We Love Real Life Scotland, is a Large scale neon installation on 18th Century façade of the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow for 6 months over 2015/16. Part of exhibition 'Devils in the Making’, Glasgow School of Art and the Collection
Over the past 300 years the national image and identity of Scotland has been articulated, defined and invented by writers, poets and artists. This dates back at least as far as 1761 and James Macpherson’s invention of his epic Ossian/Fingal poetic ruse and is woven through the incredible life and poetical works of Robert Burns, our ‘national bard’. Just a few years after Burns death Walter Scott invents historical fiction (for the first time featuring ‘Real’ characters and historical events from Scottish history, manipulated to the author’s own narrative ends). In some quarters, Scott is chiefly remembered for orchestrating the pageant/charade of the visit of George 4th to Edinburgh in 1822, (the first visit of a reigning ‘monarch’ to Scotland for almost 200 years). To celebrate, the kilt is no longer proscribed and this kick-starts a renaissance of all manner of tartanry and Scotchness we easily recognise today with a quick shoofty up High St in the capital. Coming riding along in a extravagant fashion is Edwin Landseer, making visual in layers of thick oil paint Queen Victoria’s love of the highlands in a sentimental smorgasbord of popular imagery leaving us snapshots of Balmorality and the eerie stillness of the mountains and glens, all conveniently and systematically depopulated during the Highland Clearances, when Napoleonic wars in Europe demanded higher rents and returns for the owners of the massive estates of the Highlands. Instead Landseer repopulates these lands with images of the nobility huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ and conjures up from the brigadoonish mists of time his Monarch of the Glen, which in turn becomes embedded as a pseudo national symbol of Scotland. In one sense a celebration of political and social class war against the poor. Confusing eh? In the early 20th century this becomes even more complicated with Harry Lauder and Will Fyffe becoming international superstars trading on a now familiar image of the drouthy scot, tight with his purse strings but always up for a sentimental song and the wiggle waggle of the kilt. Harry Lauder is the first solo artist to sell a million records. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting I’m above all this, I feel deeply affected by many of these images and ideas…but why? It suggests a state of national cognitive dissonance.
This is the conversation into which the artwork We Love Real Life Scotland enters. It’s a celebration, a commiseration, a joy, a cringe and all at the same time. The beating heart of the work is the large central panel of flashing neon, inspired in parts by Glaswegian landmarks of the old Irn Bru sign I used to see, as a child, high on top of the city rooftops of Union St and the fantastic folk art still to be seen on the front of the Barrowland Ballroom. This central panel pulses out - WE - LOVE - REAL LIFE - SCOTLAND, an endless affirmation, a positive exhortation to think about Scotland, to reflect on life in a Real Life Scotland, what could this mean for us individually, collectively, nationally, internationally – in the past, the present and most of all in the future? It is resolutely not party political. However in the ten years since this work was first shown, on the back of the City Chambers in Glasgow as part of the Radiance lighting festival, the discussion about what Scotland is, and what it could be nationally and internationally has exploded. This is a dialogue that will be continuing for some time to come, from whichever angle one wished to approach it politically .
The statements, which surround the main sign on the front of the gallery façade, reflect this complicated and contradictory self-image. The main door is flanked by signs imploring We Love Bannockburn 1314 and We Love Culloden 1746, twin pillars of the national psyche calcified in an understanding of ‘ourselves’ as an endless ping ponging between ‘success’ and ‘failure’ which the visitor must pass through/get beyond in order to enter the building. Above are flanked a series of statements proclaiming love for Burns, Scott, Landseer, Victoria, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Harry Lauder, Parsimony, Alcohol, Failure and The Highland Clearances. Of course no one really ‘loves’ the Highland Clearances, for example, but lasting images/national treasures held in National Collections by artists such as Landseer, the more gritty realism of Thomas Faed’s Last of the Clan or the depopulated grandeur of the highlands celebrated in Horatio McCulloch might suggest otherwise. This raises questions to which there are no easy answers. Are these images now so ingrained that they are part of us, or are we part of them? I have often sought to reflect on these kind of questions through the works I have made over the past 20 years of my Real Life Project since I had a tattoo stating Real Life inked across my back, at Terry’s Tattoo parlour at Trongate, about half a mile from the Gallery.
If there is a message to this work it is that we should embrace and even celebrate the fact that Scotland is essentially a fiction, based on something that never existed in the first place. Once you get over that you realise this means Scotland can be anything we want it to be, and anyone can become part of that journey, anyone can become Scottish if they simply come and join in, to imagine the future together, the more the merrier. It’s not Lochs and Highlands, it’s a state of mind.
It is clear to me the people of Glasgow and Scotland have the energy, enthusiasm and intelligence to embrace artwork such as this and to engage with its complexities and contradictions. I have witnessed it often myself over 25 years of working as an artist in the City, and while teaching at The Glasgow School of Art. Any visitor can see that the people of Glasgow already have a sophisticated analytical relationship with official civic statuary and its historical context in the persistent popular dialogue with the statue of Wellington directly in front of the gallery. I hope We Love Real Life Scotland, 2015 can provide a stimulating new backdrop to this discussion and stimulate new ways of seeing ourselves and perhaps even provide a little joy as the cold winter draws in.
R.S. September 2015
