Review follows:
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Even that title helves away from the elaborate time and place fan vaulting I’ve just experienced.
The sombreness which I felt. It struck me, the sense of sinking into a dream. Others responses were resonating with the note of humour in the conceit of offering a tour of GSA instead of ECA, and yet, the assertive and serious presentation pointed at the breath-taking scope of what was at play here.
Yes, there were deft and witty moments which the speaker enjoyed; the contrasts between the phantom and real spaces, or their exact concordances – these arose in descriptions of place, purpose and light and dark mainly – and yet, on the outside of these, were big considerations about truth. trust and truth. I mean I found myself questioning received truth, local truth, convenient truth all through the narrative offered by the Mephistophelean speaker.
‘Are painting studios better if they face north?’ – I ask myself in a south facing studio. ‘Does everyone agree that Janitors go in the middle?’, I ask on my way out, ‘or is this something shared between the ‘Scottish Art Schools only?’
Our categories were alternatively supported or undermined by what we took in as we were led through the experience.
Elements of the real impinged. Elements of our own lives, of the very literal present – but only as one voice among many.
There was also a question about whether this act of imposing a tour of one building on another was somehow aggressive - especially in regard to current debates about the future of ECA and it’s status in relation to the other art colleges and their operating models. Was the tour an exact transcript of one ‘captured’ from ‘the other place’? Was it implicitly critical of GSA’s embrace of tourism?
I found myself asking, ‘Why don’t I know who the architect of this space is?’. And I really noticed the architecture in a way that I hadn’t before: it’s quality and what the philosophy behind its forms was. That was pretty thrilling, like the walls dissolving around me. I had an out of body experience.
Iain Morrison
Commercial Opportunities Manager
The Fruitmarket Gallery
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FALLON.LOCHHEAD PRESENT:
A GRAND TOUR
A SERIES OF BESPOKE GUIDED TOURS AROUND EDINBURGH COLLEGE OF ART AT THE TIME OF THE 2011 DEGREE SHOW. EACH TOUR WILL BEGIN AND END AT THE THIS IS NOW EXHIBITION SPACE, AND WILL BE CONDUCTED BY A SPECIALLY INVITED CICERONE.
THERE WILL BE FOUR TOURS OVER THE COURSE OF SUNDAY 19 JUNE:
11AM
12.30PM
2PM
3.30PM
CONTACT: TO BOOK A PLACE, SPECIFYING YOUR FAVOURED TIMESLOT.
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