Art in Scotland: Review of the Decade

In the 1980s, four bold young figurative painters from Glasgow discovered that you could hit the big time without living in London. In the 1990s a new generation of Scottish artists – now of a largely conceptual bent – was slowly but surely making its way on to the international art radar.

By the noughties, young Scottish-trained artists were routinely walking away with all the best prizes – Beck’s Futures, during its seven years, was practically a Glasgow institution. The Turner Prize frequently head-hunted north of the border with winners including Martin Creed, Simon Starling, and of course this year’s Richard Wright.

Creed’s winning work was an empty room with its lights going on and off. Starling’s was a shed which had been used as a boat and made back into a shed again. Wright’s is a meticulous, but temporary wall-painting which will soon be painted out of existence. While these make good media fodder, they present a robust challenge to the commercial art market, and that’s how the artists like it.

The noughties has seen a coming of age for this new generation of artists who thrive in vibrant, self-assured communities in Scotland’s cities and towns, and whose art is designed not to make the biggest splash, but to contribute to complex dialogues with their peers at home and abroad.

The big names are no longer just the ones who shout the loudest. The last decade has brought quieter voices to the fore, such as Moyna Flannigan, Cathy Wilkes, and Lucy Skaer. These artists have a low-key, slow-burning appeal which is anathema to the sensationalism of 1990s BritArt. Much of Skaer’s work has been made almost anonymously, in collaboration with other artists, and yet she has been recognised with a recent major solo show and Turner Prize nomination.

A strong strand which has run through Scottish art over the last 10 years – and I’d go so far as to say we saw it here before it caught on around the world – was the personal touch. In a reaction against high-tech, high-gloss corporate globalisation came the scribbled lines of David Shrigley, the casual brush marks of Hayley Tompkins, and the dancing doodles of Katy Dove projected onto sagging sheets.

Politicians occasionally ponder whether cultural success engenders political confidence, or whether it’s the other way around. After the Scottish Parliament’s first full decade in 300 years we should be a little closer to the answer. Certainly devolution led to Scotland’s new profile at the Venice Biennale, and it’s puzzling to consider why, until then, we were content to be passed over in favour of one “British” representative.

But politicians of all hues have struggled to lead the way in the visual arts since the parliament’s inception. The Cultural Commission, the ill-fated Culture Bill, and the equally doomed Creative Scotland Bill dragged their way through the decade causing disgruntlement all round. Art was handcuffed to social and economic agendas and the culture portfolio seemed somewhere along the line to have become a ministerial naughty step.

Despite all this, many galleries both public and private have thrived. It’s easy to forget that the Dean Gallery and DCA were brand new 10 years ago, and the RSA a crumbling wreck. Now we have a first class gallery complex on The Mound, and a shiny new Kelvingrove in Glasgow. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is currently undergoing transformation, as is the National Museum of Scotland and the McManus Gallery in Dundee.

Private galleries took a massive step forward this decade too. The Modern Institute, Ingleby Gallery, Doggerfisher and Sorcha Dallas were all either babies or twinkles in their owners’ eyes 10 years ago. Now, crucially, contemporary Scottish artists can enjoy serious international representation without packing their bags for London, Berlin or New York.

These new galleries were born out of a vigorous DIY ethos which spread like wildfire throughout the decade: boxes weren’t ticked; t’s weren’t crossed or i’s dotted, but hundreds of exhibitions, collaborations and performances were made to happen by artists who wouldn’t wait for fate to knock at their door. Out of this culture sprung the Glasgow International art festival, which goes from strength to strength every year.

The noughties saw the loss of some of Scotland’s greatest artists: Eduardo Paolozzi and Ian Hamilton-Finlay had both made it into their 80s, but Steven Campbell’s death aged 54, at the height of his powers, came as a shock to everyone.

Some things didn’t change in the last 10 years. Richard Demarco found a new gallery to house his archive only for it to slip through his fingers again. The National Galleries of Scotland got themselves into another pickle about the status of Scottish art in their permanent display. And Glasgow School of Art’s MFA course kept on turning out the winners.

Best Pick: The Modern Institute. It revolutionised the art world dynamic in Scotland, stemming the haemorrhage of artists to London.

Worst Pick: The Culture Bill. Art is not as easy to steer as many politicians seem to think.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 27.12.09