project title
Colquhoun's Patented Peripatetic Randomiser. To be used in the Pleasurable Negation of Spectacular Space
project description
Ever since I can remember I have been having an ongoing love affair with place and space. Its time we rescued these important concepts from the dead hands of the likes of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton. Their po-faced and lugubriously detached engagement will give way to a willingness to get down and dirty with the meat of our seriously déclassé landscapes. The idea for the Randomiser grew out of frustration with the robotic way I was engaging with my city. Habit and circumstance quickly compel a monocular reading of space; we simply cease to see it as having manifold potentiality. In the words of Robert Smithson, "The strata of the earth is a jumbled museum. Embedded in the sediment is a text that contains limits and boundaries which evade the rational order . . ." By introducing an element of chance to the equation we can both salute our illustrious forebear (situationists, surrealists, etc) and help destabilize the beige monstrosity that is the shopping/leisure experience! Of course all major western cities are now safe, well-lit and well-policed arena (at least during the daylight hours) in which the only possible response is that of spending money. I want to disrupt this consensus and the self-replicating meme that sustains it. I don't want them to have it all their own way! In using the city as a playground we disengage from the orderly business of capital while at the same time realising its potential as a limitless arena for personal and political exploration. And let's face it, it's fun to mess with their heads!
name
Jim Colquhoun
location
Glasgow, Scotland
profile
2003 Blink , Market Gallery. Glasgow
Pre/Amble Festival of Art & Psychogeography , Western Front Artist Run Centre. Vancouver
Transmission members show
Degree Show
The Winking Bear. Group show. GSA
2002 Field Trip , Assembly Gallery, (a collaboration with Vicki Fleck) GSA
Group Show, Kooks, Glasgow
Open Order, Switchspace, (group show) Glasgow
Louise and Martin, (a site-specific collaboration with Cecilia Stenbom) Gothenburg, Sweden
Unholy Radiance, emerged@mansions, Glasgow
2000 Group Show, Newbery Gallery, GSA
links
www.katearmstrong.com/preamble/index.html
www.marketgallery.org.uk/exhibit2003.htm
www.blackdrop.blogspot.com/