Projects
A selection of my favourite projects from over the years: Co-production, community projects, massive murals, tiny tags, political installations, performances, collaborations and street art. Click images for project details.
Freedom Versions
In 2012 I was commissioned by Creative Stirling to create an inaugural project for their new headquarters in Stirling’s historic Old Town Jail.
I recruited 10 artists from across Scotland to work together to paint a temporary mural in the courtyard. The mural content was devised from local history folk tales and folk’s patter. We spent a week working together to paint it, mostly in the rain. The mural became the backdrop for a summer of workshops and concerts and was cut up and reconfigured into a variety of compositions across the city that Autumn. A BLAMELESS project, from before we were called BLAMELESS.
With Fraser Gray, Mike Inglis, Pete Martin, Kirsty Whiten, Raibya Choudhry, DUFI, RUE FIVE and Martin McGuinness.
Solar Fields
As a follow up to Freedom Versions, the following year, 2013, we moved inside to the basement of the jail. I worked with a team from Creative Stirling to invite members of the public, artists, writers and musicians to send us 140 character statements regarding the impending vote on Scottish Independence. These often ambiguous statements were screen printed at Dundee Contemporary Arts onto beautiful, heavy Somerset paper and hung in individual cells, for an exhibition which provoked a range of responses and conversations from the public. Those with a pro indy stance seemed to feel it was pro union and those with a pro union stance seemed to think it was pro indy, they were both right. We held a series of workshops, talks and concerts in the cells to accompany the show and produced a commemorative, screen printed newspaper of all the statements (see below). The full edition was retained as part of Stirling University’s art collection.
Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no news tonight…
The Solar Fields prints had another outing, hung above the crowd as part of Ladies and Gentlemen… an evening I curated on the day of the referendum on Scottish Independence, 2014, in Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow.
The evening started well with a blistering performance from John Knox Sex Club and Garden of Elks, Ditchburn and the second and last ever performance of Shellac Made Me Hardcore (see below). Ending with a buckfast fuelled lock-in to watch the results come in. There were big cheers for Dundee… a few tears for most other results. The tidy up was brutal.
Poster designed by Gordon Shaw, who was also involved in Shellac Made Me Hardcore. A performance we first attempted as part of Hidden Door 2014 on Market St in Edinburgh, in one of the arches Blameless had painted our Community Service mural on. The performance involved Gordon and our childhood friend Scott, dressed in high vis jackets and my 80’s Euro disco army helmet sculptures cajoling people into dancing to a vinyl set of Ayrshire techno, slowed down Proclaimers and religious 1930’s shellac 78’s played through my great great auntie’s wind up gramaphone. It was a fucking powerful celebration of the kitsch and confused central Scottish cultural identity. You can almost watch it here.
Here’s the video I made for John Knox Sex Club’s track Ashes. Edited from mobile phone footage I took in Shenzen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.