This output comprises eight performance-based site-specific artworks (2014-2019) that form the latest iteration of Ross Sinclair’s 25-year durational project, titled Real Life. The artist’s body features in every artwork, viewed from behind to reveal Sinclair’s ‘Real Life’ tattoo which, following a recent addition, now reads ‘Real Life is Dead.’ This gesture stages an intentional paradox; the artist’s physical presence is key, but by facing away from the audience, traditional and popular conceptions of the artist as elevated individual or as celebrity are rejected.

The research facilitates critical dialogues between the artist, institutions and the public that question the role of art and its potential (non-object based) forms in gallery and museum spaces. Over a series of performance-installations, Sinclair stages interventions into art institutions that engage various political and social contexts - e.g. the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and the endurance of romantic/kitsch pastoral representations of Scotland - to interrogate the purpose of art and to question who it serves and how.

Research outputs take the form of large-scale installations that stimulate audience participation, enabling new means and modes of engagement. The research contributes to the fields of socially engaged art practice and theory and institutional critique by proposing alternative forms of artwork e.g. as a gift economy, in the project 20 Years of Real Life – Free Instruments for Teenagers (Collective, Edinburgh 2014/15), where expertise, time and opportunities were gifted to a group of teenagers, alongside musical instruments.