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Catching up with the soft-spoken Matthew Zajac at Tramway, on Glasgow’s Southside, is a relaxing experience. Writer and performer of the multi-award winning Tailor of Inverness, Zajac seems mildly surprised by the critical and commercial success of what he calls “a personal and confessional” work.

Dogstar were founded in the late 1990s, partially in response to the lack of theatre in the Highlands, but also to mine the rich heritage of music that is scattered across the north of Scotland. Tailor, despite its use of technology and an approach that finds an echo in the work of the RSAMD’s Contemporary Performance young teams, retains that link: Zajic’s only on-stage company is a violinist.

Zajac became involved in the company in their early years as a performer, although the inspiration for this play reaches further back into his past. Having recorded his father’s memories years before – the beginning of Tailor relies heavily on almost verbatim transcriptions of these tapes – he visited his paternal homeland to discover that some of these memories were fabricated.

One of the central themes of Tailor is the tussle between truth and reinvention: his father had come through the Second World War, experiencing catastrophe in his native Poland, before arriving in Scotland. From this foundation, Zajic weaves a magical story that considers issues of cultural identity – he acknowledges that part of the creative process was about establishing his own identity as a Scottish Pole, or Polish Scot.

Since devolution, Scottish theatre has been increasingly preoccupied by issues of national identity: Tailor is an intensely personal take on the conflicts. Following the influx of Poles in the past decade, the questions asked by Zajac’s father have taken on a new relevance.

On stage, Zajac captures the agitation and hopes of a man who has experienced the horrors of war: in person, he is charming, generous and thoughtful. Modest about his achievements, he sees his work clearly in the context of both modernity and tradition.

So far – so good, but for me the territory becomes more problematic when the concept of ‘finding’ is introduced…..for artwork built around the hidden quite often means that the art causes the hidden to be found. While the act of revealing can deliver an initial high, this is often followed by the drive to possess or capture. While David Nash’s influence on me has waned I still hold precious James Joyce’s statement in ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ that the true work of art is defined as one that does not excite a desire of any kind (I’m still looking for the actual quote…see below).

Some of my practice is very ‘quiet’ and ‘unannounced’ – I am often asked ‘what if people do not see it, or cannot find it?’. I am interested in the act of seeking  ….it  is not overly important for me whether someone finds the initial object of their search…..rather their experience of the process and the unexpected things that might be discovered on the journey.

Erratic Cairnsmore of Fleet National Nature Reserve – permanent installation 2009. On finding Erratic you are invited to draw out the pulling handle and drag the sculpture to a new location – Erratic is in remote and open landscape…it’s position is not defined.

When the Rothko series for the Seagram Buildingwas still in what is now Tate Britain, I had a very deep relationship with the room in which they were hung – I could never guarantee finding it – for me, it was a secret or hidden room. I was not interested in getting a map, rather the finding or not finding was in some way ‘meant to be’ I gave over my destiny to the search and what I found on the way and/or the finding of the Rothkos (cf also the Joyce and Nash quotes… though Google has spoiled that game somewhat).

A good recent example of working with the hidden was a work by Ginny Hutchison in a project I curated in public space in Inverness. Ginny marked the path of the sun over a series of consciously unremarkable spaces

In going looking for the Seven Sunsets people made their own unique discovery of the city even if very few ever found all of the ‘work’.

Find out more about Matt Baker here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.