Fred Bushe, RSA OBE
Frederick Bushe. Born 1931 died 17 May 2009.
One of the foremost of a generation of Scottish sculptors, Fred Bushe also founded the Scottish Sculpture Workshop.
Both his drawing and his sculpture were monumental in scale and concerned with the physical of the environment around him. He was a modernist through and through, engaged with material and form and dismissive of the fads in sculpture that came and went. His strong sense composition in three dimensions resulted in work drawing on the industrial as a primary source. You would naturally connect his work with that of Anthony Caro.
In 1979 he had been teaching art teachers at Aberdeen College of Education, and was looking for a studio. He found an old bakery in the village of Lumsden, with a flat above a shop front, and a range of buildings behind. He took these on, establishing the Scottish Sculpture Workshop (SSW) initially under the auspices of WASPS (Workshop Artists Studio Provision Scotland), and later as a ‘client’ of the Scottish Arts Council.
Fred was part of the post-war sculpture symposium movement participating in symposia in eastern europe and in turn hosting a number of international symposia at SSW. This movement was about cultural communication in the context of political division, and Fred played an important role. In the Bothy at SSW there is a big kitchen table, and that probably epitomises his spirit.
Over the fifteen or sixteen years that he ran SSW, more than one generation of young artists found a place to explore their interests in a working studio. At the same time artists from something like 40 countries came to work. When it was good, SSW was a hothouse with artists working and talking, supporting and helping each other. When it was bad, it was freezing cold and very isolated.
Fred also established the Scottish Sculpture Open at Kildrummy Castle. For many years it provided an opportunity to see large scale work by established and emerging artists, again both Scottish and overseas. It is difficult to image the importance of this biennial when there are now so many opportunities for large scale work (temporary and permanent), but at the time it was critical.
Fred had studied at Glasgow School of Art, 1949–53. In 1966–67 he attended the University of Birmingham School of Art, where he gained an Advanced Diploma in Art Education. He was a long standing member of the Royal Scottish Academy and received his OBE in 1997 (I think).
He exhibited in group shows from the Camden Arts Centre in London to the Pier Arts Centre on Orkney, as well as many of the Sculpture Opens, and his works are to be found in various locations in Scotland as well as in odd corners of Eastern Europe.
Hopefully the RSA will put on a good retrospective of his work.
A characteristic large sculpture, “Grave Gate”, in Corten steel and wood, can be found in the Hunterian Sculpture Courtyard.
Other links to images:
Chatham Street North Extension Relief
T-Fold, Highland Council
LANDWORKERS
Twice this week I have been confronted by the importance of thinking about the rural as a thing in itself, rather than by what it is not. The Scottish Government defines the rural in negative terms; it is that which is not urban. But, and it has to be said, sometime around now according to the UN Population Fund humanity is crossing a threshold into (statistically speaking) more than 50% of us living in cities.
And it is precisely at this point that it is increasingly clear that we need to pay attention to the cost of our beliefs, and our belief that the rural is backward, dependent and boring compared to the smooth, fast and creative spaces of our cities is one we need to question.
On Thursday 14th May 2009 the Geddes Institute at the University of Dundee, as part of the Annual Conference of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland held a symposium entitled Landworkers. We were taken on a journey into a space where the indigenous and the vernacular and the rural and the remote were foremost. I have a slight reservation even using the word rural in the context of work around the Great Bear Lake in the North West Territories of Canada, or of Samiland stretching across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Rural suggests the space of western agrarian cultures, not the space of travelling folk and nomads.
So I’d like to start by suggesting several things Scotland can learn from its own rural:
The international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently reported that Scotland’s rural schools provide the best education in the world.
As noted previously, the result of more than 20 years of community development through the process of land claim on Eigg (amongst other remote Scottish estates) has resulted in the Eigg Trust introducing a renewable energy system which makes the island an exemplar. Moreover the fact that this renewable energy system incorporates a means to limit any individual from taking too much is something to be celebrated. It means that social and environmental justice are manifest in the infrastructure.
Rural Scotland also has the potential to generate 25% of Europe’s wind energy, as well as a very significant proportion of wave and tidal energy. In the context of climate change it is imperative, not that we cover every square mile of the Scottish landscape with wind turbines, but that we develop a robust politics to maximise the production of renewable energy by pushing all the technologies to commercial viability, and by re-designing and re-engineering the grid to support this. The key words for such a policy need to be a mixed economy of means across both technologies and scales – just as rural life is characterised by mixed economies and complex interdependecies.
This moves from the overused word ‘sustainability’ to the more imaginatively rich concept of a ‘stability domain’ as articulated by the eminent ecological artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. A ‘stability domain’ is a region, whether a watershed, or another geographical entity, which achieves ecological and economic stability. In human terms this means having the necessary interdependencies, structures and limitors embedding social and environmental justice, for life to thrive. It also means ceasing to be dependent on the extraction of, and consuming of, limited resources beyond the carrying capacity of the ecology. We might also want to ask what a cultural stability domain might be?
If we want to challenge beliefs, then we might want to imagine the situation where our energy needs are met from the energies already in movement around the planet, rather than those embedded beneath our feet. I can understand why miners in St Helens in Lancashire are proud of their motto ‘Ex Terra Lucem’ and it’s a wonderfully resonant phrase, but we need a new motto.
These are all pragmatic and practical lessons we can learn from the rural, but we can also learn in a different way, and returning to the Landworkers symposium I want to highlight the cultural things we can learn from the rural.
Four, if not more, presentations focused on vernacular and indigenous projects:
Gavin Renwick working as cultural intermediary for the Dogrib in their land claim negotiations with the Canadian Government, andnow moving on to the process of designing and developing a new vernacular for housing in the new nation.
Juhani Pallasmaa creating a museum of nature and culture with and for the Sami.
Then two wonderful presentations flowing into each other by a process of playing ‘tag’ starting with Arthur Watson, handing on to Will Maclean, handing on to Fergus Purdie, handing back to Will Maclean handing on to Marion Leven.
Watson was talking about Cairn Gorm: Reading a Landscape in which he is collaborating with Maclean and Purdie, amongst others. Maclean then talked about the works Cuimhneachain nan Gaisgeach (Commemoration of our Land Heroes) on Lewis where he is collaborating on the fourth site with Leven.
These projects are more than just art in rural places. They speak to a very specific and different understanding: one the places priority on the vernacular and indigenous. T.S.Eliot and others were quoted on the relationship between tradition and innovation but Renwick provided some of the key phrases that structure thinking this through. The first, probably derived from reading MacDiarmid, in “Being modern in your own language.” The second is the dictum of the Dogrib elders which is to educate young people to understand both Western culture and their own traditional culture: “to be strong like two people”.
The cultural projects all demonstrate that it is absolutely critical in the context of rampant urbanisation to express the value (richness, complexity, duration, immediacy, experimentation and repetition) of the rural. And that the expressions of value and meaning we saw help us understand, if nothing else, that the rural is more than just a lower density of population.
The issue of the vernacular seemed quite opaque in the event. What is vernacular? Is it of the everyday? In relation to architecture it can seem like an aspect of the aesthetic realm or a stylistic device. But it struck me that the terrace I live on with 20 houses the same and two at the end which are larger (for the builder/developer and his family at a guess) also describes a vernacular – yes in the ‘character,’ but also in the economics. There is a real danger that the vernacular is a lifestyle choice rather than an aspect of imagining our ‘stability domain’. It seemed to me that the artists’ projects evidenced a clear operation within a complex idea of vernacular which comes back to Renwick’s ‘modern in our own language’ and ‘strong like two people.’
Scotland's Futures Forum – How to re-perceive our understanding of 'rural Scotland' in the 21st Century?
Willie Roe, Chair, Skills Development Scotland and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, focused this event on an idea of equivalence and interdependence. He drew on the example of Denmark where, in law, the urban and the rural have to be dealt with in equivalent ways. This means that within any planning cycle rolling out services the rural is dealt with in parallel with the urban. The case in point is broadband which has apparently been rolled out in urban Scotland but is still only just reaching the islands. He perhaps highlighted interdependence through the example of very functional ferry services in the Shetlands versus the rest of the western and northern isles ferry services. He observed that in Shetland these had been designed to be the most effective for the islanders by the islanders, whereas the rest seemed to have been designed from the urban centre outwards. He also highlighted the importance of renewable energy in rural Scotland.
It therefore felt a little like the invitation had been made to come to Edinburgh to consider what could be done for rural Scotland which was obviously ‘dependent’ but that by the end the question was quite different: and might end up something like: ‘What are the key priorities where the rural has a specific role to play?’ When we ask these questions we begin to see a different set of answers: certainly renewables, but also education (apparently the OECD recently found that education in rural Scotland is actually the best in the world), probably community development, and I am sure the list goes on. Our priorities would come out looking different: re-engineering our electricity grid from one which distributes from the centre to the periphery, to one which also enables the periphery to distribute to the centre, might be a metaphor for quite a lot of other re-engineering. We would move away from assuming that the ‘rural’ is ‘dependent.’
But, if I had a reservation about the event, it was the lack of the use of the word sustainability in relation to the proposed core concept of equivalence. Equivalence could be interpreted in very wasteful ways. Rather I’d like to imagine Scotland in 20 years time being equivalent to Eigg, certainly in relation to energy if not also land ownership. I say this because Eigg is now wholly renewable, but also because there is social and environmental justice built into the system. Eigg does not have an unlimited volume of electricity available, although it is free and not consumed in the process of use. Therefore they have implemented a 5kw limit for households and a 10kw limit for businesses in the form of a trip on the supply. This way noone can take more than their share. To me this is an important model for a sustainable future for the planet, not just one utopian island.
The Artist as Leader
The Artist as Leader programme: I have been Research Associate since 2006 working closely with Professor Anne Douglas, in a partnership between academic research and practice. We have recently published the final report from the first phase of work, and are in the process of developing new initiatives.
See Research and Writing > The Artist as Leader
Climate Change and the Carteret Islands
You need to hear the voices of people on the Carteret Islands, commonly identified as some of the first climate refugees, or people displaced by climate change.
Youtube – Global Warming and the Carteret Islands
Google will eat itself
Can we really be sure that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house?
What art have I seen?
Irational.org doing a van conversion, so that it will run on vegetable oil, at the Monument in Newcastle.
The facts – 35 mpg, 70 mph, 65p a litre (more or less) and it is ‘carbon neutral’.
In other words the plants from which vegetable oil is produced take up carbon through photosynthesis as they grow. When the vegetable oil is combusted in the engine and the carbon released, it is then taken up again by the plants being grown for more vegetable oil, unlike fossil fuels which take millions of years to produce.
Not as good as the solar powered cars they race at the Alford Transport Museum, but more sustainable.
Originally posted 13 June 2006
Reading
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky
Originally posted 13 June 2006
What art have I seen?
Celebration of Art – 30 years of the Maclaurin
Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr
Originally posted 3 April 2006
What art have I seen?
‘Bungalow Blitz’ and ‘Ant Farm’ at The Lighthouse in Glasgow
Originally posted 20 March 2006
What art have I seen?
Simon Faithfull at Stills and Fred Sandback at The Fruitmarket
Originally posted 18th March 2006
What art have I seen?
John Latham at Tate Britain and Ugo Rondinone at the Whitechapel
Originally posted 18 February 2006
What art have I seen?
Richard Demarco’s Strategy Gets Art at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Originally posted 1 February 2006
What art have I seen?
Thoughts on Altermodern
Our icons
Our detritus
Our living spaces remade exactly as they are
Our failed utopias
new ways of seeing old images (Spartacus Chetwynd’s baroque p#rn)
Experiencing experiencing culture (recording reading a book)
Activism aestheticised
Every sort of involvement from discussions with the curator becoming art to volunteers performing songs
Heroes with young turks
Suicide
The impossibility of nature (Ackerman and Coates)
Reproduction – what does it mean? (the singing faces and the Simon Starling)
What art have I seen?
The inauguration of the Howden Sculpture Sequence by John Maine.
What art have I seen?
Yorkshire Sculpture Park – collecting Alec Finlay’s circle poems, part of his letterboxing project – visiting James Turrell’s skyspace in the deer shelter.
What art have I seen?
Roger Hiorns Seizure project with ArtAngel
Visited this in November 2008
What art/reading?
The Martha Rosler Library (and Anton Vidokle‘s talk) at Stills, Edinburgh.
Vidokle, founder of e-flux and Producer (?) of the Martha Rosler Library as an e-flux project, explained the origin of the circulation of the Library. Vidokle described being in Texas, visiting Marfa, seeing Donald Judd’s library (below) of some 10,000 volumes, and not being allowed to pick one off the shelves because everything has to be kept exactly the way Judd had it – a ‘permanent installation’ in his terminology. So Vidokle is talking to Rosler about another project and relates this story. She offers Vidokle her library as a public resource. Vidokle gets excited about the idea. The Martha Rosler Library opens in the e-flux storefront in New York. Stills, Edinburgh, is the last venue, the seventh stop, in what has become the circulation of the Library.
Vidokle referred to the difficulty in thinking about authorship in relation to the Library. It is curated by the venue – obtaining shelves, setting them out, accessorising; it is his idea and he thinks its art; it is Rosler’s Library and she doesn’t think its art; and of course each of the books is authored in the literary sense. We enter a dialectic between form and content. It certainly offers the possibility of a Borgesian treatise, but I think something else is also going on.
Vidokle located his recent projects (unitednationsplaza, Night School, Pawnshop, etc and his involvement in the cancelled Manifesta) in creating an ephemeral/transitory and mobile/ circulating space for attention. He understands contemporary art as constantly drifting into the spectacle whilst striving to ferment political/social change. He noted the underlying current of social change in art going back over 150 years – he referenced Manet and Courbet inheriting the radicalism of the French Revolution. The aesthetic is increasingly a powerful force, whist participation in the political is weakening – Vidokle is concerned with art that can operate differently.
The Martha Rosler Library evidences the importance of politics to some contemporary artists – you will find distinct slabs of literature on marxism, women’s issues, theory, philosophy, architecture, radical history, and so on. But more to the point it would appear that Martha Rosler is an artist who understands reading, thinking, informing, research, theory, intellectualism, radicalism, to be part of what it is to be an artist.
In fact I would go so far as to propose, and I think Vidokle hints at this with the title Martha Rosler Library, that this is like the Presidential Libraries, and in fact Artists’ Libraries should be recognised to be of equal importance and value to the life of nations. We certainly need to recognise the importance of the artist as ‘public intellectual’. To know why this is a bad idea you only have to look at the Artist Placement Group Archive recently bought by the Tate, and now functionally inaccessible. You need to register as a bona fide researcher; make a booking to use the Research Centre, and then you find that because this Archive isn’t catalogued you have to request specific items in advance – how can you request specific items in advance if the archive is uncatalogued? You have to know what you are asking for before you ask for it – the unexpected, the exploratory, the serendipitous is impossible.
But this Library, some 7000 books, is different and does something important, and maybe it does exactly what Vidokle set out to do. It is a spectacle but it draws you into spending time, paying attention and even having conversations. Vidokle has constructed an experience out of a couple of tons of matter, matter which is so fascinating that, more than gold or diamonds, it stops you in your tracks, draws you in, sits you down, and takes you into the heart of what really matters.
Deirdre McKenna and Kirsten Lloyd at Stills both commented on how long people were spending in the Gallery (far more than they would with photography exhibitions). Vidokle said that in Berlin there was a hard core of people who spent 3-4 hours every day in the Library for weeks. Now, of course all Librarians will tell you that people spend hours libraries – some of them old people keeping warm, some doing research, some just hiding. So people coming to the Martha Rosler Library get sucked in, pick up a book, sit down, start reading. Even if they pick up a sci-fi novel (and there is a shelf of them too) they are spending time in a cultural experience. And the same is true of a public library.
This is a particularly good library for those interested in contemporary art and the political – its probably better than most individuals have, and it may be better than most art schools have. Its very clear that it is an individual’s library and has that particular degree of focus. So the person spending time in the Martha Rosler Library might be radicalised. But I suspect most of the people visiting will be arts professionals (just as Vidokle acknowledged that the 50,000 subscribers to e-flux probably amount to a list of those seriously (professionally) involved in contemporary visual arts).
So if this Library does what other libraries do and keeps people for longer, and if it is a radical collection being looked at by people who are by and large au fait with a radical agenda, then why is it important?
Maybe its important precisely because it does exactly these things. Because the ‘event ‘ of the Library being in Edinburgh draws people concerned with contemporary art and social issues to spend time paying attention – reading and having conversations with colleagues, acquaintances and strangers you run into. And exactly why is this important?
I think it comes back to ‘elitism’. The more a group develops a common language, a shared set of ideas, an iterative discourse, a cliquish mentality, the more powerful it can become, the more likely it is to change the world, to take over, to mount a coup, to become a junta.
I spent two or three hours in the Library – I read two of Rosler’s book works, an essay by Lawrence Alloway on Feminism. I looked at a text on aesthetic education and on engaged artists in California. I talked to a guy from the Arts Council, Deirdre and Kirsten, Becky, Rachel and watched others. I met lots of people at Vidokle’s talk. It seems to me that art does not have to be something uniquely different: it can be something already well known, but do it with great attention. Why is this art, not just a library? Actually its a library made by an artist for other artists.
Notices on e-flux documenting the circulation of the Martha Rosler Library
Stills (Edinburgh), Site (Liverpool), Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris), unitednationsplaza (Berlin), Museum for Contemporary Art (Antwerp), Frankfurter Kunstverein, and at e-flux (New York)
Others thoughts:
Cluster Blog
Letterature di svolta
Artopia – John Perreault’s Art Diary
What art have I seen?
Slave City by the Atelier Van Lieshout and I Dig, I Look Down by Mithu Sen
What art have I seen?
Robert Morris at Monika Spruth Philomene Magers
I remember seeing work at the Fattoria di Celle that were quite like these, using encaustic. The felt Stars and Stripes surmounted by Eagles are deeply political. The work fit into rooms like altars in side chapels. The textures are a bit like ornate classical picture frames, but the textures are made of the remains of machinery and war, and the impressions of hands punching and ripping at the material.
What art have I seen?
What am I reading
The World of Perception, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Routledge Classics 2008
What art have I seen?
Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière
Some images at Flickr
Vassiviere is listed on the ISC‘s web site as one of the few sculpture parks in France. It describes itself variously as ‘a centre for art and nature’, ‘art and the counryside’, and ‘a centre for land art’. It has a few internationally known artists (Goldsworthy, Pistoletto and the Kabakovs) and many French artists; I found a work by Brad Goldberg, who collaborated on Place of Origin, and work by Roland Cognet who had worked at SSW and seems to have had a one person show at Vassiviere,
This place is interesting; having come about as a result of a major hydro-electric scheme, it conceptually raises issues of our relationship to our environment and our tendency to manipulate it in order to extract benefit. It has real character, but it suffers from neither owning its history, nor clearly adressing its apparent mission.
It has a mixed bag of sculptures that make up the park – some the result of a sculpture symposium in the early 80s. More recent and jokey post modern works are also incorporated. The gallery seems to work in partnership with some high profile institutions like the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The building by Aldo Rossi is striking.
But there is a lack of clarity – there are cornerstone international works, but I couldn’t discern a curatorial strategy. Likewise I guess that the works by French artists are significant, but I didn’t get a sense of a collection of work of significant French sculptors (or artists working in three dimensions on an outdoor scale). This would be a good project in itself.
The work by Samakh is a good response to a natural event, but the replanting of an area of forest to promote biodiversity is not radical.
Thinking about the work of Littoral in particular, but also of PLATFORM, and others involved in dialogic practices, there are so many ways in which this amazing place could speak of itself. Funnily enough it is Goldsworthy who draws attention to the drowned land, but for instance the larger ecological landscape is not drawn out.
But as it stands it clearly has a history of being a centre for sculpture during the second half of the 20th century, and is trying to redefine itself. Using the gallery to do this is OK, but in the end it remains in conflict with the permanently sited work which speaks of a previous project.
What art have I seen?
Communication Suite at the Wolfson Medical Building, University of Glasgow
New site specific work by Christine Borland (who also curated the exhibition), Aileen Campbell, Alan Currall, Alastair McLennan, Kirsty Stansfield, and Clara Ursitti, complimented by work by Abramovitc/Ulay, Breda Beban, Mark Dion and Douglas Gordon.
What art have I seen?
Patricia Cain’s exhibition Drawing Construction at the Lillie Gallery in Milngavie
What art have I seen?
South By South West – Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr, and Dick Institute, Kilmarnock
What am I re-reading?
The Ends Of Our Tethers: 13 Stories by Alistair Gray, Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 2003
What art have I seen?
Psycho Buildings: Artists take on Architecture at the Southbank Centre, London
I also saw some stuff at the Tate including Nahnou Together Now and a great display on drawing with Landy, Tyson, Emin, etc along with work from the collection.
What am I reading?
Atoms of Delight: an anthology of Scottish haiku and short poems, Edited by Alec Finlay, Pocketbooks, 2000
Distance & Proximity, Thomas A Clark, Pocketbooks, 2000
Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom
Greenhouse Britain: (2006-2008). I had the pleasure and honour to work with Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison and David Haley, . The project developed new thinking about the impact of climate change on the island of Britain.
Producing and Project Managing > Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom
What art have I seen?
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Portrack House, Dumfries, by Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks
What am I reading?
Ekow Eshun’s Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, (Penguin, 2006) lent to me by Anne Douglas.
“When I eventually bought a copy of his book I realized how prophetic DuBois had been. Mannered tones aside, The Souls of Black Folk could have been written at the end of the twentieth century instead of its dawn. With his description of double consciousness, Dubois became the first writer to articulate the sensibility of black people born into the white world. He was also the first to argue that, far from being a drawback, our dual gaze was a blessing. It meant that we regarded life with an acuity white people could never muster. We watched for the bigotry cloaked in humour and the hesitations of speech that betrayed hostility. We used double consciousness to survive, and ultimately thrive, in the white world.”
p. 214-215
“The images had faded over time, so that, on one plate, only a pair of eyes was visible.”
p. 123
What art have I seen?
Alison Watt‘s exhibition Phantom following her two year residency at the National Gallery
Short video on Guardian website.
What art have I seen?
Ally Wallace‘s Multi-Module at Scotland Street School Museum
Multi Module (2008)
and
Jacki Parry’s The Towers of Babel at the Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr
What art have I seen?
Art About‘s WHAT HAPPENED HERE. I went into the Carnegie Library in Ayr on Friday afternoon and the entrance hall was covered in pictures with hand written comments. Very different from the Ayr Photographic Society’s annual exhibition in the Reference Section. This was clearly improvised and ad hoc. Rachel and Pamela have taken a selection of views of Ayr and photocopied them adding a question under the picture “What Happened Here?” You can add your name and contact details at the bottom.
Walking around the entrance hall people from Ayr have talked about where they have had ice cream and sun burn, where they have fights and kisses. Some talk about the historical significance of sites.
This is preparatory to some planned ‘public art’ event to take place during the Burns an’ a’ that Festival in May. Its interesting because I had just seen the Caravan Club at GI in Glasgow, with their post cards of various graffiti written and derelict sites around the UK. Rachel and Pamela approach is interesting because they are building an audience for the Festival work by getting people involved at this stage. More later.
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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