An Apolitical Miracle? : Scottish Artists in Public Space.
How Scottish Artists learned to avoid stating the obvious without forgetting to engage in Scottish history and politics. This paper will discuss how Scottish visual artists have apparently been oblivious or unconcerned in their work about the day to day social effects of the political soul-searching over Scotland’s future constitutional arrangements. The thesis here is that many artists have, in fact, inspired new ways of thinking about this pressing subject by an oblique turn which on the face of it seems to avoid engagement with the political situation. This turn is at once liberating in its invitation to discourse the question in modes beyond the conventional, and profoundly provocative. Case studies will be made of the work of two internationally recognised artists, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Douglas Gordon.