This is the official Gretna Landmark pdf with clearer images and better text than those scanned from last weeks edition of the D&G Standard.
As one of these landmarks is going to sited on our border with England, can we have less of the funny comments and some serious consideration given to something that like it or not, will be seen by millions of visitors to Scotland every year.
Now that readers have an opportunity to read the text the creative teams have put to the images, is our understanding of the collected work clearer or even more confused?
Posted by MMac.
PS the symbol at the bottom of the Scribd document to the left, enlarges the pdf to full screen size.
Gretna Landmark
I hear the seriousness of Mark’s call for debate – I guess that I am not alone in feeling fear in raising my head above the parapet to talk about this project. Yet, I am not quite sure why I feel anxious….fear of hurting the feelings of people I know and value? An artist’s code that says that we all have an unalienable right to self-expression? But something is eating away at me about this and I need to try and understand why that should be.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about the principles of the Gretna project in January – http://tinyurl.com/6xv8rmw
The bottom line for me is that I love the border, my mother always hooted the horn as she crossed into Scotland and I have adopted that ritual too….Borderlands are rough places, scrappy and disorderly, and yet in their crossing they are sacred and absolute. The very nature of the border exists in our own individual imaginations – there is something personal and constantly changing about our relationship to our own identities that a crossing gives form to. As an idea for an art project – the exploration of the Scottish/English border is an idea of genius…what I find ridiculous is the assumption that the outcome of this exploration must be ‘an icon’ or ‘a landmark’.
Our definition of art has changed radically in the modern age – often Scottish artist have been at the vanguard of these changes…..these current proposals seem to me simulacra of art…ie they represent the idea of art rather than ‘being’ art. As such they speak with the voice of the establishment. There is no individual ‘way in’, no space to make these works something that each of us can own – rather they are like the disappointment of being given an educational toy…something that puts across a message that is good for you rather than something that inspires you to find out something for yourself.
I wanted to hear the tooting of horns and know that we were all thinking something different – not feel that I was tooting in support of The Landmark.
My money is on the 'Star of Caledonia' to be chosen as the winner. My worry is that a proposal that relies on powerful illumination for its effect is right for D&G given the success of Dark Skies in Galloway forest and our possible future status as a UNESCO Biosphere. Is their information anywhere about the power sources/carbon footprints of the proposals?
ReplyDeleteProject manager Carol Hogarth said she believed all three options said "something important about Dumfries and Galloway and Scotland".
ReplyDeleteWhat?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-13992689
In case you haven't seen this already.. Ian Rankin speaks on the winning design.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14023458
Thanks Pete, here's the BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz take on the Star of Caledonia.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14027083