00:00I guess it's a provocative title that tries to make us contemplate what we
00:17should remember what we should forget. I think the imperative of public art is
00:22always to remember that's why often why these artworks are put out into the
00:26public realm but I'm with this exhibition I'm questioning possibly what if
00:33remembering is always the correct thing and because it can sometimes have a
00:37negative effect on society it can make us prolong bitterness or avoid
00:42reconciliation or history can also be misused and misaligned and be used
00:49against us in a way so I'm just kind of trying to own up to the idea that
00:53history is quite a subjective field that can't really one angle can't from one
00:59angle you can't tell the whole story you've got to come out from lots of angles
01:02and public monuments tend to be unsophisticated they tend to be quite
01:07one directional they tend to look at an issue or a time or an event from one
01:13perspective so this exhibition tries to look at monumentalism in the round and
01:20that's more about asking interesting questions of the genre rather than giving
01:25a singular meaning. Well I think they're very different environments public art
01:29versus gallery work but they're also interconnected you know they overlap for
01:36me at least they do. I see that galleries as an experimental zone where I can test
01:42out ideas I can build my identity as an artist as well because as you know public
01:48art tends to have a brief attached to it we must remember this person or this event
01:53or this this industry that's no longer no longer here so the artists can still
02:01bring their creativity to that process but they don't completely control it it's a
02:08negotiated outcome which I love so I'm not against that I'm very pro the idea of
02:13listening as an artist and being part of our discourse and then negotiating an
02:18outcome but I also need to go into that negotiation with a strong sense of who I
02:23am and what I can bring to that. In this city I've got a memorial to the NHS health
02:29care workers at the Royal College of Surgeons that's a COVID memorial I've got a
02:37a little head of Patrick Gerriss which is just off the Royal Mile I'm currently
02:43working on another project for Edinburgh but that's still in play so I can't tell
02:48you much about that. In Glasgow I've got Citizen Firefighter outside Central Station
02:54commemorates the work of the Strathclyde Fire Brigade and a few other got work at
02:59the Tron Theatre but I have I have artworks in Aberdeen I have artworks in London
03:07quite a few in London but yeah I would say all these experiences have really
03:11brought a enriched my life as an artist because the I'd start with the cliche of
03:19an artist an artist is sometimes seen as somebody who's isolated remote you know
03:24a disconnected from everyday life a dreaming person okay but creative and
03:32have of value but still dreaming was my experience as a sculptor has been one of
03:39being exposed to other people's lives communities working practices incredibly
03:46diverse experiences I've been privileged to have so yeah that's I think that's
03:53where I want to be as an artist I think this is important this show reflects on
03:58how I work in the studio my own concerns but it's not until I get I feel like the
04:04kind of end point is the city or this or the square or the or the piece of land
04:10art whatever I create in fact I would probably like to mention one other artwork
04:16which is the unknown which is in the very north of Scotland and that's a single figure in fact that
04:25one behind me the skeleton is the master copy of it and it's a conversion of that cast in iron which
04:31stands on a remote hillside in Sutherland and it's all about absence it's all about the human frame and
04:38about the eternal but also about the absence of people and as well so and it kind of intersects with
04:46iron age history as well folk art things like that I mean that's how I tend to my strategy as an artist is
04:53often to try and create a something that resonates meaning but doesn't have a kind of core meaning right
05:00doesn't you don't get it if you know I mean it's just a thing that tries to bring influences together
05:07so they make some sort of resonance some sort of charge that will that will engage the viewer my
05:15education and art really began in this city I did a higher art after I left school I went to
05:22Western Hills Education Center to study art higher and then that allowed me to then apply for art school
05:29um and I applied for Edinburgh and Glasgow and got into Glasgow which was a fantastic uh bit of
05:39it allowed me to change myself if you know what I mean you know what if you leave your past leave
05:45your old city start in a new one it's quite uh it's an opportunity for it can be catalytic that's the
05:53word I'm looking for it's a catalytic event because it's hard you can't really reinvent yourself in
05:59your own city you know I mean because you can't you drag all your past with you whereas when I went
06:05to Glasgow I felt like an opportunity to sort of like reset as a recent opportunity so Glasgow was
06:11incredibly I was so lucky I collided a very key time in Scottish art and there's a lot of really
06:16important artists who we didn't know at the time but were going through art school at the same time as
06:21me and so I came of age in a time living in Glasgow where people were doing amazing things and people
06:29were making connections outside of Scotland beyond London to Europe to America etc there was a a sense
06:38that you could do things that you could achieve things that there was uh what's the word a vital
06:44community of art uh who decided not to leave Scotland you know decided to stay in Scotland but
06:51connect outside of it and that was incredible for the time so yeah I think everybody gets lifted up by
06:58that social moment right everybody involved in that scene maybe achieve more than they could have done if
07:03they were in a sort of a less what's the word a less engaged less less less uh connected city uh that
07:13Glasgow was at that time my motivation really is is undying I suppose the idea of sculpture I think if I
07:21don't make sculpture I basically become quite unhappy a person um it's that ingrained in my sense of my own
07:30identity um it's it's tied to it um and it doesn't take long for me to go off the boil and that's but
07:37of course being an artist doesn't mean you get to go in the studio and make work every day there's lots
07:41more to it than that uh stuff that you know we'd all rather not have to do but we do what interests me
07:47is what is here what is now what has always been I'm looking for um feedback loops within history you
07:55know where you can see something that's like I did a sculpture about um urban deer hunting and that
08:01was something that was if you think of that is that's a manifestation of a very old practice so
08:07hunting is basically as old as humanity and it's probably the first ever subject in art it was the
08:13hunt scene and the first ever paint was animal blood it goes that far back as a subject but I read the story
08:21about uh deers being hunted urban deer being hunted by by young folk you know so I thought well that's
08:28that's interesting subject because it's it's it's connecting to our ancient past but it's also
08:35manifesting itself in a very contemporary way I mean the horse and rider one for instance that's
08:40obviously a historical um archetype yeah and it's all usually about control and about power
08:48and dominance and the figure on the horse is usually sort of dominating the animal and we're supposed
08:54to be impressed by that um and it's elevated high up so here we have a horse and rider in this show
09:01which is but it's a little a young woman young girl sitting on a pony but there's a sort of peacefulness
09:08to it and there's a sort of almost like a tacit agreement between the animal and the rider that they're
09:14this arrangement they've come together that they share as opposed to one so it's a kind of just
09:21flipping a lot of the values um attached to archetypes attached to stereotypical monumental sculpture
09:29that's the kind of strategy I have I guess art doesn't have a function per se I mean we can argue
09:35we can argue the case for art in society but it doesn't have a practical function an immediate one like
09:41say a bend put rubbish or a light so you don't bump into buildings or road markings so cars nowhere to
09:47drive there's something practice some sort of practical reason for everything whereas the arts much
09:51more it there is reason for existence is something you have to debate and of course as you say you don't
09:58find a complete consensus it will divide people to some degree as well but you hope to take most of
10:05the people with you I mean it's quite often a public artwork will be loathed on inception
10:12and then accepted and then loved um that's hopefully the trajectory for most of the public art
10:19i mean they can the work citizen firefighter you mentioned and sent outside central station that
10:25work was commissioned just before 9 11 and it was to commemorate the work of the strathcad fire brigade
10:33and but within a few months its meaning changed significantly uh because of those all the
10:41firefighters who perished and the ladder companies in new york though and it created a kind of
10:47rawness within the fire service in scotland and they had connections with those emergency workers
10:58so they decided to have a service around the statue and so all this the the fire set fire brigades of
11:04scotland came around the statue they played the pipes they sang laid flowers had a speech
11:11and right there you could see that there was a social function to sculpture it wasn't just about
11:17making the city look more interesting visually or aesthetic or it wasn't just something you put up
11:23and forgot it actually had a social role and that was to deal with this raw emotion and it was a conduit
11:29that people could come or come around a lightning rod maybe yeah for and i think that's what sculpture can
11:35do it can quietly exist and suddenly is thrust into the limelight for a particular social reason
11:44and it does in a way ask us what do we share as a community what does the city share what's the city
11:53what are the citizens have in common with each other
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