Art at The Scottish Parliament

There exists a principle known across the world as percent for art. It is enshrined in the laws of most European countries, and across the cities and states of North America. It means that every public building project is obliged to commit at least 1% of its budget to art. If this law applied in Scotland (and it should), the budget for art in the Scottish Parliament would stand now at £4.3 million.

But of course, it doesn’t. This particular building project managed to turn the country against adventurous architecture. If architecture was under fire, art had no chance of support. Besieged MSPs popped their heads above the parapet just long enough to throw a token £250,000 at their disappointed art consultants, before retreating in consternation.

Admittedly there are art galleries for whom £250,000 would make all the difference, but they aren’t charged with creating a collection, from scratch, of the best of Scotland’s established talent. Moreover they haven’t got endless swathes of bare concrete wall to fill.

The consultants came up with dozens of modestly-sized photographs, along with a modest quantity of more physically substantial artworks. However, in a building of such remarkable ambition and flamboyance, modesty is lost. Contemporary Scottish art is more than capable of meeting the challenge, but only if money can be found.

The biggest gaping hole is Paolozzi. It seems almost unthinkable that a public building of this importance does not boast a monumental bronze by the Leith-born artist, either inside or out. Six of the artist’s woodcuts are a good start, but not good enough. Paolozzi’s bulky, fragmented metal figures would make a perfect complement to this raw, multi-facetted building. Perhaps if the Presiding Officer speaks nicely to Sir Timothy he can borrow one.

Despite the budgetary holes, there are some real triumphs to be found around the walls of the parliament. John Bellany has gifted one of his superb early paintings, depicting the uncompromising harshness of the North East fishing industry. Like a superstar at a party, it charges the space around it with its own stern aura. This is a life of salt in open wounds and of death at sea. The central cluster of black-clad figures, presumably fishmongers, might as well be a cabal of hard-core presbyterian ministers plotting a denunciation. Menace and hardship are all around.

Another highlight, on a monumental scale, is Glen Onwin’s specially commissioned diptych, Mossers, Rebels and Wolves, Heather Forest (Coral) Tree. Two huge box frames contain dead heather, poking out of black salty wax on the left, and stark red on the right. Life and death are mixed, scorched earth and comforting peat both evoked by the black-painted heather.

The red suggests bloodshed, to which the title refers (quoting General Monk, who burned the forests at Aberfoyle in 1654 to purge them of anti-union rebels and wolves). At night the protruding branches must be quite spooky, and during the day they serve as a stern social and environmental warning to MSPs as they approach Committee Room Five.

Callum Innes chose a wall for his painting which is different from all the others. His is inside Queensbury House, where the plaster board only partially covers the old rubble walls of that historic building. His exposed painting – where paint is washed off with dripping turpentine – is mounted on the exposed rubble wall, like a perfect artistic partner to the stripped structure.

The photographs, by a range of highly respected artists including Thomas Joshua Cooper, are less successful in this context, particularly those whose only source of light is at ankle-height. Perhaps predictably, there is an over-preponderance of Scottish mountains in the mist, and even more of choppy seas. But gratifyingly, none are sentimentalised. I can’t think now of a single land or seascape which isn’t cold and hostile, like the walls to which they are attached.

Niall Hendrie was commissioned early on to document the building of the parliament, and his selection of colour photographs is utterly seductive. Going far beyond documentary, they are as close to painting as photography can get, finding soft pastel surfaces and razor-sharp contours in places where most of us would fail to notice anything.

In this idiosyncratic environment, the relationship between the works of art and their surroundings is impossible to ignore, and in fact reveals a lot about the building. The two tapestries and the row of silk banners, for instance, are completely at home on the raw concrete walls, just as they would be on the cold stone of a medieval castle. They perform the same functions too, warming up the look and feel of the vast hall and tower. The overall effect of the architecture is breathtaking, but at times, close up, it can feel like an intimidating fortress. The right art, in the right places, should soften the blow without compromising Miralles’s intentions.

Does this collection of work say something about us as a nation? I think it does. It shuns flamboyance and embraces restraint. It seeks out harsh environments, both environmental and industrial, and it reaches right up to the boundaries to stare into infinity. It also says we’re stingy when it comes to art. That bit, at least, can be fixed.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 26.09.04