Index

This artwork featured in Picture This (2002). A Meadow Arts commission. 

Dunlop usually mainly works with digital imagery and photography to explore the relationship between discourse, identity and place. In his previous project “Languageland“, the Glasgow based artist focused on the mediation of the landscape through the postcard, and how we filter out the undesirable through our Romantic gaze. Dunlop blurs the distinctions between the observer, environment and artwork by attempting to draw attention to our constructed ways of seeing. His installation at the Meadow Gallery, Index, reflects his thorough research-based approach and his concerns with historical and political context.

Index involves a series of laminated plastic notices, of the sort used in horticultural labelling or for visitor instructions. These fragments of texts are taken from fundamental texts involved in the picturesque debate and include quotes from Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), Humphrey Repton (1752-1818), Uvedale Price (1747-1829), and French counter-revolutionary theorist: Joseph De Maistre. These signs are strategically placed around the Meadow space to allow a flow of associated meanings and a juxtaposition of experiences. Acting as a set of instructions or as fragments of information, the texts for these signs question our relation to landscape and to nature.

Image: Gair Dunlop, Index, installation view, Picture This, Burford House, 2002. Image courtesy Meadow Arts. 

 

 

About the artist

Gair Dunlop

Gair Dunlop exhibited in Picture This, Burford House, 2002, commissioned by Meadow Arts.

Image: Gair Dunlop, Index, installation view, Picture This, Burford House, 2002. Image courtesy Meadow Arts.