My contribution to the Society of Scottish Artists’ annual exhibition of 1989 was two large chairs…
As with the Two Gates artwork of the previous year, my idea here was to present an art environment where none had existed before – in the street outside the Royal Scottish Academy. By setting up a sculpture which was both sympathetic with, and irritating to the classical proportions of the Royal Scottish Academy building, I hoped to instill in bus passengers and other passers-by, a feeling that art is a symbolic language which can be used to interrogate and complicate the overwhelming simplicity of colloquial, objectifying language. In other words, this artwork was an invitation for people to occupy the chairs mindfully and to be the artist.
Looking into these two ‘art’ chairs, we see immediately that the larger, left hand chair is of plain appearance, while the chair to its right is painted red and adorned with many small golden chairs. The larger plain chair seems to be almost like a template for the other, and being of classical proportions, it might well have worked on its own outside the RSA building. But the essence of this piece sits in the relatedness of the two chairs. If the larger chair resonates more harmoniously with the edifice – almost like a sign for ‘high art’, then the smaller tries to interfere with that resonance by being a symbol for every other type of kitchen chair no matter what awkwardness of form it might possess.
I was asked to make an etching to raise funds for the SSA. I made this ‘Folding Chair’ with the help of Alphonse Bytautas of the Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop…
But inside the Royal Scottish Academy just on the other side of the wall I made another chair – a Folk Chair…
The Folk Chair was 7.5 metres in height, and was made from coppiced elder and ash, lashed together with hessian cord. While ascending the ladder, the eye picks up on a large white tea towel draped over the arm of the chair.
What the Two Chairs were trying to say in the street outside those walls, the Folk chair tried to say inside an art gallery. Mindfully sit in the chair, ascend the ladder and have aspirations to make art in the streets with others. We are one with all things. How we are is what we are. We are not to be objectified in linguistic ledgers. We are the things around us – the Folk Chair as a symbol of symbolic language.
(In this time after the discovery of quantum entanglement, we must consider it probable that we – you, me and every other thing in the universe, are one. No if’s, no but’s….we are one. This being the case, then every thing that we think we see around us is actually the thing that we are, and that is why we think we see them. It is the reason we sense things.)
Nevertheless, in week three of the month long exhibition, the coppiced elder stems dried out in the summer heat, and one morning we opened up to find that the Folk Chair had collapsed. (I describe this in a little more detail later on page 1990).
But all art exhibitions come to an end, and after the 1989 SSA in Edinburgh, these works were installed in Vogrie Park near Dalkeith in Midlothian…
Around that time I also made a small sculpture which I called ‘Trousseau’…
…In fact the cube on which the figure stands does have the word ‘Trousseau’ deeply incised into the reverse face and inlaid with shocking pink paint.
This sculpture is about 500mm tall, and is cast in resin bronze (patinated). It shows the empty suit of clothes of a businessman with a large deciduous tree growing out of the groin area.