Sorcha Dallas

Four emerging Scottish artists are bound for the Venice Biennale and valuable international exposure

Next week, the art world will turn its eyes to Venice once again. In recent years, the Venice Biennale faced speculation that it was losing its pole position as an arbiter of taste in contemporary art to a string of other festivals in younger cities. Nonetheless, the city of Titian and Peggy Guggenheim still holds powerful sway in the world of art.

Scotland hadn’t held an exhibition space at the Biennale until 2003, when the Scottish Arts Council, spearheaded Zenomap, in which the work of three young Scottish artists – Simon Starling, Claire Barclay and Jim Lambie – was shown in an old palazzo, curated by Francis McKee, now the curator of Glasgow International, and Kay Pallister. A longer list showed work as part of a wider programme. It was a high-profile event, and an important one two years on, with another Biennale looming, they faced the more difficult decision of how to follow it.

This year, the Scottish Arts Council has joined with the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Council, and has found a new venue, the Scoletta, on Campo San Rocco, a stone’s throw away from Titian’s Assumption and Tintoretto’s Scuola Grande di san Rocco. When it returns from six months in Venice, the work will be shown at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

The curators, Jason E. Bowman and Rachel Bradley, are clear that this year will be different from Zenomap. ’ We wanted to represent a different type of practice which has been at work in Scotland,’ says Bowman. ‘We have a very specific interest in the dynamic of an artistic practice, in the way a practice behaves. All three practices we have chosen we have been following for a significant period of time.’

The artists, Cathy Wilkes, Alex Pollard, and Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan who work as a partnership, share an interest in how an artistic practice works. Bowman and Bradley have called the exhibition Selective Memory because ‘we are very interested in the editing process, the works an artist deems to be successful and complete. But an artistic practice is never complete, it is invisible most of the time. You don’t see what an artist actually does, you see what they make.’

On the face of it, the works are richly contrasting. Wilkes makes installations which combine elements of sculpture and painting with everyday objects; Tatham and O’Sullivan create sculptural motifs which they place in different contexts; Pollard’s recent work involves sculptures made from customised articulated rulers. But Bowman says a certain amount of contrast is a good thing. ‘There are complementary factors, all are very concerned with the notion of the production of art, of artistic labour, but the actual manifestation of the three are quite different. There are points of aesthetic challenge between the three.’

Alex Pollard, who in his twenties is the youngest of the four, is delighted with the opportunity to make work for the Biennale. ‘It’s great, obviously a real privilage. It’s great to get the opportunity to show to an international audience. I’ve been working hard on it for the last six or seven months. I’m just going to try to enjoy myself as much as possible.’

His major concern is that his sculptures, in particular a pair of dinosaurs, made from hand painted rulers in metal, plaster and wood, will make the journey from Scotland to Venice safely. ‘I had to do quite a lot of worrying about that. In the end, I packed them in vitrines full of polystyrene balls, so they are suspended in a tankful of those.’

Tatham and O’Sullivan’s work poses a different challenge because of its larger scale. The artists also plan to build an outdoor sculpture near the Giardini, where the national pavilions are situated. ‘The Biennale is the main contemporary art event internationally,’ says O’Sullivan. ‘In terms of the number of people who will see our work, it is amazing. But getting our work out there is quite complicated. The outdoor work has been constructed in parts here in Glasgow and will be put together there. Another of our pieces will have to be built when we get there.’

The job of selecting artists for Venice was never going to be an easy one. The curators are spoilt for choice with a rich and varied scene, incorporating talent as diverse as Alison Watt and Toby Paterson, Dalziel and Scullion, Beagles and Ramsay, Christine Borland, Callum Innes. Bowman says they believe they have chosen work which stands on ‘an international platform, beyond any form of jingoistic nationalism.’

‘The practices that we selected to work with are involved in a non-parochial notion of what are is. Cathy’s work can be seen within the dynamic of feminism, rather than representing Scotland, for example. Scottish contemporary art has an international reputation because the artists there have an international outlook.’

They have chosen ‘emerging’ artists rather than household names. The more traditional view of the Biennale is that of national pavilions occupied by a single artistic heavyweight; this year Ed Ruscha is at the American pavilion and Gilbert and George at the (official) British pavilion. Bowman and Bradley believe that being part of the ‘parallel programme’ gives them more freedom.

‘As a curator you make choices at points to work with blue-chip artists’, says Bowman. ‘The other part of curatorial practice is how to support artists who are on the pathway. Working on the Biennale, one of the concerns was to represent the social dynamism of contemporary art in Scotland, as opposed to choosing one figurehead artist to represent nationhood.’

Contemporary art in Scotland has flourished because it is part of a broad and colourful scene, supported with grassroots artist-led initiatives and sustained by established artists staying on in Scotland and teaching the next generation. All the artists in Selective Memory are part of that. Cathy Wilkes started Wilkes Gallery in her own flat as a way of showing her own work and that of others; Tatham and O’Sullivan teach at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen; Alex Pollard served for two years on the committee of Glasgow’s Transmission Gallery.

‘The artists we chose have all made an incredible commitment to the artistic ecology of Scotland,’ says Bowman. ‘One of the reasons why Scottish contemporary art constantly rejuvenates itself is that artists have very expanded practices. They have taken a significant responsibility for cultural development in Scotland.’ And as the old stones of Venice will discover on Wednesday night, they know how to throw a party.