Counterpoint at Edinburgh Art Festival 2014
24th July 2014
The List
By Rhona Taylor
Counterpoint at Edinburgh Art Festival 2014: hoping to add to contemporary art in Scotland, not just repeat it
Alec Finlay, Ellie Harrison, Michelle Hannah, Andrew Miller & more contribute to GENERATION showcase
Talbot Rice Gallery is doing GENERATION with a twist. It is one of 60 venues taking part in Scotland’s biggest ever showcase of art – a huge national event celebrating the work of the country’s artists over the past 25 years – but when the project was announced, Talbot Rice’s principal curator decided she wanted to do things a little differently.
‘When GENERATION came about, I had a touch of the awkward squad about me,’ Pat Fisher says. ‘I didn’t want to just do a monograph exhibition of an artist within that period. I toyed with various things but none of them seemed the right fit. We wanted to find out what we could do that would add to the story, not just repeat it.’
To move the story on, the gallery selected eight artists to take part in Counterpoint – a series of solo shows that Fisher says will come together and resonate with one another across the Talbot Rice’s unique gallery spaces. ‘These artists are in the vanguard of the art world,’ Fisher adds. ‘They are the vectors of something new rather than something that follows on.’
The eight artists include Michelle Hannah and Shona Macnaughton, who have both used performance to respond to the institutional architecture of the gallery, part of the University of Edinburgh. Hannah used the university’s Playfair Library for ‘Statue’, the first recording of one of her singing performances, in which she used lasers to refract off her sequin-covered face.
‘Universities as old as Edinburgh are aware of the historic tradition they come from, but it’s also a place of new ideas,’ Fisher says. ‘That idea of the laboratory and of experimentation – of risk-taking – is something we try to fold into our exhibition approach. In this show we’re giving artists the opportunity to develop their own work, so it’s also creating this other counterpoint about what is the association between a visual art installation and performance art.’
There is a strong element of performance throughout the show, which is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. As well as an evening of live work held in the gallery on 16 August, performance forms the basis of much of the work on display. ‘Performance is coming back,’ Fisher adds. ‘It’s not as it was in the 1970s, it’s a new type of performance. It looks at the notion of what performance might be and how you record it – how you create a stage scenario.’
In the main gallery space, Andrew Miller has created a breakfast bar that will act as a meeting point, while Craig Mulholland presents ‘POTEMKIN FUNKTION’, an installation that includes sound work and a custom-made bowling alley. In the upper gallery space, Alec Finlay has created a multimedia work looking at satellite communication, GPS navigation and the spacial memory of bees.
In the Georgian Gallery, Ellie Harrison has installed one of two pieces in the show that reference the Scottish independence referendum on 18 September – the other being Ross Birrell’s work for his ‘Envoy’ project, in which he will throw a metal cast of Heisenberg’s uncertainty equation into the Firth of Clyde on the day of the vote.
For her work, ‘After The Revolution, Who Will Clean Up The Mess?’, Harrison has installed four confetti cannons and a detonator bearing the word ‘Yes’ in the gallery. For the first 48 days of the exhibition, her work will sit quietly alongside a series of sculptures by Keith Farquhar – but if Scots vote for independence, the cannons will be detonated as part of an event that will be broadcast live on the internet on the night of the vote.
‘It’s a really over the top, ostentatious celebration creating a massive spectacle,’ Harrison says. ‘Within a space like the Georgian Gallery, something of that scale is almost completely overwhelming. It’s ambiguous – you’ve got all this confetti going everywhere, but you’re actually creating a massive mess that somebody’s going to have to clear up. In a gallery context you're also doing something really inappropriate and temporally defacing the other artworks.’
The work mirrors the sense of anticipation that exists in Scotland in relation to the referendum, Harrison says. ‘Nothing might happen – it could all be a massive anti-climax, but that’s what I’m interested in. It’s the temptation to push the button, but without really knowing the chain of events that will unfold. That’s the situation I’m creating in the artwork.’
The performance aspect of the work is something Harrison says engages people, creating an experience rather than a commodity out of her art. ‘I’m drawn to performance because I’m drawn to anything that can create an atmosphere. That’s why I like to use humour because it’s a way of engaging people across the board. Whether they think it’s art or not, they'll understand it on some sort of level.’
Talbot Rice Gallery, 650 2210, until 18 October, free. Watch Ellie Harrison’s webcast at ellieharrison.com/aftertherevolution.
Further Reference
- Article on The List website
- After the Revolution, Who Will Clean Up the Mess? website
- Edinburgh Art Festival website
Other Press
- After the Data Confessional: Interview with Ellie Harrison
- Night at the Museum
- Interview: Ellie Harrison
- A Most Unusual Referendum Results Party
- Art Review: Counterpoint
- Getting Straight to the Point
- Confetti Cannon Primed to Explode, or Maybe Not
- Indyref Confetti Cannon to go on Display at Edinburgh Art Festival
- Counterpoint at Edinburgh Art Festival 2014
- Eat 22 (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- Power For The People! (by Ellie Harrison)
- Counter-Hegemonic Propaganda Machine (by Ellie Harrison)
- The Hunger Artists
- The Artists’ Bond
- Notes Towards Becoming a Good Citizen (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- She Shelves Sanctuary
- National Museum of Roller Derby (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- Early Warning Signs
- Artist Fund Thyself
- Ellie & Oliver Show
- Art for the Age of Information
- Workers Are Not Alone
- Market Forces
- DIY Lottery Art Funding
- Converse Emerging Artists Award: Ellie Harrison
- Fair Exchange
- Vault Art Glasgow
- A Good Climate for Business (by Ellie Harrison)
- Interview with Ellie Harrison
- A Brief History of Privatisation
- Art Monthly Profile
- Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed
- Trajectories (interview with Ellie Harrison)
- Furtherfield Radio
- Funding: One Alternative
- New Forms of Collectivity (by Ellie Harrison)
- The Finished Article
- Art Erupts Out of a Fine Mess
- Artists in a Bid for Success with Different Type of Draw
- Party Politics: Election Art
- Young Scottish Artists
- Budget Buzzwords Prompted Machine to Deliver Crisps
- Lady Dada
- Summer Reading
- Altermodernism: The Age of Stupid (by Ellie Harrison)
- Ellie Harrison Loves Tea
- Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector
- Five Pointers to Becoming the ‘Perfect Artist’
- How Can We Continue Making Art? (by Ellie Harrison)
- This is Not a Circular
- Ones to Watch
- Braziers International
- Two Years of Tea Blog
- Angel Row Closing Party
- The Obsessives
- New Stars on Broadway
- This is Ellie Harrison
- Prime
- Insignificance
- Day-to-Day Data Review
- Sports Day
- Many Conceptual Artists Have an Unholy Delight in Statistics
- Day-to-Day Data Review
- Under the Data, the Stars
- Day-to-Day Data Exhibitions Preview
- Out of the Ordinary
- Just the Facts...
- Day-to-Day Data Event Preview
- Underground Movement
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- The Big Sneeze
- Artist’s Profile
- LabCulture Feature
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- A Day in the Life
- Eat Me!
- Eat 22 Events Preview
- Graduate’s Snappy Diet
- Diet Hard
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