1
2
hospitalfield
Foreword
Amanda Catto
The Scotland + Venice partnership is delighted to introduce this impressive publication,
produced on the occasion of Graham Fagen’s exhibition of new work for the 56th
International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
Fagen is one of Scotland’s most influential artists and it has been a privilege to support
his commission for Venice, produced in close association with Hospitalfield in Arbroath.
We are particularly excited that the catalogue describes so many of Graham’s past works
alongside the pages that focus on the new commission for Venice.
The unique interiors of the historic Palazzo Fontana add a rich character and context that
has inspired and informed Fagen’s installation. The result is an absorbing work that resonates
in the space and unfolds over time.
Venice is the perfect opportunity to engage internationally diverse audiences with Fagen’s
work and we hope this publication will provide the perfect complement to the Scotland +
Venice exhibition.
Fagen’s exhibition is the 7th edition of the Scotland + Venice programme which was
established in 2003 to promote Scotland as an international centre for contemporary art.
Working with a different curator for each edition the priority is to offer artists this valuable
opportunity at the right moment in their career, and with the required curatorial support
to enable the strongest impact within this internationally significant context. Our success is
testament to the skills and exceptional vision of the artists and curators that we have worked
with to date.
Scotland + Venice is reliant on the contributions of many, however, the Scotland + Venice
partners wish to extend particular thanks to three people without whom this project would
not have been possible: the artist, Graham Fagen, the curator, Lucy Byatt, and the production
manager, Jane Connarty.
Scotland + Venice is a partnership between Creative Scotland, the National Galleries
of Scotland and the British Council. This strategic initiative, devised in 2003, has been
designed to promote some of the best work from Scotland on an international stage.
—
Amanda Catto is Portfolio Manager, Visual Arts, Creative Scotland
and Chair of the Scotland + Venice Steering Group
7
Guerra/Giardino, 2015
Neon and acrylic, 164 x 55 x 8cm
Introduction
Lucy Byatt
10
Hospitalfield has so much enjoyed working with Graham Fagen on this most ambitious new
work for Scotland + Venice, and before I dedicate this introduction to the artist I will take a
moment to introduce Hospitalfield: the publisher.
For those not already familiar, Hospitalfield is a house and estate left in trust by the 19th
century artist and polymath, Patrick Allan-Fraser (1834 – 1890), to support the arts and
learning. The estate is located in the east of Scotland, overlooking the North Sea, just to the
edge of the small Angus town of Arbroath. The programme is committed to working closely
with artists to commission new work. In addition we host one of Scotland’s foremost residency
programmes and welcome artists, writers, curators and other creative practitioners from
Scotland and far beyond, to spend time developing their work in this peaceful place.
The commission with Graham Fagen for Scotland + Venice comes at a pivotal moment for
the evolution of our programme and an important time for Fagen, an artist who has worked
with so many interesting curators and institutions internationally and whose work is complex
and increasingly significant within the context of contemporary Scottish art. This publication
has been conceived to focus on and document the new body of work commissioned through
Scotland + Venice 2015 but also presents an opportunity to look back over a longer period of
Fagen’s career. The pages dedicated to the earlier commissions, projects and individual pieces
make it possible to understand more fully the artist’s vocabulary and the continuous threads of
enquiry which are extended within this exhibition at the Palazzo Fontana.
Essays for this publication have been commissioned from curators who are close to
Graham’s work: Katrina Brown, Director of The Common Guild, Glasgow and Penelope
Curtis, Director of Tate Britain, London. Both curators provide valuable insight into
Fagen’s influences.
The title of Curtis’s essay, Palazzo Fontana / Fountain Palace: Hospitalfield / Campo Ospedale,
reminds us immediately of how important site is for Fagen and how many of his works draw
from, or are formed by their situation. This might be the specific location of a museum, the
housing scheme where he was brought up, or indeed the theatre of war. She particularly
describes the location of the site in Flanders from where Fagen drew the phrase Come into the
Garden and forget about the War, a text that he has used within a number of exhibitions, each
time making new associations with the location. At Palazzo Fontana, the Italian translation,
positioned right at the threshold of the exhibition creates the expectation of a garden within.
Knowing that the artist consistently re-works this text allows us to reflect upon the use of an
artist’s vocabulary that is both from this place and from other places. A balance of perspectives
and ideas that is fragile and carefully arranged.
Formers and Forms, Casts and Casting, the title of the essay authored by Katrina Brown
references a very early yet influential work, Former and Form (1993). There is an echo from
this small sculpture that continuously resonates and Brown introduces us to the culture,
contemporary, popular, historic and so on, that has formed the artist. For the exhibition in
Venice Fagen once again draws on the lyric of the Burns’ poem, The Slave’s Lament (1792).
His first use of the poem was in a recording made in 2005 through a collaboration with reggae
singer and musician Ghetto Priest, and music producer Adrian Sherwood. For this new
composition Fagen brings together classical composer Sally Beamish, musicians from Scottish
Ensemble and a renewed collaboration with Priest and Sherwood. The four moving image
works/screens that together form Fagen’s 2015 Slave’s Lament, are set against the historical
murals that are a part of the fabric of the Palazzo; neo classical images of crumbling empire
painted by an unknown hand in sepia. The moving, lamenting musical interpretation of the
Burns’ lyric, can be heard faintly throughout the exhibition; a composition that accompanies
the viewer.
Between these two essays, Fagen’s voice and that of author Louise Welsh are in conversation.
First working/speaking together as part of Welsh’s Empire Café project in Glasgow, 2014, they
begin this conversation with trees and plants and Fagen’s use of nature and the construction
of identity through the use of pansies, roses, grass, trees. For the Royston Road Project
(1999 – 2002), Fagen planted over twenty trees for specific people and places, carefully leaving
a space to allow for very local and specific identity to form. The photograph taken in 1999
followed here by the image taken over sixteen years later, shows a tree planted by the artist yet
with added paraphernalia that has a meaning and a lasting significance to someone else. There
is a tree in the exhibition for Venice also, Rope Tree. A sculpture made by the artist formed in
rope, then cast in bronze. This is an impression of a tree, situated for this exhibition in a noble
Venetian room between two highly crafted Murano glass lights, in a city with a history of trade
similar to so many European port cities.
In their conversation Welsh compares her working process, ‘Writers are often thinking about
what to leave out, in order to enable the reader to invest imaginatively in the experience. Are you
doing something similar…?’ She is specifically referring to Fagen’s use of theatre scripts but it
is an important question to ask more generally. Fagen replies ‘The artwork is neither the form
nor the text … the artwork gets made in the mind of the person who has viewed and read the
form and the text’.
Graham Fagen is someone who edits, who removes a great deal in order to reveal what is most
essential and his work and his use of narrative, actual or implied between objects, is only
completed through the viewers’ own various and personal readings.
I must thank the artist and all those who have contributed to this publication, each bringing
so much knowledge and reflection.
—
Lucy Byatt
Director, Hospitalfield
11
13
15
56th International Art Exhibition,
The Slave’s Lament, 2015
La Biennale di Venezia, 2015
5 channel audio video installation,
Palazzo Fontana, Venice
dimensions variable
Guerra/Giardino, 2015
Concept: Graham Fagen
Neon and acrylic, 164 x 55 x 8cm
Cinematography: Holger Mohaupt
Composer: Sally Beamish
Rope Tree, 2015
Production: Adrian Sherwood & Skip McDonald
Bronze, 450 x 400 x 400 cm
Sound recording: Hywel Jones
Sound Edit: Laurie Irvine
Scheme for Lament, 2015
Sound Engineer: Dave McEwan
Indian ink and enamel on paper
Vocals: Ghetto Priest
19 framed drawings, dimensions variable
Guitars: Skip McDonald
Drums: Lincoln ‘Style’ Scott
Scheme for Our Nature, 2015
Strings: Scottish Ensemble
Mild steel, platinum lustre, gold lustre,
Violin: Jonathan Morton
white glaze and ceramic, dimensions variable
Cello: Alison Lawrance
Double Bass: Diane Clark
16
17
18
19
21
22
23
24
Palazzo Fontana / Fountain Palace:
Hospitalfield / Campo Ospedale
Penelope Curtis
26
Graham Fagen’s fascination for plants and trees is about as strong as his fascination for
sculpture. This equivalence lies at the heart of his work, and indeed forms the subject of much
of it. To a degree the two fascinations come together in the garden, a haven from the outside
world, a place which we have in common, but where we can also be alone.
Over the years Fagen has placed plants in galleries, leaving them to survive as if they were
sculptures, materially and conceptually. He has cast plants from life, like an Italian Renaissance
sculptor, and then gone on to colour them, so that they tread a wary line between the high and
the low, while at the same time interestingly brushing up against the sentimental.
Fagen’s interest in equivalence, his weighing up of the natural world against the constructed
world, is evident in the simple indexicality of much of his sculpture. A rose is a rose is a rose.
These life casts, of cut flowers such as roses and pansies, small plants like the Venus flytrap, as
well as trees, are now giving way to trees which are invented and made. En route they embrace
a wider range of associations with the decorative, including those which are both seasonal and
topical, Christmassy and Venetian, and which make reference to Fagen’s recent project at the
Glasgow School of Art. Here is Scotland in Venice, or more precisely Glasgow in Venice: a
bit of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a bit of Carlo Scarpa, and lots of Graham Fagen, brought
together in the Palazzo Fontana.
Palazzo Fontana, on the Grand Canal, emblematizes the wealth of the merchant venturers
who settled in Venice,2 and the adjacency of land and sea. In the grand saloon of the palazzo,
the rope tree sits between two crystal chandeliers, suggesting, if only inferentially, the
reversibility of the root, and the tree’s uprooting and inversion.
II
In the next room Fagen is showing works on paper based on the tooth drawings he has been
making in recent years. They represent a cross between rigorous hard-line delineations of his
own teeth, as felt by his tongue, marked out in pencil, and highly coloured, semi-psychedelic
free-form emanations.3 They are also the part of Fagen’s work, which most closely approaches
the routine, indicating (and proving) the right physical and mental conditions for working.
Again a cross between something found in the everyday world, and something made special
by art (think Duchamp, or better Johns), the dental record is both ubiquitous and absolutely
unique. And indeed these works are premised on something which lies on the threshold
between the self-portrait and the emblem. Fagen plays on the anthropological and forensic
associations4 of teeth in his darker drawings, which evoke not only the skull, but more
specifically, the black man’s skull.
III
* * *
‘Entra nel Giardino
E dimentica la Guerra’
greets us at the threshold. A reference to an earlier project made in Flanders,1 drawing on the
house/garden where soldiers were encouraged to recuperate from being on the front line at
nearby Ypres, here it seems to indicate more generally the duality of the world in which we
live, and specifically the inside/outside dynamic which is peculiar to Venice.
I
Preparatory images of the first tree in Fagen’s installation are reminiscent of early blueprint
photographs of pressed plants; an other-worldly combination of flattened botanical specimens
with experimental chemical technology. Fagen’s tree is cast from coir, ordered from Chatham,
a material with a long marine history which has now largely shifted to ornamental usage. Its
past is darker, given its links with the forced labour of hemp-picking in the workhouse and
prison, not to speak of the galley. Such an interpretative shift is not unreasonable here, given
Fagen’s earlier research into Robert Burns’ potential links with the British slave-trade in
Jamaica, as well as his depictions of trees as gallows. Now the noose is more than an adjunct
to the tree, and might even be read as the tree itself. This is in line with Fagen’s concern to
maintain a kind of instinctively circular logic in his evolutionary lineage: coir>rope>tree or
plant to tool to tree.
Here in Venice the rope has made a similar jump from the sea to the land, appearing as it does
as a decorative feature around doors and windows, and along the edges of buildings. The
In the smaller front room we find three tree-forms which resemble the artificial Christmas
tree crossed with the candelabrum, welded out of mild-steel rod. They further combine either
the decorated tree and the candlestick in suggesting light (and the wiring diagram which
will create electricity), or a kind of corn-dolly rope not unlike a DNA spiral. They use the
functionality of the natural structure to support a host of ‘decorations’: glazed ceramic left
and right hand-squeezes in red and white clay. These forms, like quite a lot of Fagen’s works,
go back to his childhood and refer to a simple ‘sculpture’ lesson in which he used a bag of
setting plaster to preserve the space between his hands.
The place at the top of the tree – conventionally reserved for the star or the fairy – is here
occupied by a fragment of a black clay mask which seems to grimace at its audience. Like the
dental cast, and the drawings, these facial masks carry with them their inside and outside, their
front and back. Fagen speaks of their façade, but not of their apparently uttered sound. Teeth
are held in the mouth as if in a frame. Although this interest in life-casting goes back some time
in the artist’s work, there is nonetheless a coincidence at this point with the grimacing mask of
the commedia dell’arte, a similar capturing of expression and quieting of noise.5
IV
The space between the form and the sound it makes is in fact a specific subject of interest,
even if it is almost denied in the silent masks above. When he was making the film ‘The Slave’s
Lament’ (2005), Fagen came to realise that in many ways he was not just recording a song, but
making a portrait of its singer, and in so doing capturing the relationship of face and mouth
to microphone and the production of sound. Now he focuses on this aspect more explicitly as
a subject, setting up around us a ‘quartet’ of monitors, three of which carry the instruments
27
28
(double bass, cello, violin) and one the vocalist, Ghetto Priest. His teeth seem almost to hold
the words of Burns’ haunting elegy. The sound of the performers (the Scottish Ensemble,
‘choreographed’ by composer Sally Beamish) will travel through the rooms which the visitor
has already traversed, and back again. Now we become a performer within the melancholy and
ambiguous setting of the play.
1The project was made at Talbot House in Poperinge,
Belgium, 2007. Fagen points out that he will
now have presented this injunction in the four
languages of the theatre of the First World War.
2The Fontana family came from Piacenza. The
* * *
‘Come into the garden
and forget about the war’
building was later occupied by the Rezzonico family,
and Pope Clement XIII was born there in 1693.
3There is a cross-over here too with the pansy,
always the artist’s favourite flower, with its
When we exit through the entrance we have traced a small circle through the work of Graham
Fagen. Coming out under the same sign, but in reverse, we might have a heightened awareness
of recto and verso, and ask what the difference is between them.
Did we forget about the outside world as we surveyed the forms fashioned from ropes and
teeth? Did we enjoy the artificial groves within this stylized garden, full of cultural referents?6
To what extent do Venetian connotations of morbidity underscore the already uncomfortable
qualities in Fagen’s work; the fragile maritime existence of the city striking a chord with
Fagen's inherent lyricism?
fascinating saturated colouring and il/logical
patterning which sometimes seem to verge on
portraiture.
4This interest was sparked off by casts of George
Washington’s mouth, but it seems possible that
more recently Fagen has been influenced by the
x-rays of his own children’s teeth.
5The artist mentions the Blackamoor door-handles
How do we make a tally of the varied works through which we have passed? Human scale and
human touch is implicit in much of the work: the tool-like tree, the grip, the mouth, the mask.
Their commonalities seem to be expressed in the space between front and back, inside and
outside. The space between is that occupied by the wax which is lost in casting, and casting
is a central part of Fagen’s vocabulary. But that indexicality – the one-to-one equivalence – is
extended here by the explicit focus on the sound as it is made by the instrument or the mouth.
It is the sound which bridges inside and outside and holds us in its loop.
I focused at the outset on the proper names of the place where Fagen will show this work and
the place which commissioned it. Complementary hosts. By coincidence, or not, both the
Italian and the Scottish place-names juxtapose inside and outside, and the very strangeness of
the combinations seems to suit Graham Fagen’s work, which makes of the combining of nature
and nurture a point of recuperation. The terrors of the outside world menace the threshold, but
in this safe haven we might, temporarily, once again be whole.
—
Penelope Curtis
Director, Tate Britain
which abound in Venice.
6I would see Charles and Ray Eames and Fausto
Melotti, as well as Mackintosh and Scarpa.
29
31
32
33
Louise Welsh and Graham Fagen
in conversation
21 November 2014
34
Part I
LW: The first thing that strikes me is how beautiful the bronze cast [rope] tree will look in the
space you have chosen [yet] there is a sinister aspect to the combination of tree and rope. Was
the piece partly prompted by this particular location?
GF: I’ve used trees in my work often, from The Royston Road Project (2002, p.64) [tree planting]
to projects like Killing Time (2006, p.92) and The Making of Us (2012, p.106). Trees, and ropes
on trees, have been in other works.
GF: Certainly the way that I work, even when it’s in a very simple form or format such as the
Cabbages in an Orchard exhibition, which was framed paintings and sculptures on plinths,
even then it was important for me to consider how viewers would negotiate the space. What
kind of geography can you make for them? What kind of landscape will make the experience
of seeing the work more than just going in to look at something on a plinth or on a wall?
I noticed that Venice, like lots of port towns, features rope on many building facades – around
doors and windows, on corners of buildings – so there is also the symbolism of shipping similar
to port towns in Scotland and in other places.
With Peek-A-Jobby, [a work first made at Matt’s Gallery in 1998 and that has been recently
shown again at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art as part of GENERATION, 2014 (p.52)],
the viewer is introduced to what appears to be a theatre set and a script. My main concern
was to challenge viewers’ preconception that when they go to an exhibition they must follow
some unwritten gallery protocol. So I was conscious very early on that you might be able to
just nudge people sideways a wee bit – or set something up that might get them questioning
what it is they are looking at.
The cycle of the piece is interesting; the type of rope that I’m using is called coir. It’s a plant or
natural material that is processed and gets made into what becomes a tool. I’m then casting it and
using it to make the tree, so it is made back into a natural form again. The process is similar to
processes that I’ve used before, like the bronze rosebush of Where the Heart is (2002, p.62).
In that early version of Peek-A-Jobby at Matt’s people also got a wee book to take home.
So even when they were away from the exhibition they would maybe read the book at home
or on the underground – in that sense it’s almost like they’re still part of the exhibition, even
though they might be in their own space or place.
It’s not a tree in bloom, although I was quite enjoying the combination of the similar fan-like
forms of the roots, and the way that the branches reach and expand… and there’s maybe a hint
of a fruit that might also be a noose, but there are certainly no leaves; it’s quite a bare tree.
LW: Writers are often thinking about what to leave out, in order to enable the reader to invest
imaginatively in the experience. Are you doing something similar by employing books and
scripts in artworks? Requiring visitors to engage their own imagination?
LW: I noticed the roses in your front garden when I arrived, did any of those come from
Where the Heart Is?
GF: The artwork is neither the form nor the text, the artwork is actually the understanding you
get from both the form and the text. So the artwork gets made in the mind of the person who
has viewed and read the form and the text.
GF: I used to have six Where the Heart Is rosebushes in the front garden but had to use them
all to make the bronze versions.
LW: It’s like something from an Angela Carter fairy-story isn’t it?
GF: Or like my work The Forest and the Forester (2002, p.74) – which I developed from the
Maeterlinck play The Blue Bird – where the forest comes alive to kill the forester’s children to
stop humanity from harming nature. I had to destroy my nature in order to make my manmade nature with the rosebush.
LW: Palazzo Fontana seems like an invitation to make theatre. Does such a beautiful setting
impose any restrictions on your work? Could a piece like Peek-A-Jobby sit in this space?!
GF: The work I’m making for Palazzo Fontana is influenced by the aesthetic of each room,
where the building is, and the way in which people might make their journey through these
four rooms.
LW: When I’m writing I’m often thinking about place – where a particular scene is set, and the
characters’ relationship to their space. It’s fascinating to hear that you’re thinking about the
viewer as well as the artwork. The artwork hinges everything together, but you also have a
consciousness of the viewer’s relationship to place and space.
It’s a thought that takes me back to school; I had a revelation in an English class. The teacher
was telling us about early Shakespeare plays and she described how a murder scene can be
played out in order to heighten the aspect of the drama. It would be clear to the audience from
the actors’ dialogue and body language, that this person was going to kill that person, but
when it came time for the deed the players would shuffle off-stage – so the audience couldn’t
see them any more – but they could still hear what was going on. The drama the audience
imagines will always be more than what can be shown on stage.
Peek-A-Jobby let me include this fantastically disgusting act – but of course there was no act.
It was only described. You could see the formal apparatus that was used for this act and read
the description of what happened – but it was in the viewer’s head. I didn’t make it happen!
You made it happen.
It is a powerful way to share an experience without the literalness of it. In The Making of Us,
we included a hanging of a man from a tree as part of the performance – of course the actor was
wearing all sorts of safety harnesses under their costume. When the hanging was performed
and filmed, the audience’s reaction – although they must have known it was a theatrical
act – was of horror and apprehension, it was very tense. What are we witnessing here? Are we
complicit? Are we allowed to watch this? Do they know what they are doing? It’s a powerful tool.
35
36
LW: To what extent might a feeling of unease be something that you consciously want to
create within that space?
GF: Theatre director Graham Eatough, who I worked with to make The Making of Us and I
have often discussed a rarely acknowledged contract – the difference between going to the
theatre and maybe going to an art gallery.
In some installations that I’ve made, you’ve got a gallery floor and a carpeted area that’s part
of the installation. You have to make a conscious choice, understand if you have permission,
and you step off the relative safety of the gallery floor and go onto the carpeted area of the
installation – if you do make that choice and someone else is on the gallery floor, suddenly
they’re looking at you in the territory of the installation. Does that make you part of the
installation?
A viewer going into Peek-A-Jobby might sit on the settee and think ‘so what’s this book we’ve
been given? Oh it’s a script. I’ll start reading it.’ Then someone else comes in. The newcomer’s
on the gallery floor, and they’re looking at their book – ‘it’s some kind of script, but we’ve got
a set here… Oh hang on somebody’s on that chair, they’re going to act this out!’ So you have two
members of the public looking at each other and the preconceptions of the contract means that
one’s expecting the other to perform, and of course the one who’s not passive is thinking ‘Jings
– they’re looking at me. Oh hang on, they’re probably thinking I’m gonna do something. Right well
I’ll stand up and get off of this!’ So the unwritten rules of theatre and art galleries – that contract
– is something that I’ve consciously tried to – not control, but maybe be creative with, in order
for exchanges like the one I’ve just described to happen.
make a mark which would not only position where I understood the teeth to be in my head,
but also show the volume of space – the space that was allowing me to think about the feeling
from my tongue, which was feeling the form.
I would make a drawing of my teeth from the front – and then another drawing of my teeth
feeling the back. I thought these two drawings might show looking at someone and then being
someone. And I noticed when I finished the drawings that, with the teeth from the front, the
volume of the perceived space was quite narrow in comparison to the volume of the teeth
drawn from the back – the Indian ink volume of that was quite wide.
The drawings can be done in two parts. You very consciously draw the teeth, and then, once
the enamel is dry, you can work more creatively with the inks. I allowed myself to do these
drawings for a few months and then one day I came back in here, and I thought I’ll have a
wee look at how these are shaping up.
So I had a look at them for the first time with some kind of critical distance. I was doing the
formal aspect of the teeth, letting that dry and set. Then when I was working with the inks, a
lot depended upon mood, or situation or even time of the week. What was going on, how much
time did I have, was I rushed a wee bit? Each time I was trying to consider the space that my
head occupies but, what I was also trying to consider, was the consciousness, the thoughts, the
guidance that I was getting to physically place the ink. That was also coming from my head.
I thought – my God – am I trying to draw consciousness? What a ridiculous concept – or is
it a ridiculous concept? How can you show consciousness? So that’s what I was reflecting for
myself. Do these drawings show consciousness? Do they show me? Is it a portrait of me? It was
difficult to know – difficult to understand, but I liked that, I like that difficulty, difficultness
LW: It’s an invitation… and possibly an interesting first date!?
Part II
GF: This is the only room where we are allowed to put things onto the wall. The drawings
I’ve been working on are developments of drawings I made for the Glasgow School of Art
exhibition. They started life as drawings of my teeth and the perceived volume of the space
that my teeth occupy in my head.
LW: It’s returning to the fundamentals of art. What is it to be alive? What is it to exist?
We exist – that’s mind-blowing. There is something very ancient looking about your most
recent drawings isn’t there? Maybe it’s something to do with those teeth; they put me in
mind of Aztec skulls where teeth have been stuck back on – I love the gold…
GF: Yeah the gold is around and about quite a lot in these drawings
LW: Some of them are quite ghastly aren’t they?
LW: Are they something to do with consciousness – the idea of inhabiting the inside of your
head? You started out not by looking at your teeth, but by feeling them.
GF: I began to think about what teeth are. I had this nice thought that – black, white, gay,
straight, able, disabled – teeth belong to all of us and the way we communicate to the world
is through the gaps between the top set and the bottom set. They’re completely common to
every person alive and to every person dead, but at the same time they’re absolutely unique.
I thought if I can communicate that form I’ll get a chance to see what it looks like and whether
it touches on that concept.
I used my tongue to feel the shape of each tooth along the front and then, after I had made
the drawing in pencil, I painted the teeth with white enamel. Then I used black Indian ink to
GF: The more recent ones, we’ve got reds and blacks…
LW: …like an explosion.
GF: And then I’ve also consciously starting to do ones that don’t have any teeth. It’s making
me wonder if I’m drawing someone else – is it someone else’s face, or is it still a degree of me?
These are quite early so I’m not sure…
LW: Looking at these drawings makes me think of your photograph of Ghetto Priest where we
only see his teeth.
GF: The first time I worked with Ghetto Priest was when we made a version of Robert Burns’
37
38
The Slave's Lament. The song was first published in 1792 and the question I wanted to ask
by making it as an artwork was, did it still have relevance today?
stereotyping – we’ve just become lazy and used to hearing it. It takes another culture to
recognize the lyrics in a different way and really make something happen with it.
I approached Adrian Sherwood and shared my idea with him. He wanted to know the types
of sounds and vocals I wanted to use. So we talked about different instrument sounds and
he was able to tell me the type of players he knew who could achieve it. And then we talked
about what kind of vocal we wanted. I think we decided that in order to do the vocal right,
we would have to ask the person the question of the relevance of that song today.
LW: Music and visual art don’t necessarily rely on words. You can walk into a gallery in Italy,
look at some art and have an opinion on it; or we can listen to music from Senegal or Samoa or
wherever and have a response. The idea of crossing cultures seems to be integral to those forms…
Of course what I wanted to do was to make the song with Jamaican reggae singers and players
– because, they are directly related to the slaves that Burns was singing about. So in order to
get the vocal right, I would have to share this song with the person who was going to sing it
and ask them their thoughts on it. They would have to believe in it and have some compassion
and understanding of, and with, this Robert Burns song.
I didn’t meet this person until we were in the recording studio. I was nervous, about meeting
strangers I was about to work with, but also because of this question.
When we arrived in the studio it was very busy. There was an engineer fiddling and people
milling around setting things up. Everybody was very friendly and said ‘hello’, except for
Ghetto Priest. He was standing in the corner of the room, facing the wall, swaying backwards
and forwards. I thought, ‘Oh, is he angry? Why is he over there? He’s not turned around…’
GF: Is there such a thing as a universal language? Can music be universal? There might be
specifics about a rhythm, or a sound that might be understood in a particular way to one
culture, another culture might not get that, but they’ll get their own understanding and their
own logic and their own sense from what they’re hearing. And true, maybe image is the same.
You know we’re all able to read a person. Are we all able to read art? Of course art like music
can be culturally specific, but image-making and sound is so fundamental to who we are, how
we enjoy and communicate life.
LW: Collaboration is something that you obviously enjoy. You’ve collaborated with actors,
theatre directors, musicians, producers, but there is a loss of control as soon as you start
collaborating isn’t there? Are you introducing an element of play and chance?
GF: It’s interesting that you describe it as a loss of control. I see it as a way of me being able
to have control.
LW: So maybe a loss of control is the wrong phrase – being open to other voices…
I’d sent down some Burns music in advance, to help everyone involved begin to understand
the context of what we were going to make. Every now and again I would hear bits of lyric
and bits of The Slave's Lament being sung. I thought it was coming from the engineer and all
his buttons. Eventually someone said 'who would like a coffee?' The engineer turned his buttons
off and the music stopped, but I could still hear the singing. And I realised that it was Ghetto
Priest. So he wasn’t an angry man in the corner. He was in the corner working. He was in the
corner thinking. He was in the corner singing The Slave’s Lament. After the music had gone
off he sung a few bars and then he stopped. And he turned around and came over and said
‘Graham!’ and I said, ‘Yeah – really pleased to meet you…’. And he said something along the
lines of: ‘Your man Robert Burns was born to write The Slave’s Lament, and I was born to sing it.’
So that was the answer…
LW: It’s as if you are giving each other a present. You’ve introduced him to this song, and he is
now going to re-introduce it to you.
GF: I wonder if as a culture you create something and then you just have it, but maybe if
another culture gets a hold of it, they do what their culture knows with it. That’s when the
piece can change, become reinvigorated and relevant in a different way.
There’s another example of that happening with Robert Burns’ My Heart’s in the Highlands.
It’s a Burns song that I would normally ignore, because it fits into the clichéd stereotype that
we’ve made for ourselves, but one day I heard Arvo Pärt’s version of it. I couldn’t believe what
I was hearing – the space and depth and the integrity with such previously naff lyrics – the
song had so much more meaning, strength and power. I wonder if that’s a reflection of cultural
GF: That’s maybe a good way of understanding it. When I started working with Adrian
Sherwood on The Slave's Lament, I had an aim that I wanted to achieve, but I knew I didn’t
have the professional skills to fully achieve it. So what you have to do in that situation is get
to meet the people who‘ve got those necessary skills in order to help achieve the aim.
The key thing for me is that the people I collaborate with have a perception of what the aim is.
If I feel comfortable that their perception is along the same lines as my own, that’s when I’ve
got complete trust. I’m not that tight at controlling what that finished thing is – but I think that
what I am quite tight at trying to control is who’s involved in trying to achieve what that final
thing is. I have to accept that final form, because I have put into place the mechanisms that will
give us that final form – and I quite like that.
I think all my work has got an element of that in it. You know even the teeth and the Indian
ink drawings. They’re about process, and if I stick to the process that I’ve set myself then the
form of the artwork is what it needs to be, if I adhere to the process.
Part III
GF: This is the third room. It’s a beautiful bedroom as you can see – I sound like an estate
agent! My plans for this room at the moment are to make three sculptures, I think there is
going to be a medium height one, which might be about the same height as myself, there’s
going to be one that’s taller and one that’s smaller. And it’s a combination of metal and
ceramic, a bit like this one from Cabbages in an Orchard at Glasgow School of Art.
39
40
LW: …and the cubes are ceramic.
GF: I was thinking of a gold lustre and a silver lustre. And for this one it’s probably going to be
three different colours of clay; white, terracotta and black. And the reason I’m clenching my
fists when I describing the clay is because these wee shapes or forms – if you grab a bit of clay
with your hand – that’s the shape that you get.
It’s a very a simple, fundamental process. So if you pick this up and squeeze it, here’s the
shape, or there’s the form that you get. Another thing I like about it is that, if you make an
action, you can see a form that sort of represents an action.
LW: I am possibly putting things together that don’t go together, but these sculptures make me
think of knuckledusters and that makes me think back to the Weapons…
GF: I made a work just before the Weapons (1998, p.48), which was called Former and Form
(1993, p.42). It was a wooden box that had a lump of concrete cast from it – very simple – in
order to have that shape and form, you need that box, but in order to make that box, you need to
have an idea of what you want that form to be. An action which produces a form that is evidence
of an action – I think that’s something that is important to quite a lot of the work that I make.
I describe my work, or what I’m interested in, as cultural formers. What is our culture and how
is it formed? Do you need an idea of the culture you want in order to create it? Former and
Form is a thinking model. The concrete block is formed by the wooden former but in order for
me to have made the wooden former I had to have an idea of the final form.
LW: That appears to remove an element of what we were discussing earlier; there’s no room
for accident in this model, unlike your teeth drawings, which have an unconscious, accidental
or playful element.
GF: I described it as a thinking model and I think the reason that Former and Form is so matter
of fact, without space for accident, is because I’ve used it as a model to try and understand the
complexities of culture. Maybe it’s the clarity or the simplicity of that work – the knowledge
that a work like that has given me – that’s allowed me to collaborate in the way that I do.
and form. And then you have a reply that’s about the actual consequence, or the results of
a life lived within those shapes and forms – so again you have that cause and effect, or action
and re-action.
I think that’s what I was going to say when you mentioned the Weapons. What’s exciting
about the Weapons is imagining the potential of the action. It’s a very simple set-up of an object
or pairing of objects. So for example the flame-thrower – which is a lighter and an aerosol can
– but of course if you light the lighter and hold it up next to the aerosol can and press the spray
button of the aerosol can, you have a flame-thrower. And again, of course, in the artwork you
only see the objects; you never see the action. Going back to the forms that are going to make
the sculptures up in this third room, it is an action. What you are seeing is the evidence of an
action, the evidence of something as simple as a hand squeezing a lump of clay. And then I
suppose the sculptures, the overall form of the sculptures, will be understood as a number of
actions or evidence of actions that make up the shapes and the forms.
LW: And the skulls are on top like totems…
GF: The skulls are 3-dimensional developments from the teeth drawings. They are formed by
literally squashing the clay against my teeth and mouth. You get the front side – you can see
where I’ve pressed with my fingers – and then the back side which shows an imprint of my
teeth and skin.
I want to use this white clay for the impression of the front of the teeth and black clay for the
interior side, so you’ll get a contrast with the white teeth and black volume. I was also thinking
of trying different things with the faces. Interestingly I think of the face in an architectural
sense, like a facade. I also want to expand the area, so it’s not just the mouth – actually try
and show the head up past the eyes, in the same way that I show the volume of the head in the
drawings. I’m going to try and achieve that with the clay, so we get that physical exterior and
interior, and play with the colour of the clay in the same way that I played with Indian inks to
give that perception of consciousness, mood, thought and possibility.
Part IV
GF: So that was room 3, and this is room 4.
LW: I’ve been thinking about your work Nothank – the concepts of living and how to live…
LW: Where our journey ends.
GF: Nothank (1999, p.44) I suppose is a good one to compare, or to develop on from Former and
Form. I’m going to get back to your Weapons point as well, but Nothank is a good example. I
made a true/ fictitious documentary of a new-town housing scheme. The architect and planner
of the scheme talked about the reason and the logic for their ideas that had given the place its
shape and form. And then I interviewed a young married couple who lived inside the shapes
and forms of the ideas of the architect and planner. So the architect and planner were quite
pragmatic and matter of fact about the financial cost implications, the use, needs and wants of
a community and how that gave rise to shape and form and aesthetic.
But the young married couple gave the matter of fact reply of what it was like to live within
these shapes and forms. So on-the-one-hand you had a planned and measured reason for shape
GF: I’m wondering about making some kind of soundtrack or soundscape for the place. The thing
that I quite like about that idea is that it will have a presence, consciously or unconsciously,
for the viewer in all of the rooms. And it won’t be until you reach the fourth and the final room
that you get to see where that sound is coming from.
The aim is quite simple. I want to re-make the version of The Slave's Lament that we made in
2005 (p.103). But what I want to do this time is to work with a cello player, a violin player and
double bass as well as a voice.
41
42
I’ve described it as some kind of clash, I don’t know if it’s a culture clash. I suppose I’m trying
to put classical music with Jamaican reggae dub. I’ve approached the Scottish Ensemble and
they are very keen to work on it. I’ve also approached the composer Sally Beamish. So at the
moment the aim is for Sally to work on a simple composition that we would record with the
violin, cello and double bass. We would take that recording to Adrian Sherwood’s studio and
work with Ghetto Priest on the vocal. Then I’ll work with Adrian on the production.
GF: Yes – you’ll have to retrace your steps to exit. You’ll be passing through each room
and the artworks that you have come across already. I’m sure the experience of The Slave’s
Lament (2015, p.146) in the final room will influence a visitor’s perception of the artworks
on the way out.
When we made The Slave’s Lament first time around, we also made a dub version. In the
dub version there was minimal use of the lyrics, maybe just the occasional word or a phrase
was used. I am getting interested in the type of emotion that classical instruments can evoke
and also the type of space that the classical instruments can give. I want to use words or
phrases from The Slave's Lament to put into the spaces that can be created with the
classical instruments.
—
Louise Welsh is a writer who lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland
LW: We haven’t really talked about the political nature of a lot of your work. This piece
appears to explore ideas of dominant culture and social control.
GF: Absolutely. I talked earlier about the Burns songs within our culture, but if we work
with another culture, the whole meaning and the resonance of it, both the social and political
understandings change, or alter. Maybe that’s why I want to clash these two traditions
together. It’s interesting because when I’ve been describing it, I’ve talked a lot about space –
space that can be created by the instruments and by the voice. And I’m wondering if also what
I’m thinking about is conceptual space – space for thoughts and ideas. For ways of being to be
shared and understood – maybe in order for new thought and meaning to be achieved from
that understanding.
I’ve not been as conscious of the importance of cultural clash or cultural borrowing before,
but the complexity of the history and meaning of such a song, both when it was first published,
through to the way that we understand it now, feels interesting to me. Even in the way that we
know that history now.
LW: Are you also thinking about the appropriation of the artist by the dominant culture – the
establishment? Within a hundred years an artist or writer, through no volition of their own,
might move from being an outsider to being in the heart of the establishment.
GF: The whole merchant history of Venice resonates with the slave trade. In Venice you’ve got
the ‘blackamoors’ – brass door-handles with the face of a blackamoor on it, shops that have
a blackamoor holding the lamp standard – that whole representation of an ‘exotic’ culture
through trade is everywhere in Venice. Taking this work to Venice feels like an important job;
maybe it’s about taking that work there, so that the conversation around the blackamoors can
possibly be expanded.
LW: Exploring ideas for this final room, I think I see the bronze tree we began with –
with its hanging rope and the suggestion of the noose that might be some kind of strange
fruit – more clearly now. I feel that, as I walk out, I’ll stop and look at the tree again and
I’ll see it differently.
43
Former and Form, 1993
Wood, Cement and two G-Clamps, 80 x 40 x 40 cm
46
47
48
49
Nothank, 1999
Installation and tv documentary
21 minutes 34 seconds looped, variable
51
PISH BALLOON
Scottish. Date 1979-83.
BLOWPIPE
Scottish. Date 1975-79.
FLAME THROWER
Scottish. Date 1979-82.
Glass bottle or other suitable
container and balloon.
The empty tube of a ball point
pen is used as a pipe to blow
pins at a target.
Aerosol can sprayed into
lighted lighter, producing a
flame of approximately 1 metre
in length.
The bottle would be pissed
into, then poured into the
balloon, which would be
inflated further by tap water.
Once primed the balloon could
be thrown or, most commonly,
dropped from a window. When it
struck its target the balloon
would burst, showering the
recipient with the pish.
Mostly used in random attacks
on unknown enemies. Most
effective when dropped from
a window on to a crowd,
splashing more than one
target.
The pins are given width and
weight by being wrapped at
the ends with clear tape.
This would be constructed at
home or, more commonly, in a
classroom situation.
The classroom was where it was
most used. Being silent, it
could be used on a classmate
even when the teacher was in
the room. If fired correctly
the pin would stick into the
target, causing a sharp pain.
This was often used in
opportunist situations or when
the aerosol and lighter were
readily available. It was used
more as a deterrent and it was
rare for the fire to actually
come into contact with the
offending person.
Also used for displays of
bravado. There was always
the danger of serious backfire
or explosion, which could
seriously burn or even kill
the user.
53
FINGER SLING
Scottish. Date 1973-80.
PETROL BOMB
Scottish. Date 1979-81.
CROSSBOW
Scottish. Date 1970-73.
A rubber band construction
used between forefinger and
thumb, firing small U-shaped
nails.
Glass bottle, filled with
petrol, with a rag or paper
plugged into the neck. The rag
or paper would be lit and the
bottle thrown at target where
it would smash, releasing the
petrol and causing a small
explosion.
A wooden cross with a rubber
band across the short section.
This fires U-shaped nails.
This simple weapon could be
easily carried and concealed.
Mostly used in classroom
situations. It had the
disadvantage of making a very
recognisable pinging sound,
making it more effective when
the teacher was out of the
room or in the corridors.
Often used by violent street
protesters. However this
example is typical of the
housing scheme petrol bomb.
This would be made by youths
who would siphon petrol from
parked cars at night, usually
in the winter months. The
bottles would then be taken
to a quiet area, such as the
back of shops, churches or
garages. There the bomb would
be constructed and thrown
against a wall. This was never
used as a weapon of violence
but more for the spectacle of
the explosion.
The weapon was usually built
by a father for a young son.
The rubber band would be very
slack and a clothes peg would
be fired. These would often
be modified by the son when
the weapon was used out with
the family situation. The
band would be tightened and a
U-nail would be fired.
Almost mostly used outdoors.
The main purpose was target
shooting but occasionally
it would be used to fire at
friends or unknown enemies.
Weapons, 1998
Six colour photographs with text panels, 61 x 51 cm
54
55
56
57
Peek-A-Jobby, 1998
Installation and script, variable
Matt's Gallery, London, 1998
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2014
59
60
62
63
Theatre, 2000
Projected play 9 minutes 45 seconds looped
and artefacts from the performance, variable
64
65
Where the Heart Is, 2002
Bronze, 50 x 50 x 50 cm
66
Royston Road Project, Glasgow, 1999 – 2002
Tree planting and naming of a new rose
Royston tree, 1999
Royston tree, 2015
Where the Heart Is, 2002
69
70
71
72
OWNER OF THE ARTS
(born in? BC)
OWNER OF BROADCASTING
(born in 1901)
Born into humble beginnings
- so long ago that no one is
sure exactly when - he used
whatever was at hand to create
images. Religion became an
early patron and many ancient
paintings and sculptures
from this time can still be
seen today. More recently,
countries became patrons
too, establishing hundreds
of archival and educational
institutions of the Arts all
over the world.
Known as a keen amateur radio
ham as a child, he went on
to produce the world’s first
ever broadcast of music and
speech in his home state
of Massachusetts, USA in
December 1906. By the 1920s
his transmitters and receivers
were in general use, sending
out entertainment programmes
to North America and Europe.
By 1927 he had established
the BBC in the UK, and went
on to establish many other
broadcasting companies all
over the developed world.
Unlike many of todays’ owners
his aim is not commercial
growth but expression. His
business is one of paradox
though. It is commercial, with
many private patrons. And as
we try to define what Art is,
we find ourselves accepting,
then denying, agreeing, then
disagreeing. Perhaps this is a
mark of his true genius. But
as the eminent art historian
E. Gombrich states ‘there
really is no such a thing as
Art’.
He has never taken a wife
or fathered any children.
There are many documented
accounts however of his many
lovers, of both sexes. This
portrait, taken on a visit to
Scotland in 1966, shows a man
with contained strength and
intelligence. He enjoys his
solitude and lives alone.
Now, with hundreds of
companies in his ownership, he
is developing the technology
into the 21st century. In
the UK alone there are 55
million of his television
sets. People can now have
hundreds of television and
radio channels broadcast
to their homes - digitally,
often via satellite. Even the
third world and undeveloped
countries are starting
to receive broadcasting
equipment.
This portrait - taken in the
1920s when ‘radio was king’ shows him at his playful best,
demonstrating his passion to
entertain.
73
OWNER OF EDUCATION
(born in Africa, date
unknown, possibly during the
Palaeolithic or Neolithic
periods)
74
Stood out as an infant because
of her keenness to lead by
example, copying the actions
of adults and teaching her
young peers what she had
learned. She called this
education. In her early years
her teaching manifested itself
through magic, rituals and
folk tales.
Her methods and their aims
change depending on the needs
of the people she sold her
practice to. For centuries
education was concerned with
the security and welfare
of establishing states.
Young adults were taught the
practical and theoretical
apprenticeship in the art
of war and children taught
endurance and an unquestioning
submission to authority.
A working relationship with
religion and more recently
governments, have helped
her to establish formal
institutions of education.
However, her discovery that
knowledge gives power made her
guard it jealously. Attempts
to popularise education are
discouraged and punished. Some
knowledge is made illegal and
any attempts to acquire and
disseminate it can lead to
imprisonment.
OWNER OF MYTHS
(born in Greece, approx.
300BC)
She was originally one of the
good people of Greece, many of
who went on to become known as
‘gods’. She took a different
path however, realising the
potential of selling her truth
and knowledge in order to help
control the universe and to
make mankind’s activities in
it efficacious.
Today her work is used in
everyday life across the whole
world. Presidents and Kings
are sworn in or enthroned by
reciting myths which relate to
the origins of the cosmos and
other events on which depend
the well-being of the world.
The breadth of her work is
clear when we realise that her
truth informs the paradigms
or models of modern physics,
biology, medicine, philosophy,
indeed all science, nature,
religion and culture.
This portrait was taken on the
28th of May 1888, when she was
in Glasgow, Scotland. Rumour
has it that this photograph
was taken at a sporting event.
Owners, 2001
Four Colour photographs with text panels, 10 x 15 cm
75
76
78
79
The Forest & The Forester (after Maeterlinck), 2002
12 Scots Pine trees and published script
80
81
82
83
Prince Charles Edward Stewart After Maurice-Quentin
de la Tour, After J. Williams (disguised as ‘Betty Burke’)
& After Antonio David, 2002
Three Colour photographs, variable
84
85
86
87
Black Pansy, 2005
Sceptre (after Theatre), 2005
Bronze, 15 x 15 x 23 cm
Bronze and Kosovan newspaper, 80 x 40 x 6 cm
Lawn, 1999
R-Type print with text panel, 102 x 77 cm
90
91
92
93
Punk Fuck, A Cross, Mum + Dad, 2002
Neon, variable
94
95
Killing Time, 2006
Five-screen video projection and installation
with theatre director Graham Eatough
Detail of Harlequin from Killing Time, 2006
96
Guerre Jardin, 2014
Neon, 90 x 220 cm
100
101
Nancy, 2006
Bell, 2006
Silk screen print, 55.5 x 76 cm
Silk screen print, 55.5 x 76 cm
102
103
Roselle, 2006
Plans and Records, 2007
Silk screen print, 55.5 x 76 cm
Silk screen print, 55.5 x 76 cm
105
Auld Lang Syne c/w The Slave's Lament, 2005
Video 6 minutes 45 seconds, variable
106
107
Scheme for Consciousness (Front, Roots, Back), 2014
Indian ink and enamel, each drawing 83 x 63 cm
The Making of Us, 2012
Installation, performance and film 48 minutes,
variable, with theatre director Graham Eatough
110
111
112
Under Heavy Manners, 2011
Artpace, San Antonio
Our Shared, Common, Private Space, 2011
Bronze, Enamel and Ebony, 178 x 54 x 54 cm
Heavy Manners, 2011
Video projection, 4 minutes 04 seconds
115
116
117
Natural Anarchy, 2013
Mirror, acrylic & neon, 102 x 60 cm
Formers and Forms,
Casts and Casting
Katrina Brown
120
A passion for reggae music may not be the most obvious residue of growing up on the west
coast of Scotland. So much about identity is inferred from biography, from place and time
of upbringing and schooling, suggesting supposed commonalities and shared outlooks on
the world. From language and dialect, through clothing, the flavours we crave and those we
eschew, the music and literature we consume, to the colour palettes we seek or recreate (think
of all those ‘Scandinavian’ interiors) – so much can be ascribed to those formative years when
tied to a place.
That someone born in the west of Scotland in the 20th century should be drawn to music with
its origins on the other side of the Atlantic may seem surprising given the geography alone,
but time of course changes things. Nowadays, the connection wrought purely through place is
slight; even more so in today’s instantly inter-connected digital age, than it was in the 1970s. But
even then (yes, even then) music had slipped its boundaries and allowed for a boy in Irvine to
hear, like and understand reggae more than the traditional music of his fellow countrymen. So it
was with the young Graham Fagen, who was drawn to reggae (and, of course, punk), doubtless
in part for the voice given to protest and rebellion, always appealing in the teenage years.
The fact that reggae spoke more to Fagen than the poetry of his famous, fellow Ayrshireman,
Robert Burns, is evidence of many things: of the universality of music as a form, for one, and
the ability of individuals – and communities – to resist being cast into certain given moulds.
The Jamaican-English heard in reggae was somehow more understandable and resonant to
him than the old Scots English of Burns. Like many a child growing up on the west coast of
Scotland (myself included) – rote-learning poems in primary school – Fagen found Burns’
language foreign, alien, and therefore indirect: it was not the language spoken around him.
Burns comes into play in Fagen’s work as re-presented through the poet’s now iconic status
as ‘national bard’ – a key and prominent part of the story that official Scotland tells of itself.
But it was the discovery of the fact that Burns had almost migrated from Scotland to the West
Indies1 that allowed Fagen a way to approach him. This ‘coincidence’ opened up a way of
bringing the two cultural histories together. He first connected them in 2005, when he ‘re-cast’
Burns’ words – and music – in a recording made with leading reggae / dub musician, Ghetto
Priest. They recorded two songs: the world-renowned ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and the lesser-known
but powerful The Slave's Lament (p.103). Fagen produced a video work documenting the
recording, and a CD, realised with the collaboration of London dub music producer Adrian
Sherwood2. The Slave's Lament was first published in 1792 in the fourth volume of ‘The Scots
Musical Museum’. It is sung from the viewpoint of a slave taken from Senegal to Virginia, in the
United States, where the farming of tobacco plantations, and the slave trade that supplied it, in
the 18th century was fuelling the wealth that built so much of Glasgow. The so-called ‘tobacco
lords’ of Glasgow left a legacy that endures to this day, in many of the city’s grandest buildings,
and streets such as Virginia Street and Jamaica Street. Just as the imprint of the slave trade can
be found all over Venice, in the ‘blackamoor’ imagery embedded in much of the architecture, the
residue of Venice’s trade routes and the city’s own involvement in the slave trade.
Fagen is clear about the intention in this inter-twining of these two disparate strands from his
own cultural identity, in this and other, subsequent projects, being not just a jarring clash of
unlikely musical traditions, but more an attempt to get towards meaning, to use the language
that spoke to him to get to the meaning of the one that did not. He has sought to retrieve the
intent of Burns’ often revolutionary lyrics, which addressed the horrendous inhumanity of
slavery abroad and the iniquity of wealth at home (although not so much the subjugation of
women, unfortunately). It was personal economic hardship in Scotland that almost forced
Burns to seek a new, albeit indentured life3 in Jamaica, selling his labour to a British landowner.
For Venice in 2015, Fagen has revisited The Slave's Lament, recording new vocals, again with
Ghetto Priest, the music this time a wholly new composition by Sally Beamish and performed
by the Scottish Ensemble. Played on violin, cello and double bass, the recorded music was
then over-dubbed, again by Adrian Sherwood, with Ghetto Priest and collaborator Skip
McDonald adding other instruments, percussion and backing vocals. Fagen’s work presents
the piece across four screens, each depicting one component of the whole: the playing of each
of the three musical instruments and the vocal recording. Each of the four accompanying audio
tracks is relayed through a mono speaker, with separate stereo speakers playing the additional
arrangements, an effect that serves to retain the sense of the individual in the group, the part in
the whole. The whole becomes a rich, layered, experience in the round, with the constituent
parts still comprehensible and at times distinct.
The gulf between the two disparate worlds Fagen invokes – those of 18th century Scottish poet
and 20th century reggae – is not as extreme as time and geography would suggest. Reggae can
be seen through the prism of Jamaica and Afro-Caribbean culture, just as Robert Burns is seen
through that of Scotland. They have both come to express national identity. They may seem
a million miles apart, but both can be construed as folk music. Adrian Sherwood, with whom
Fagen has often collaborated, has said:
“If you look at a lot of reggae artists, they sing about everything, from sex to buying a new donkey.
Every aspect of life is there, so it becomes social commentary. Burns had that thing going on as well,
so everyone’s already working in similar areas…”4
Throughout his career as an artist, Graham Fagen has regularly incorporated elements of his
own cultural, social and national identity in his work. He is continually drawn to thinking
about how stories of self are exchanged: how each individual presents who he / she is; what
details are proffered to conjure the formed individual. His interest in storytelling is reflected
in the fact that, when asked about influences, Fagen is more likely to cite writers than artists.
He has specifically referred to Alistair Gray and Irvine Welsh, both well known for the
unromantic, impoverished, housing scheme settings in which their tales often unfold. An early
work of Fagen’s depicts the fictional town of Nothank, 1999 (p.44), in evident reference to the
‘Unthank’ of Gray’s hugely influential Lanark (first published in 1981).
‘Who are your influences?’ is one of the four perennial, unpleasant questions asked of novelists,
according to Jonathan Franzen in his lecture ‘On Autobiographical Fiction’5. Franzen goes
on to say that: “Reading and writing fiction is a form of active social engagement, of conversation
and competition. It’s a way of being and becoming”. His idea of ‘being and becoming’ brings to
mind an important early work of Fagen’s, the significance of which seems to grow with time.
The work is comprised of two parts: the first is a simple mould made of five rectangular pieces
of wood held together by two clamps to create an open-sided box; the second, a ‘brick’,
created as a cast from the first of the two parts. Significantly the multi-part, messy process of
the making of the object is presented as an equivalence to the product, the finite, neat, clean
121
122
form of the brick. A modest little work, entitled Former and Form, 1993 (p.42), it nonetheless
encapsulates much that has continued to interest Fagen in the years since, through to recent,
large-scale and ambitious projects, which tackle the forming or casting of cultural identity.
This idea of ‘formers and forms’ reappeared in Fagen’s 2014 exhibition at The Glasgow
School of Art. Entitled Cabbages in an Orchard – the show’s subtitle was The formers
and forms of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Graham Fagen. One work in this exhibition,
Scheme for a Cannabis Tree House, 2014 (p.134), is made up of 8 framed groups of photographs,
creating a kind of visual anthology of references, materials – building surfaces – red brick,
roughcast and tarmac, graffiti-covered gable ends, neat social housing and concrete flyovers.
The differentiated gardens and the graffiti tags appear just as different tactics for expressing
some kind of individuality in the midst of serried uniformity. But within each frame Fagen has
created a mirror image, one in which colour is adjusted – a kind of ‘through the looking glass’
version of its partner. The highly coloured images are the result of digital manipulation applied
by Fagen in an attempt to draw out the unseen behind the seen, mundane environment.
He says:
“The idea started with the image of the gable end and the tree. I was wondering about the planning
and the intentions versus the various perceptions the inhabitants have. So I was wondering what
the opposite of that place would look like.”
The reality, it is implied, could not have been what was intended. The work is characteristic
of Fagen’s desire to allow us to see the unseen, to consider the intention, the constraints and
decisions, to expose the conditions of making, the process of casting.
Colour is in itself, interesting to consider here: how tastes are influenced to determine
responses and choices. It is a topic addressed concisely in a work by artist Marine Hugonnier
– Colour of a Memory (Pittsburgh 1972), 2001. The work features a photograph of Pittsburgh
taken by the artist’s father in 1972, the warm, orangey tint so familiar to anyone with family
photographs from that era. It is accompanied by a printed orange sheet that corresponds to the
colour balance of Kodachrome film stock at the time6. While Hugonnier’s work is a succinct
example of the various unseen or unknown conditions that shape taste – a ‘former’ in Fagen’s
terms – it also opens up the idea of a colour palette that may be seen to infuse Fagen’s work,
one of natural greens, earthy tones, yellow, ochre and orange. One clearly formed in the same
period as Hugonnier’s.
The Making of Us, 2012 (p.106), was the second collaborative project Fagen realised with theatre
director Graham Eatough. This ambitious, multi-part work defied easy description, comprising
event, installation and film when it was shown at Tramway in 2012 as part of the Glasgow
International Festival of Visual Arts. Its form as ‘installation’ was viewable just like a gallery
installation, with regular opening hours and visitors free to come and go within those hours.
However, at specified times, advertised and bookable in advance, it became the setting for
a performance, to which ‘audience’ was admitted by ticket – and after signing a release form,
which made it clear that the ‘installation’ / set was also to serve as the soundstage for the
making of a film. Cameras, lighting, sound equipment and crew all became active parts of the
environment, with the ‘audience’ not readily able to discern which of the people with whom
they sat or stood were ‘audience’ and which were in fact ‘performers’ or others involved in the
film production. The work, as it unfolded, staged several situations in which a person is asked
to recount him – or herself – the interview, audition, or trial, for example. What things come,
or are actively brought, to the fore to illustrate the character, the formed individual? He is seen
having to make decisions about who he wants to be – creating his own story.
Described as ‘the making of a film about the making of a man’ the work’s own transition from
installation, through performance (set) to film (soundstage) mirrored the trajectory of the
central character from spectator, to actor to victim and the distancing process of objectification
enacted through the whole.
The Making of Us is also one of several works that draw on the forms and conventions of
theatrical drama, while in some respect undermining them, including the wonderfully titled
Peek-A-Jobby made for Matt’s Gallery in London in 1998 and Theatre commissioned by The
Imperial War Museum in 2000, subsequent to Fagen’s time as official artist in residence
in Kosovo. Both involve theatrical settings and scripts, but open up the space between the
visual or physical setting and the narrative language – the first by having the text available
in printed form – to be read before, after or during the viewing of the set / installation; the
second, by making language itself the barrier to understanding. Peek-A-Jobby (p.52) took the
form of a set – a domestic interior – accompanied by a script, the set brilliantly strewn with
myriad indicators of time, place, and character: Joy Division and Clash posters pinned to the
(wall-papered) walls; cans of Budweiser beer; VHS tapes scattered around an old TV; cassette
tapes on a chipboard shelving unit.
Theatre, 2000 (p.60), is described as ‘a projected play with artefacts from the performance’.
It sets up an opposition between two groups of individuals, one wearing white shirts, the
other checked. They communicate civilly and politely at first, though we cannot understand
what they say, for the performers speak in a made-up language. It is not therefore their words
that influence how we see them, but their behaviour. While Theatre can be seen to refer to the
specifics of the deadly conflict that arose between Kosovan Serbs and Albanian Kosovars, it
also brings to the fore the matter of identification, allegiance, affiliation. It is precisely about
what happens when individuals coalesce into groups, how difference creates distance, and the
swift route from a lack of empathy to antipathy between defined ‘forms’.
It’s hard to resist the pull of my ascribed cultural identity at this point in returning to the
eminently-quotable Burns, in particular his, To A Louse (Upon Seeing One on A Lady’s Bonnet
at Church) from 1786 – the very year he didn’t sail to Jamaica – in which he wrote:
‘O wad some power the giftie gie’ us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’
But if that language is too archaic, too indirect for our purposes, if it doesn’t create meaning,
we have Fagen’s own perspective:
“It’s really important – as an artist but also as a person – how we understand our cultures but –
more importantly – how we are able to understand our cultures within the context of other people’s
cultures, and to see the connections, the links and the influences 7.”
123
124
What makes us the same? What differentiates us? Who are ‘we’? Such questions permeate any
approach to understanding cultures. They arise too in Fagen’s work, navigating as it does the
formation and perception of identity, perhaps never more so acutely as in this particular time
and place. Both place of origin and exhibition of the work heighten its focus: Scotland in the
year after the referendum on independence and the intense, highly contested ground around
identity and identification that was ignited by it: and Venice, where the Biennale context
regularly asks us to look at art through the prism of nationhood, with its national pavilions,
and artists’ biographies. The often heated discussions that surrounded the referendum in
Scotland included complex, as well as over-simplified views on how ‘we’ as a society or nation
see ‘ourselves’, but even who the ‘we’ might be. Scottish? British? Glaswegian? European?
The social, political and cultural histories that accrue to identified places in debates such as
these are the very stuff of Graham Fagen’s art.
The things that surround us shape us, creating differences and allegiances in equal measure
– from the music we listen to as teenagers, to the clothes we wear, affecting not just how we
appear to others, but how we look at the world. How we see and understand. Graham Fagen’s
art prompts us to see those conditions, the formers, to acknowledge that they are there.
—
Katrina M Brown
Director of The Common Guild, Glasgow
1Burns went as far as making a down-payment
on a ship, the Nancy, due to sail from Greenock
4Adrian Sherwood, in an interview with Neil Cooper,
published in The Herald, 2009.
in August 1786. An article in The Scotsman (20
January 2006) explains the chain of events that
prevented him taking the trip.
5A transcript of the lecture On Autobiographical
Fiction published in Jonathan Franzen “Farther
Away” (Fourth Estate, London, 2012).
“What took place between August and October
1786 changed the face of Scottish culture and of
6The notes that accompany Hugonnier’s work read
world literature. Burns was persuaded to publish
as follows: “When we look at photographs taken
a book of his poetry to raise money for the trip. The
in the 1970s, we can see that they have a peculiar
Nancy, due to leave Greenock on 10 August with
orange tinge, which is the result of a specific colour
freight and passengers bound for the Jamaican port
balance. Later in the 1980s, there is a redder tinge,
of Savannah-la-Mar, was delayed until 5 September.
and, in the 1990s, as shift to more of a blue. In fact,
the orange haze effect in the 1970s photographs is
Then, on 3 September, Jean Armour gave birth to
not only due to the process used: the development
twins, Jean and Robert. This delighted him, as did
paper and the fact that they are now ageing. But
the news that the 612 copies of his book, Poems,
also is the result of a marketing decision taken to
Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, were selling like hot
match the aspirations of the moment, to represent
cakes thanks in no small measure to a glittering
the spirit of the time” in Marine Hugonnier
review in the Edinburgh press. The Kilmarnock
(Film & Video Umbrella, London, and Dundee
Edition, as the book became known, had elevated
Contemporary Arts, 2004).
him to celebrity status.
7Graham Fagen in an interview for the GENERATION
In October came news that Mary Campbell, while
waiting at a relative’s house in Greenock, had
contracted a fever and died.
It was enough to make him abandon all plans of
sailing to Jamaica. With his new-found wealth and
status he headed, instead, for Edinburgh. The rest,
as they say, is history.”
2A second collaboration in 2009 resulted in the
project I Murder Hate, involving four of Burns’ songs.
3Passage to the West Indies was most often paid by
agreeing to work for a British landowner for a set
period of years.
exhibition website, 2014.
125
126
129
Cabbages in an Orchard, 2014
Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow
Detail from Scheme for Consciousness (Cabbages), 2014
Indian ink and enamel, variable
Scheme for Consciousness (Cabbages), 2014
Indian ink and enamel, variable
Scheme for Support (Separated), 2014
Concrete, mild steel and ceramic, 46 x 26 x 67 cm
Detail from Scheme for Support (Single), 2014
Concrete, mild steel and ceramic, 26 x 15 x 67 cm
Scheme for Nature, 2014
Bronze, 100 x 100 x 210 cm
Scheme for a Cannabis Tree House, 2014
Giclee print, 270 x 190 cm
Scheme for Conscience, 2014
Concrete, mild steel, ceramic, gold lustre and bronze, 27 x 30 x 95 cm
130
132
133
134
135
137
138
139
War c/w I Murder Hate, 2014
Video Projection, 7 minutes 32 seconds
140
141
In Camera, 2014
Panorama, La Friche, Marseille
with theatre director Graham Eatough
142
143
144
145
146
147
West Coast Looking West (Atlantic), 2006
East Coast Looking East (Caribbean), 2007
Colour photograph, 98.5 x 144 cm
Colour photograph, 98.5 x 144 cm
149
The Slave’s Lament (1792)
Robert Burns
150
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral,
For the lands of Virginia-ginia, O;
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost,
Like the lands of Virginia-ginia, O;
There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear,
In the lands of Virginia-ginia, O;
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
152
153
The Slave’s Lament, 2015
Four-screen video installation with
5.1 surround sound, variable dimensions
The Slave’s Lament lyrics by Robert Burns, 1792
The Slave’s Lament score by Sally Beamish, 2015
The Slave’s Lament, 2015
Production image showing Graham Fagen
and Alison Lawrance, Scottish Ensemble
Graham Fagen
Biography
154
1966
Born in Glasgow, Scotland
1984 – 1988
Glasgow School of Art
1989 – 1990
Kent Institute of Art & Design, Canterbury
2002
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
Where is my Home, (with Flavio Favelli) Italian Cultural Institute, London
2001
Galerie Valeria Belvedere, Milan
2000
Theatre, Imperial War Museum, London
Graham Fagen, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2014
Cabbages in an Orchard, Glasgow School of Art
In Camera, (with theatre director Graham Eatough), Panorama, La Friche, Marseille, France
1999
Subversive on the Side of a Lunatic. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Graham Fagen at the Botanics. Inverleith House, Edinburgh
Galerie Valeria Belvedere, Milan
Graham Fagen (with Michellle Segre). Murray Guy Gallery, New York
2012
The Making of Us, (with theatre director Graham Eatough), Glasgow International
Festival of Visual Art, Tramway, Glasgow
Graham Fagen versus the BBC versus Robert Burns, GoMA, Glasgow
1998
Peek-A-Jobby, Matt’s Gallery, London
2011
Under Heavy Manners, Artpace, San Antonio
Missing, Tramway, Glasgow and Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
1996
Graham Fagen in collaboration with Sydney Devine & Dennis Hopper,
Transmission Gallery, Glasgow
2007
Downpresserer, GoMA, Glasgow
Talbot House Museum, Poperinge, Belgium with FRAC Nord Pas de Calais
Graham Fagen at Micky Schubert, Berlin
Selected Group Exhibitions
2006
Killing Time, (with theatre director Graham Eatough), Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee
Closer, Doggerfisher Gallery, Edinburgh
2014
Generation 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland. Scottish National Gallery of Modern
Art Edinburgh, City Art Centre Edinburgh, Dick Institute Kilmarnock, Gracefield Arts
Centre Dumfries, MacLaurin Art Gallery Alloway, Cooper Gallery Dundee
2005
Clean Hands Pure Heart, Tramway, Glasgow
True Love, City Projects, London
2015
Gallery Micky Schubert, Berlin
2013
Between the Late and Early, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
Living with War: Artists on war & conflict, GoMA, Glasgow
2004
Graham Fagen, CRAC, Alsace
La Mia Casa Dove’e? (with Flavio Favelli) Nuova Icona Gallery, Venice
2011
Tales of the City, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
2003
Theatre, Chapter, Cardiff
Benim Evim Neresi? (with Flavio Favelli), Macka Sanat Gallery, Istanbul
2010
Woodman, Woodman Spare Me That Tree, Gallery Micky Schubert, Berlin
Artist Film & Video at BBC Scotland, Glasgow International, Glasgow
155
156
2009
Running Time, Artist Films in Scotland 1960 to Now, National Galleries of Scotland,
Edinburgh. Unsettled Objects, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
2008
Breakthrough, Imperial War Museum, London
What Is Life, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
Supernatural, Centro Cultural Kunsthalle Andrax, Mallorca
2007
Shadows in Paradise, FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, France
2006
Living in the Modern World, City Art Centre, Edinburgh
2005
Evergreen, Inverleith House, Edinburgh
Reflection, New works for the city collection. McManus Galleries, Dundee
Reap, Café Gallery, London
Art Sheffield, Shefield Contemporary Art Forum, Sheffield
2004
Art & Industry Biennial, Christchurch, New Zealand
The Other Flower Show, V&A, London
Art of the Garden, Tate Britain, London, touring to Ulster Museum, Belfast and Manchester
City Art Galleries
Busan Biennial, Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, South Korea
2003
Mars, Art & War, Neue Galerie am LandesmuseumJoanneum, Graz, Austria
Nurseryworld, Jennifer Flay, Paris, France
Sanctuary, GoMA, Glasgow
In Good Form, Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Zenomap, Scotland + Venice, 50th Venice Biennial
Northern Grammar, Solvberget, Stavanger Kulturhus, Norway
2002
Strike, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Reality Check, British Council, London and European tour
2001
Definition, Murray Guy Gallery, New York
different/diverse, Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Venice
Here + Now, Dundee Contemporary Arts
G13 NY3, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
2000
Playthings, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. Touring Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art and
York City Art Gallery
Gemini Sculpture Park, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Warning Shots, The Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds
Salon De Montrouge, Montrouge, France and Institute of Contemporary Art, Lisbon
Blackbox Recorder. British Council touring exhibition
British Art Show 5. Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff & Birmingham
1999
The Sea, The Sea. Murray Guy Gallery, New York.
Word Enough to Save a Life, Word Enough to Take a Life. Dilston Grove, London
The Golden Age. ICA, London
Backspace. Matt's Gallery, London
A Touch of Evil, Metronom. Barcelona
1998
From Here – Wallpapervideo, High Street Project, Christchurch, New Zealand
1997
European Couples and Others, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow
Periphery, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany
Waterfront, Catalyst Arts, Belfast
Musee Imaginaire, Museum of Installation, London
1996
Art for People, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow
Fall Out, Wacker Kunst, Darmstadt
1995
Gallery Valeria Belvedere, Milan
1994
Facts of Life,102 Gallery, Dusseldorf.
Modern Art, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow
1993
Wonderful Life, Lisson Gallery, London
157
Commissions
158
Selected Publications
2014
Cabbages in an Orchard, Glasgow School of Art. Text by Graham Fagen, Johnny Rodgers
and Jenny Brownrigg
2011
Baile an Or, Timespan, Helmsdale. Text by Kirsteen MacDonald and Nicola Henderson
2010
For St. Agnes, foreground. Text by Laura Mansfield
Diary of an Egg Collector, The Shetland Museum. Artists book work with Eddie Summerton
2014
War c/w I Murder Hate commissioned by14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions,
for The Empire Cafe
2009 – 2010
For St Agnes at St. Agnes Park, Bristol commissioned by Foreground projects and Bristol
City Council
2007
Fir Tree commissioned for Talbot House, Belgium by FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, France
2009
somebodyelse, The Changing Room. Text by Dan Kidner
1999 – 2002
Two Pocket Parks. Tree Planting and Where the Heart Is. Commissioned by The Centre
and The Royston Road Company
2007
Killing Time, Dundee Contemporary Arts. Text by Katrina Brown
2000
Commission to Kosovo. Commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, London
2005
Clean Hands Pure Heart, Tramway. Text by Francis McKee and Lorraine WIlson
2001 – 2002
The Forest and the Forester (after Maeterlinck) commissioned by Grizedale Arts
2002
Love Is Lovely, Fruitmarket Gallery. Text by Murdo MacDonald and Jeremy Millar
Botanica, Grizedale Arts. Text by Simon Morrissey, Lucy Byatt and Penelope Curtis
Where Is My Home, Italian Cultural Institute London. Text by Vittorio Urbani
The Forest and The Forester, Grizedale Arts. Artist book work
1999
Subversive On The Side Of A Lunatic. The Henry Moore Foundation. Artist book work
1998
Peek-a-Jobby, Matt’s Gallery, London. Artist book work
Belfast as World Garden, Armpit Press, Glasgow. Artist book work
1997
Art As Reactionary Statement, Armpit Press, Glasgow. Artist book work
Collections
Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London; Imperial War Museum, London;
Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds; Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow, City Of Edinburgh
Collection, Ayrshire Museums, Dundee Museums. The Fleming Collection, London.
The National Galleries of Scotland
Private Collections, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, New York, San Antonio, Germany,
Denmark and Italy
159
War/Garden (after Tubby), 2007
Neon, 60 x 150 cm
Published by Hospitalfield on the occasion of the 56th International Art
Exhibition, the Venice Biennale, 9 May – 22 November 2015.
Curated by Hospitalfield and commissioned by the Scotland + Venice partnership:
Creative Scotland, the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Council.
We would like to thank the following supporters of this publication: The British
Council, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee
and the Hospitalfield Alumni Association.
Additional supporters of Graham Fagen’s commission for Scotland + Venice:
www.hospitalfield.org.uk
All works courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
All photography by the artist, except: p.10 – 31 by Ruth Clark;
p.40, 43, 45 – 47 by John McKenzie; p.50 – 51, 56, 82 – 85 by Alan
Dimmick; p.78 – 79 by Donald Nisbet; p.100 by Graeme Hunter;
p.102 – 109 by Todd Johnson; p.124 – 135 by Alan McAteer;
p.147 – 148 by Holger Mohaupt.
Design by Owned and Operated, Glasgow.
Typeset in ITC Franklin Gothic and King’s Caslon.
Printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Allander
in an edition of 1,000.
isbn 978 – 0 – 9932275 – 0 – 9​
© the artist and authors, 2015.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical – including photocopy, recording or any other
information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher.
163
164