Historical gender bias and the reappraisal of figures like Cecil Rhodes have made monuments controversial territory. Edinburgh Art Festival’s director Sorcha Carey estimates that the city has more structures commemorating animals than it does women.
For the festival’s 2016 edition (running until 28 August), seven artists have been invited to explore the theme of monuments and commemoration in spaces around Edinburgh under the theme, More Lasting Than Bronze. Here’s a whistle-stop tour…
‘Understanding versus Sympathy,’ by Roderick Buchanan
Location: St. Patrick’s Church, Cowgate
A neoclassical church that became the heart of Edinburgh’s ‘Little Ireland’ in the nineteenth century is now the site for ‘Understanding versus Sympathy’. Roderick Buchanan’s video work is constructed around an interview with eminent historian Owen Dudley Edward, biographer of revolutionary socialist James Connolly, who was executed by firing squad for his role in the Easter Rising of 1916. Though his parents were Irish, Connolly was Edinburgh-born (a fact he took pains to conceal); while Dudley Edwards, whose father met Connolly as a child, moved from Ireland to Scotland as a young man. Their combined histories and the importance of place entwine in Dudley Edwards’s storytelling.
Photography: Ross Fraser McLean, Studio RoRo
‘A Drama in Time,’ by Graham Fagen
Location: the foot of Jacob’s Ladder, New Street Rail Bridge
Fagen’s work occupies the deepest, darkest spot in the heart of Edinburgh: the railway bridge at the foot of the long staircase from Old Town to New Town (or, as the name given to the steps suggests, a shortcut to heaven). Inspired by incidents in Robert Burns’s life that twice saw him contemplate abandoning poetry to move to the West Indies and work on a sugar plantation, Fagen’s neon installation places a cadaver between boats departing in opposite directions.
Photography: Ross Fraser McLean, Studio RoRo
‘Every Woman,’ by Ciara Phillips
Location: Prince of Wales Dock, Leith
MV Fingal is the fourth artist Dazzle Ship to be docked around the UK as part of the 14-18 Now programme of WWI centenary art commissions, and the only one to be painted while in the water: a daunting task that saw the artist and team paint the bobbing boat from a moving scaffolding structure. Striking pictures exist of ships in Dazzle pattern ‘camouflage’ docked at Leith during the First World War. ‘Every Woman’ commemorates the less visible role women played in the war effort – including female artists at the Royal Academy who designed Dazzle patterns under Norman Wilkinson.
Photography: Ross Fraser McLean, Studio RoRo
‘The Fountain of Youth,’ by Sally Hackett
Location: the courtyard of Huntly House, Museum of Edinburgh
This Fountain is the product of youth itself: artist Sally Hackett invited local primary school children to portray the ups and downs of being young on 40 of her biscuit-fired head forms. These are now installed on the parapets of her fountain. Around it, the courtyard of Huntly House is decorated with fragments of ornamental stonework, including gargoyles and memorial plaques dating back to the seventeenth century.
Photography: Ross Fraser McLean, Studio RoRo
Untitled, by Jonathan Owen
Location: Burns Monument, Regents Road
The committee formed in 1819 to create an Edinburgh monument to Burns had only planned for a statue, but John Flaxman’s marble figure cost half the amount they’d raised – so a copy of Thomas Hamilton’s existing Burns Monument at Alloway was built to house it. When local gasworks discoloured the marble statue in 1839, the Burns portrait was rehoused, leaving the monument empty. Jonathan Owen has used Burns’ pedestal as the plinth for a re-carved nineteenth century nymph, her body transformed into a large buckling chain.
Photography: John McKenzie. Courtesy the Artist and Ingleby Gallery
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