Counterscript documentation, 2014
There are several divides within my practice, like I imagine there are for any contemporary artist. For instance- a lot of the personal myth surrounding my practice comes from self-generating a lot of my projects, but more and more I am undertaking commissions for galleries and institutions. Doing both at the same time can take your practice in several very different directions at once, and often leaves audiences a bit unsure of where to place you. There is also a strange split in my practice between data-heavy analytical works, and accessible bright colourful theatrical performances; I have previously undertaken public works with communities in the highlands and islands that have lead to unusual looking images of part neon hiker, part wicker-animal characters. And I’ve also found myself making work about archival systems for whom the main audience was librarians, or museologists!
So a commission to respond to the ATELIER PUBLIC#2 program at GoMA during G.I. really could have gone either way!
Boar-Headed Hiker, 2013
AP2 is a fantastic public engagement activity, taking place over several months, and breaking through a lot of the G.I. veneer, sandwiched between two of the main G.I. exhibitions- Sue Tompkins and Aleksandra Domanovic. Members of the public (and visitors to the G.I.) are encouraged to create their own slogans and images, and what has resulted over the past 2 months, is a constantly changing canvass of ideologies and (often highly personal) imagery. There are also few rules in place, and so existing images are often re-used or destroyed in the production of new ones. There is also no quality control or age restriction, so the content is as varied as the people walking the streets of central Glasgow.
Tale-twisting documentation, 2013
These slogans, symbols and amorphous shapes, have had a habit of mimicking and responding to what existed already on the walls around them. Thus an image of a rocket has seeded several more personalised rockets, a provocative slogan has inspire many more slogans along similar themes, and in comparative display styles. Like Chinese-whispers, messages and visual imagery has shifted and transformed, amalgamating and dissolving existing materials and influences.
To explore this process and create my own version of the phenomenon, I spent 8 days in the gallery at the beginning of April, employing a “copycat” approach; creating a likeness of each shape, form, slogan, scribble, pictogram, and amorphous cut-out that took my fancy. Members of the public and invited guests came in and helped- applying their own re-interpretation upon the symbolism of each icon by re-making it. It was also interesting to have to work with a limited amount of similar material, meaning colours and material often had to be substituted.
Exegesis film still, 2013
The original emotive images and words (many still visible on the walls of Gallery 2) often came from someone’s personal rhetoric, something tied up with their identity and things that mattered to them, symbolising more than is immediately accessible to others. By copying (or attempting to copy) these symbols we can only take the ‘likeness’ of them, and most of the meaning is left behind.
Following the creation of over a hundred ‘likenesses’ in vinyl, I have taken these symbols through a further process of re-interpretation, transforming and amalgamating them into a single mural.
New combinations of the slogans and text has produced a single paragraph of evocative phrases, and every word has been assigned its own symbol allowing new readings of what is now ‘mute’ material.
Exegesis film still, 2013
This curious “copycat” exhibition is both subversive and archival, so that in creating something away from the institutions intentions, the material has been placed within an even more institutional context. But the meaning/s of the new arrangement is in appearance only, where readings and connections can be made but become looser as the text work spirals up towards the ceiling.
Audiences who have already contributed to the ATELIER PUBLIC #2 project these past weeks will return to find a mirror of their own artworks being put to new use, in a re-interpretation of the entire exhibition.
“Counterscript” opens in the Round Gallery of Balcony 2 at GoMA on 24 April, and runs through to 27 May.
See more of Alexander’s work in VERGES/The Wild Project from 2 – 17 May at Interview Room 11 in an exhibition that examines personal and public perceptions of Wild(er)’ness.
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