A young girl had sadly died, and a number of artists were invited to make proposals for an artwork in her memory. It was commissioned by all her friends…
The artwork was to be situated in Gladstones Land, an ancient back court off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. My proposal was to work with her friends to make small changes in the environment of that place. The changes would have been a way for her friends to speak about the person they knew, in the context of that ancient architecture, and would have offered a subtle portrait – the work of many hands.
Rather than making an Art object, I wanted to use the love and the pain that was felt by her friends, as an interplay of differences that might challenge the historic, narrative structure of the place. In the event however, this proposal was not used, and although it is difficult to imagine how these changes would have looked, the above image offers one possible idea. It shows one of the corner stones of an ancient building, re-carved to resemble books, petrified on a bookshelf.