Artists at Glenfiddich 03
open daily until September 28

It all seems too good to be true. The distillery – like a historic village full of gleaming copper sculptures – is a hive of activity day and night, and international artists, living in cottages on-site, exchange smiles with the workers as they wander freely between the stills. Across the road stands the twelfth-century Balvenie Castle, and next to it the cottage of Glasgow artists Roddy Buchanan and Jackie Donachie. The eight contemporary artists, who were invited by Glenfiddich to take up a three-month residency, are not even under pressure to produce finished work during their time here.

This is the second year of the Glenfiddich artists in residence scheme, and the company behind it, William Grant and Sons, has so far invested £150,000 – but it’s well worth the money, they say, and already they have won the prestigious Visionary Sponsorship award from Arts and Business.

“It is interesting to artists to come and live in this rural but industrial place,” says Peter Gordon, the Grant family member who made the project happen. “This tiny local community is also the international brand Glenfiddich. Then there is the uniqueness of the place – here we are in one of the most beautiful factories in the world, and yet you can come and live and work here. That’s what’s on offer, plus the most important ingredient of all – the care and character of people here.”

An exhibition of the artists’ ongoing work is currently on view around the distillery and in the gallery. “At the high point of summer we have up to a 1000 people a day coming to visit the distillery,” says gallery manager Andy Fairgrieve. “If 10% of those people come in here, it’s probably a better throughflow than galleries in the centre of the art world.”

“We could have filled it with Landseers and traditional watercolours, but that would have been so kitsch that it wouldn’t have had any impact. The whole of the Scottish whisky industry is sold on heritage, tradition, tartan and haggis, and this is such a contrast, it has an amazing impact on the visitors.”

Some of the artists, who are from Scotland, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Italy, have engaged more directly with the distillery and its workers than others. Lois Carson, who graduated this year from Gray’s School of Art, learned from the workers about the art of making whisky, and has made a sculpture which interprets the entire twelve year process in one block of perspex. “This really suits the way I work,” explains Carson. “The passage of time, taking fragments and memories from moments in time and then bringing them together to give a different visual interpretation of that duration.”

Carson now plans a more figurative piece based on the legendary “angel’s share” – that proportion of the whisky which evaporates during the distillation process. She has quizzed the workers about what gender the angel should be (the result is, to her surprise, evenly spread) and all that remains is to lay her hands on the materials.

“As long as you have your high visibility vest on you can go into most places in the distillery,” she says. “Everybody’s so friendly and easy-going, like the guy down at the cooperage – I wanted to get my hands on a barrel, and I didn’t think it was going to be easy, but I was chatting with him and he just offered, without being asked.”

The size of the local community, both within the distillery and in the nearby town of Dufftown, has come as a surprise to some of the artists. “Living in such a small town I’ve never done before,” says Danish artist Jasper Sebastian Stürup. “It’s really different from Copenhagen, which has one million people. Everybody’s nice but it’s just so small! One of the differences from most other residencies, is usually you come to a place where there are a lot of artists or there’s an artscene. The art community here is quite small, and so then it gets to be about other stuff.”

“I’ve been on a vacation from art,” Stürup continues. “I’ve tried not to go to any shows, and it has been wonderful just doing my own stuff. I’ve been working hard producing two shows: my show in New York, and my next show in Copenhagen. That’s over 40 drawings. There isn’t anything here to distract you unless you choose to be distracted, and I enjoy that.”

Glasgow artist Jackie Donachie has been somewhat distracted by her two young children and by the constant stream of visiting friends and relatives, but she views her time in Glenfiddich as an opportunity for ongoing research rather than the production of finished works of art. “What we haven’t done is produce tonnes of work,” she says about herself and her partner, Roddy Buchanan. “But you shouldn’t make the work until you get back home, because then you’re wasting all the time to soak up all the experiences.”

“It is very important for us that people are not forced to produce,” agrees Claudia Zeiske, Programme Curator. “Obviously we try to encourage them and we look forward to seeing things, but for example Kenny Hunter, who was here last year, takes a long time to produce an artwork so it is very obvious that work that is a reaction to his time in Glenfiddich is being done later, once he is long gone. We keep a dialogue with him and I know that he is working on something that came out of his work here.”

Castle Croft, the cottage where Donachie, Buchanan, and their children are living, is romantically sandwiched between a medieval castle and a field full of hairy highland cows. Buchanan was amused by the endless stream of tourists who assumed that they were an ‘authentic’ local family, and he was inspired to research his family tree. Five generations of Glaswegians (with a smattering of Irish) are charted on an enormous banner, Weegie Castle Dwellers, which now covers the gable end of the house.

“Every time we go out our front door there’s people looking at it,” says Donachie. “It’s amazing – we’ve had Chinese tourists in photographing the kids because they’re on this wall plan! Everyone has come over to look at it because it’s quite clear from the castle. They’ve all been really positive - no-one has said ‘what on earth did you do that for?’, which you could guarantee in Glasgow.”

Perhaps the greatest hit with visitors has been Danish artist Jan Cardell’s rytmobile, which occupies the Peat Shed but can be heard for miles around. It is a home-made mechanical orchestra pre-programmed to bash out groovy tunes at the push of a button, and it’s amusing to watch startled tourists jump the moment it cranks into motion. Cardell made the rytmobile before coming to Glenfiddich, and although he was given a workbench in the distillery’s industrial workshop, he was forced to change his way of working. “I couldn’t get the exact materials I wanted, so I made grass straws instead. But I like it because they’re different; I made something totally new here so I think that’s good. I’m going to keep on with those grasses now.”

Paris-based Matthieu Laurette’s work is not dependent on materials in the traditional sense, but being in Glenfiddich has made a strong impression on him. His interests lie in corporate branding, subverting systems, and exploring the boundaries of art. His work in progress, entitled Camouflage, is tucked discreetly into a display case in the site’s reception area.

“They suggested that we show our works on the route of the tour, and I was looking for a place that was camouflaged. I have tried to test the limits of the company, myself, our relationship – to define which territories we can share. It’s very rare that you can have access to a company from inside. Normally you just see the product from outside, as a tourist, but we’ve been living here, meeting the Grant family and the workers, seeing how the whisky is made – we’re like a small community.”

Laurette signed personalised notes on 50 bottles of malt, and sent them to curators, critics and collectors around the world (including DCA’s Katrina Brown). This task turned out to be a legal and logistical headache and on Laurette’s last day, Dufftown Post Office relocated itself to the artist’s studio to take the job in hand.

“The work is the whole process: sending them, shipping them, writing the message, but it is the recipients who will decide whether to add extra value to it,” explains Laurette. “They are all signed, which is ironic, because you sign a postcard of course, but a signature has a different meaning in the artworld so for some the value is in the contents, others will prefer to keep it. The idea is to merge two different worlds: the business world, and my world. Glenfiddich is trying to build a reputation through the artworld, but what extra value do they get? There must be a better way – they’re interested in doing something which is not normal. They bring people here who create problems! None of us are watercolourists – we’re troublemakers in different ways, so why do they want to associate their name, their brand with artists? I don’t really know. They just want to do it.”

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 14.09.03