“Ross Sinclair has long been fascinated by Landseer and made provocative installations at Aberdeen and Inverness Art galleries in response to Landseer’s work including Monarch of the Glen. These installations challenged its status as a Victorian icon and questioned what it says about the nature and formation of Scottish identity. His own body became a tool for his art in 1994 when he has the words Real Life, tattooed across his shoulders. Since then, his Real Life projects have taken many forms using different materials and approaches”

How can powerful historical artworks, images and objects be deactivated in order to reappraise the veracity of their ubiquity, unspooling them from the anchors of their accepted meanings and political uses, perhaps unseating them from the certainty of their familiar identities. Using a performative, somatic engagement with such objects and through a recirculation of images employing détournement, the artist and their artworks attempt to cast this 'icon' in a fresh light, repositioned in a contemporary context. By reconsidering the past through a unencumbered critical lens, this process invites audiences to unlock new reflections on the original work and its meanings, disconnecting congealed understandings of the story of the work and rebuilding and reconnecting with new possible modes of thinking it usefully into the future. One of a range of methodologies is explored through the coining of a new, hybrid image, a dialogue across 170 years encouraging ‘conversations’ with publics, through a combination of life sized photographic work in the gallery featuring a tattooed artist/human in apparent dialogue with the Monarch, then with the subsequent distribution of free postcards with an invitation to “Please take a postcard, Put it somewhere in your Real Life, Take a picture of the postcard in that place, share on social media adding #RealLifeMonarch and tag @dovecotstudios”