GENERATION: A History of Contemporary Scottish Art

It’s become so ingrained in the art world: that oft-cited idea of the ‘Glasgow Miracle,’ and the city and its surrounding nation being renowned for its visual art; that it’s easy to forget that the presence of Scottish contemporary art at the forefront of the international scene is a relatively recent development. Artists from or based here may routinely be nominated for the Turner Prize, a useful if debateable litmus of the prevailing currents in the higher echelons of the art world; but rewind just a few decades and you’d be hard pushed to find a Scottish artist blazing a trail on the world stage.

This summer, a programme of exhibitions of astonishing ambition celebrates the flourishing of contemporary art in the last quarter century, with shows across the country from Orkney to the Borders. GENERATION includes more than 60 shows, over 100 artists, and is about the last 25 years of Scottish visual art. That takes us back to the late 80s, the year before Glasgow became European City of Culture; the year after the Glasgow Garden Festival, which brought visitors to the city for something other than fitba and chibbing. It was also, says Simon Groom, director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) and one of the architects of GENERATION, a pivotal turning point as it marked the start of the Environmental Arts course at Glasgow School of Art which famously educated a whole host of the artists associated with Glasgow from the 90s onwards (Douglas Gordon, Nathan Coley, Jim Lambie et al) with its focus on context and ideas as much as the work itself.

“It also dates to the first of the artists that we’re looking at,” says Groom. “For us one of the key artists is Steven Campbell, who really marks that transition between the kind of Vigorous Imagination generation of 80s painters to what’s happening now.” The Vigorous Imagination generation were displayed under that title in a survey of new Scottish art in the SNGMA in the late 80s, and included the so-called New Glasgow Boys of Adrian Wiszniewski, Ken Currie, Peter Howson, and a reluctant Steven Campbell, who gets lumped in with them, but really marks the step change between an era of Scottish art defined by figuration, and the one now, where the idea is king.

Groom explains Campbell’s significance in the scene’s development. “He did a show in the Third Eye Centre in 1990 called On Form and Fiction. He’d just come back from New York with a completely different attitude to painting, to the work of art, and created a total environment where he papered the walls of the gallery with these drawings and watercolours and overlaid on that his painting, and had a soundtrack going. So you entered this total work of art and that just opened up so many possibilities for so many of the artists who saw it.”

On Form and Fiction has been tracked down in its entirety to a London store, and will be redisplayed in the SNGMA from late June alongside work by such varied artists as Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Henry Coombes, David Shrigley and Rosalind Nashashibi. This disparity in practices, in methods, modes and meaning, is a fundamental part of what makes the last 25 years of Scottish art so fascinating. You’ve got Nashashibi’s sublime, internationally engaged video art. But you’ve also got David Shrigley making his millions from mass marketed books of dry wit and photos of stuffed cats.

This disparity is both a joy and a challenge for GENERATION. As Groom explains, “Trying now to think about how one might represent the art of a time, a country, a place, becomes increasingly difficult. How do you do an exhibition now that looks at a whole nation’s art? Or on art produced in a nation over 25 years, over a generation?” This led on to the thought of creating an exhibition that revels in these different strands and media. “An exhibition that’s contemporary, that’s relevant, that tells stories, rather than one imposed narrative on the last 25 years. Because of course it’s a complex place, history is always shifting, it’s always being redefined. It depends on where one stands. So GENERATION really mirrors that complexity, it mirrors the complexity of the scene at the time. There are many different strands to it, many different types of behaviour, media, practice.”

As well as the many different artists and their practices, GENERATION takes in the whole of the country, eschewing the traditional orthodoxy that the culture happens in the Central Belt and maybe a bit in Dundee. “It’s about the whole of Scotland. So whether you are on Orkney, or in North Uist, or Mull or Inverness of Aberdeen or Dumfries or wherever it might be, there’s an opportunity to come along, have a look, make up your own mind, learn a bit more about this thing called contemporary art.”

Crucially, the programme is composed of existing contemporary art galleries and residency spaces that are scattered across the nation but rarely explicitly connected. The GENERATION concept was formed and shaped by a central curatorial team of the National Galleries, Glasgow Life and Creative Scotland, but the exhibitions would have been happening anyway, just with somewhat less fanfare. As Groom explains, 2014 and its attendant international focus offered the perfect opportunity to celebrate. “What we wanted to do was really use the occasion when the eyes of the world will be on Scotland during the Commonwealth Games to celebrate what we think is a really important, dynamic, interesting and powerful story.”

Another concern is making the work as accessible as possible without dumbing down. As Groom explains, there is an attendant fear around contemporary art being some sort of inscrutable voodoo that can only be understood with a PhD in International Art English. “The thing about art is everyone feels like you need to be reverential towards it, you have to like everything. And I think what we’re saying here is there is no such thing as one type of contemporary art. I guarantee there will be things that you love. But also there are going to be things that you hate. And that’s part of the world anyway, and contemporary art’s no different. You have permission to not like things or to love things.”

Emphasising the point that contemporary art is a relatable form like any other is a tricky message to deliver, and GENERATION is aiming to do so through a variety of means, with the months of exhibitions accompanied by explanatory publications, and the prerequisite digital campaign with special website and interactive social media strategy. Says Groom, “The opportunity to have a conversation with our audience is all we can hope for – that would be a great thing.”

GENERATION has already started, with Toby Paterson currently on show in Kirkcaldy Galleries, Anthony Schrag up in Aberdeen and Corin Sworn in Inverleith House in Edinburgh. May sees the launch of Douglas Gordon’s Artist Room way up in Caithness; Ilana Halperin showing in An Tobar on Mull; and a touring show of Christine Borland, Graham Fagan and Dalziel + Scullion taking in Gracefield Art Centre in Dumfries and the Maclaurin Art Gallery in Ayrshire. Closer to home, there’s also Mick Peter popping up in the Tramway’s Hidden Garden; Nathan Coley in GoMA and Rachel MacLean taking over CCA with her largest solo show to date, Happy & Glorious.

This selection alone takes in performance, video, drawing, sculpture, sound and multimedia installation. As the exhibitions continue over the summer – Lucy Skaer, Alison Watt, Nick Evans, Richard Wright, Paul Carter, Raydale Dower, Charles Avery, and on and on and on – the disciplines, practices and media continue to unfurl and collide in all their contradictory brilliance. Says Groom, “Contemporary art can take so many different forms, as we’ve seen in the last 25 years from Scotland. It’s the same with anything – food, television, music – the more you know about it the richer the experience becomes and the more you enjoy it.” This year in particular, it’s all there to be explored.