ourselves.”[3] Gray’s novel is known for its lengthy passages of metafiction, the author liberally entering into discussions with the main character or offering the reader extended notes on his acts of plagiarism. A similarly playful kunstwollen belies Gray’s grandest pictorial schemes. Arguably the most ambitious public art work in Scotland, a mural scheme has been slowly materialising in recent years in Òran Mór, an auditorium, theatre, nightclub, bar and restaurant that occupies the former Kelvinside Parish Kirk in Glasgow. Extending the meta-fictive universe of Lanark , Òran Mór takes the role of the Elite Café just as Gray plays his alter-ego Duncan Thaw. Thaw’s quest to paint his city imaginatively is materialising in Òran Mór. The scheme rallies against the kirk’s prescriptive Calvinist inheritance; it is speculative, outward looking and inventive.[4] [3] Thaw in Kenneth McAlpin Chapter 22, Book 2, Alasdair Gray, Lanark , p243. In their own ways Byrne and Gray both productively break the cycle of inferiorism by addressing it directly, with great ambition and much humour. They are thus both rightfully regarded as pivotal Scottish artists. It should be noted that this recognition has come late in both of their lives despite the efforts of the art establishment to ignore them and their work. Most talented artists in Scotland in the 50s and 60s were not prepared to pay this price and thus joined the Diaspora (mainly) to London where they found success came more easily (e.g. Eduardo Paolozzi, The Boyle Family, John Bellany, Bruce McLean, etc.) Thus the cycle has continued apace until a different example was set by these artists. [4] This could just as easily describe the music of The Humblebums and by extension the kind of Scotland as imagined by Byrne and his peers.
- Byrne’s practice as an artist has to be seen as allied to the transformation of working class ethics in Tory 1950s Glasgow[1], a period in which American-style mass consumerism was becoming increasingly pervasive. These interests were reflected in Byrne’s painstaking paintings which merged a fascination with popular Americana, folk and naïve art, self-consciously encapsulating the glamorous myth of rock n’ roll authenticity and America’s false promise of an inclusive primitivism. This way of working went entirely against the grain of the beat-inspired abstraction found amidst mytho-poetic ethnocentric Scottish painters such as Alan Davie. If Davie’s ethno-Celtic sensibility and the Nationalistic tropes of Scottish painting located in the landscape were rejected, it was in favour of an urban-folk vision that is best encapsulated in the music of The Humblebums (1969), Gerry Rafferty’s early collaboration with Billy Connolly. This duo scorned the bogus ethnicity and affectation of Celtic folk music and old men’s blues in favour of a mix of lewd steelworker jokes and jukebox folk-pop. Byrne’s own folk history is most clearly inscribed in the rapier-like wit of three slab boys in the Design Studios of A.F. Slobo Carpet Manufacturers, Paisley. Each dreams of leaving their dreary small town jobs. Spanky Farrell thinks of becoming a rock n’ roll star in the USA, Hector McKenzie, of marrying the mailroom girl Lucille, and Phil McCann of gaining admission to art school. Byrne is a composite of each character, his life echoing theirs - he went to art school and then got married and returned to Paisley to work in as a carpet designer.[2] [1] This was the time of Harold MacMillan’s Tory triumphalism. Although Scotland is the home of Labourism, especially since the 1970s, the Conservative and Unionist Party gained more than 50% of the Scottish popular vote in the 1950s. [2] This cycle of expectation followed almost certainly by disappointment (and thus to chronic lack of expectation) is central to discussions of Scotland’s miserablist sensibility, a fatalistic acceptance of ‘urban entrapment’ and dependency culture that New Labour are keen to break in order to inspire confidence in the economy. The popularity of schadenfreude and the cycle of inferiorism is seen to stem from the 1707 Act of Union by many commentators. See Beveridge, Craig, and Ronald Turnbull. The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism and the Intellectuals . Edinburgh: Polygon, 1989 and Carol Craig’s The Scots Crisis in Confidence , Big Thinking, 2003 the thesis which ‘justifies’ the work of the Centre for Confidence Studies which she now directs .
- Until the Scottish Parliament was re-opened in 1999, this quest for (inter)national autonomy was pursued through cultural devolution. In artistic terms this was encouraged, moderately, by the establishment of the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) in 1967. The SAC helped for a time, in part, to create the economic conditions in which an independent artistic microclimate might grow. As was the case with Eire, funding was (and still is) given to organisations which make particular claims to pursue distinctly ‘Scottish’ programming policy. Despite this, Scottish artists largely regarded the SAC with suspicion, as a clone of its parent organization the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB). SAC tended to keep a tight reign on the organizations it sponsored.
- To confirm his credentials as a cultural worker, Moffat worked at an engineering factory from 1964-1966 and in 1967 visited Dresden, Halle, Weimar, East Berlin and Buchenwald concentration camp in the German Democratic Republic with Bold and Bellany. Moffat’s work featured in Scottish Realism (1971) SAC touring exhibition selected by his friend the poet Alan Bold. [1] Bold’s advocacy of, a rather poorly theorized, Realism appears naïve, nostalgic and retrograde in the context of contemporary international art practice of the early 70s. This impression is particularly acute when we consider such work alongside innovative developments in conceptualism, feminism and systems based-practices - all of which were regularly exposed through the ambitious and groundbreaking programming of the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh. There is sense in which artists associated with the New 57 saw the Demarco Gallery as something to compete with rather than a context to embrace, despite the fact that they saw their primary target to be the conservatism of the RSA. To New 57 artists both Demarco and the RSA represented the ‘establishment’ since both were major recipients of SAC awards, grants that seemed to elude artists who wanted to run their own infrastructures. [2] As such both were regarded to be distant from the daily practice of the artist, both were managerial, administrative and distant from the wider audience. Given that the insistence on a Realist agenda didn’t bode particularly well with Scotland’s commercial galleries the New 57’s independence from commercial concerns and academic proprieties and its ability to nurture communities of artists made it crucial in the development and promotion of new art in Scotland. [1] The importance of Rocket magazine should be noted here, in particular issue 8 which featured Alan Bold’s manifesto on Scottish Realism. [2] Examining the accounts of the SAC in the 1970s shows clearly that the Demarco Gallery was receiving large subsidies while the New 57 was, in comparison, rather poorly supported. For example in 1972-3 the Demarco Gallery received £17,000 in grants (the largest award given in that year) compared with the more modest £1,250 awarded to the New 57. This certainly reflects the ambitions and experience of each organisation but is, nevertheless, indicative of a lack of investment in ARIs and is indicative of the deliberate maintenance of a sweat-equity economy that continues in Scottish art to the time of writing.
- Scottish International showcased the literati of the 60s who gravitated around Edinburgh’s Milne’s Bar (Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Robert Garioch, Sorley MacLean and Edwin Morgan) as well as the work of then lesser known Glasgow writers such as Gray. [1] [1] See for example Gray’s short story “The Comedy of the White Dog”, Scottish International , 8, November 1969, p18-21, later published by Glasgow Print Studio Press in 1979.
- Unlike the ACGB it actually administered and curated some galleries directly, notably the gallery now known as Fruitmarket in Edinburgh which grew out of their HQ in Charlotte Square and the Glasgow SAC Centre in Blythswood Square which would form the basis for the Third Eye on Sauchiehall Street. SAC Attempted to respond to the need to regionalise the arts with innovations such as the Travelling Gallery.
- 1976 – Reform of Local Government 1976 – Devolution Referendum in the air – Together this would create even greater demand for national and local devolution – So: The need for an alternative to this London-led model of centralized cultural administration was deeply felt. This was something that already emerged since the late 60s via Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs), organizations that have proved to be crucial to the Scottish art infrastructure and the health of art practice.
- This desire is also at the heart of Richard Demarco’s links with Europe, with the New 57 Gallery’s fascination with German modernism and with the rise of new institutions such as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (founded 1960). The aim was to spearhead a cultural revival which would be ‘Scottish’, in the sense that it would rediscover its cultural and economic independence amidst the ruins of an imperialist British culture, and international in so far as it would explore Scotland’s independent links and networks with the world beyond the British Commonwealth.[1] [1] Scotland and its people played a central role in the growth of the British Empire (as colonizing nation). With the collapse of the Empire and with it the raison d'être of the British State, Scottish self-determination has become increasing appealing. In the early 1970s, North Sea oil fields promised to deliver an economic bounty that would allow Scotland to become a wealthy independent state once more and allow it to renegotiate its relations with the world.
- The first of what has become a wave of key ARIs, the 57 Gallery opened on the 9th of February 1957 in Daphne Dyce Sharp’s sculpture studio at 53 George Street. The artist run collective mutated into the New 57 situated at 105 Rose Street from 1965-73, where, benefiting greatly from the arm’s length funding of the SAC, it mainly showcased work by emerging Scottish artists who were excluded from the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the commercial galleries of the New Town. There were also important exhibitions from established artists including
- Jim Dine (1971)
- Max Beckmann (1970) Max Ernst, John Heartfeld
- 57 is comparable to the example set by grass-roots cultural initiatives like the Festival Fringe (founded 1947) and run in parallel with other radical developments such as Jim Haynes Paperback Bookshop (opened 1959), Traverse Theatre (founded 1963), Richard Demarco Gallery (founded 1966), Edinburgh Arts (founded 1972) and WASPS (Workshop and Artists Studio Provision, Scotland founded 1977). Chaired by painter Sandy Moffat from 1968-78, the New 57 operated as a cooperative, run mainly by painters that included Ian Patterson, Roger Askham, Mark Jones, Kirkland Main, Alan Johnston, Jim Birrell and Glen Onwin who took responsibility for the support of contemporary art practices that renegotiated the constraints engendered by national, municipal and commercial venues in Edinburgh. Artists associated with the New 57 - such as Ian Guthrie, Michael Docherty and John Mooney – also exhibited their work at David Balfour’s Bookshop Gallery (opened 1971) at 17 West Nicolson Street, and annually at the Edinburgh Festival 20 x 57 group shows held at the University of Edinburgh’s William Robertson Building in George Square from 1969. The shows were straightforward affairs, solo or groups exhibitions mainly of paintings and graphics devoid of any pressing curatorial intervention.
- Byrne and Gray’s figurative work negotiates an increasingly Americanised Scottish urbanism on home-spun terms. To what extent can we see a burgeoning sense of postmodern or postcolonial practice? Is this work simply parochial or does it aspire to the international impact and visibility that Lanark has undoubtedly has had? This desire to be both Scottish and international had its most powerful advocates in the magazine Scottish International (1968-74), a cross-cultural journal edited by Bob Tait.
- There are no ‘pan-British’ art magazines, only city-based publications –each with their own distinctive geopolitical identities. The makar model – the close connection between the indie art, music and publishing worlds is flourishes right up to the present day… Edinburgh : Product One O’Clock Gun Glasgow Variant The Drouth
- The arts centre was directed by the Italo-Scot musician, poet and playwright Tom McGrath[1] founding editor of the underground magazine International Times 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. [1] McGrath was also musical director of The Great Northern Welly Boot Show , starring comedian Billy Connolly. He established the foundations of the Third Eye Centre in 1974 and ran it for three years.
- The devolving Scotland was also to gain one of its most important and resolutely polymathic institutions when, in 1975, Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre opened to the public.
- Bold’s advocacy of Scottish Realism existed alongside a growing desire to produce work that would be encountered beyond the gallery system. The mural schemes of the early 1970s were one means by which this desire was broached. This set a number of precedents for what was to follow in Scotland. The mural schemes were large and ambitious, encouraging following generations of artists to aim to produce work on a similar scale. They were also largely iconographic (although there were a few abstract murals). Muralism picked up in the late 60s when much of the Victorian tenements of urban Central Scotland was being bulldozed. The old buildings vanished partly to make way for modern housing developments and partly to allow the introduction of new motorways, particularly in Glasgow. Murals were thus painted on Gable Ends to brighten up the scars left by the new concrete megastructures. These early schemes soon morphed into regenerative public art schemes in the Blackness area of Dundee, in Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Inverness, Perth and Arbroath. The Scottish Arts Council’s 1974 mural scheme commissioned four friezes in Glasgow, including a design by John Byrne.
- The murals themselves were largely ‘pictorialist’, blow ups of gallery art previously exhibited at the Glasgow League of Artists (GLA). The GLA, however, like many muralists in 1970s Britain, were a radicalised co-operative. Founded in 1971, they aimed to continue the spirit of 1968. “These ideas included a re-affirmation of the importance of art and all creative activity; greater public access to art as well as greater involvement in art activities; a belief in self-help and mutual aid to get things done, rather than passive dependence on ‘experts’ and established authority.”[1]. One important effect of the 70s projects was to bolster the popularity of mural painting and mixed media degree programmes led by Roger Hoare at GSA (wherein Campbell and Adrian Wiszneiwski were students) and in Bob McGilvray at DJCAD. These programmes laid the ground for later developments such as the GSA’s Department of Environmental Art and in turn for the greatly celebrated site and audience orientated public art produced in Scotland in the early 1990s. [1] Bell, Stan, ‘The Spirit of ‘68”, Roots into the 80’s: Glasgow League of Artists Yearbook , Glasgow: John Watson, 1979.
- Public Art – One Mile, Kate Owens, Collective links with next slide of SAC mural schemes
- I can try to conclude by looking at what's happening to SAC now and think about how such things would have fared under the proposed new regime. The end of arm’s length principles will destroy the ability of artists to create their own mythologies – it will put back the clock to before 1966 and take the localised elements out of Scottish art.