Date: 26 July 07
Author: Caroline Ednie, Web Editor
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The Fruitmarket Gallery’s 2007 Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition is the first major British solo presentation of the work of British artist Alex Hartley. Working primarily with photography, though often incorporating it into sculpture and installation, Hartley’s work offers a unique analysis of modernist and contemporary architecture and its relationship to landscape.
The exhibition brings together a significant body of existing and new work. It begins on the façade of The Fruitmarket Gallery, on which Hartley has made a new work that particularly exemplifies his highly individual 'buildering' approach, which involves climbing buildings and mapping routes.
Inside the Gallery, other new work extends the possibilities of solo climbing as a metaphorical and actual approach to the built as well as the natural environment, with photographs of the artist tackling a variety of buildings around Scotland.
Finally, two major installations take on the interior architecture of The Fruitmarket Gallery, inserting photographs of unattainable, idealised modernist spaces into the fabric of the building.
Artist and ‘builderer’ Alex Hartley speaks to Web Editor Caroline Ednie about his first major solo exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Scottish architecture, and Spiderman…
The exhibition is billed as your first major solo exhibition?
I’ve had solo shows in private galleries, notably at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, but this is my first solo show in a public gallery. It’s a bit of a retrospective, and seeing my work catalogued for the first time is very exciting.
Your work embraces so many different disciplines. How do you describe yourself…as artist, photographer, architect, or even builderer?
Even though I use photography a lot, I see myself more as an artist or sculptor. People do try and pin you down. I’ve worked hard to avoid being pinned down or tied down to what people expect of you.
Although I trained as an artist I’ve always been interested in architecture. I’ve worked with architects during the course of my work. In the last ten years my work has involved making models of architecture and putting them into sculptures. And more recently I have started to take photographs of wilderness areas where I’ve worked out what architecture should go into that landscape. I actually made physical models and stuck these into the ‘Don’t want to be part of your world’ photos. I’m exploring the idea of how people crave the notion of being able to be alone in the wilderness and to build this perfect place away from everyone else. It’s a Utopian dream, yet it’s also a divisive way to build, impractical and socially removed. It’s just not possible for everyone to have their James Bond villain type glass box retreat on a hillside.
The exhibition features a series of photographic works where you are climbing or buildering a variety of buildings? How did this idea emerge?
I lived in Los Angeles for a while and started climbing buildings. This idea emerged as I was studying the guide books I had to the classic buildings of LA, but as I went around visiting these buildings I realised that since the guide books had been published many of these buildings were difficult to penetrate due to the security measures surrounding them. So I was breaching security, jumping through fences in order to see them and this married the other passion that I have of climbing.
There’s a bit of a commentary on the act transgression in my LA works. It’s a bit like graffiti artists and skateboarders as I treat these buildings in the same way that they treat the city - as just surface.
I didn’t seek permission for these climbs as I’m not big on permission! My experience with permission is that people are keen on the idea to begin with and then they freak out! There’s an immediacy to buildering, which I suppose is a bit like skateboarders again, and the way that they use a building as if it were just another part of the landscape. It’s also questioning the whole right to roam idea. Although it’s transgressive, the main idea behind buildering is to describe a different way of experiencing architecture. A large part of the show is drawings and photographs of the buildings I’ve climbed with the climbing routes.
You have followed your LA experience by buildering a variety of Scottish buildings?
When I spent two years in Los Angeles, I built up a relationship with the city and its architecture. With the Scottish project I had a much shorter timescale. It was intimidating to take on the project for the exhibition. Initially, I was just going to focus on Edinburgh but I felt that I just didn’t have the relationship and experience to make this work. I really felt that you have to live in a place for a while to find these bits that somehow typify the city. So my tour of Scotland became more about a journey - taking in the typical experience of Scotland in some ways.
I’ve had a relationship with Scotland for a long time, but I’ve never really quite been able to define Scottish architecture. So, I borrowed Fruitmarket Gallery Director Fiona Bradley’s VW campervan and went all over Scotland working out my ideas of Scottish vernacular architecture.
I’ve married the ideas that I explored in LA with a tour of Scotland – a progression and journey through buildings and ruins and various urban and rural landscapes. Yet whereas the LA ‘buildering’ projects were like a climbing guide book, the Scottish projects are much more personal.
What did you discover during your journey around Scottish architectural sites?
The journey was a real learning curve for me and my understanding of Scottish architecture. I didn’t have a strict agenda so I explored a range of buildings from St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross to a distillery in Fort William; as well as a lot of traditional abandoned bothys and crofts - and pebbledash houses.
I wanted to explore how the beautiful traditional croft has somehow become adulterated into a lot of ‘grey’ architecture. I also had this idea of the pebbledash house as a cliché of Scottish architecture and I wanted to look at where this idea came from. I actually began to find some of the pebbledash buildings rather beautiful. I took a picture of a pebbledash council house on the edge of Edinburgh that I think is a really beautiful thing - but then it’s so close to the housing that I think is a real blight on the outskirts of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I try not to be judgemental. I’m not an expert on this subject. I’m just trying to bring a personal view. It’s an essay or a journey of architectural discovery that I’m asking people to come in on.
The modernist ruin of St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross seems to have become quite a source of perennial inspiration to artists and architects alike?
I have visited St Peter’s at Cardross in the past and I was keen to revisit it on my trip. There is so much discussion about whether the ruin should be rebuilt or turned into this or that. But to me the beauty of it is as a modernist ruin. I think that in lots of ways it’s as beautiful as it can be. I know that’s not what a lot of people would like to hear, but I think that if it was turned into a hotel or rehab centre it would never be as beautiful as it is now. I can come from that point of view because I’m not an architect or a planner. I think that it has a strange aura…… it’s situated in a polite bit of the countryside, yet there’s all this graffiti and locals use it as a place to smoke – there’s almost a sub-culture built around the ruins.
‘Nomadic’ the image where you are climbing a croft – upside down and looking almost glued to the side - seems to be quite at odds with the more glamorous, daredevil feats normally associated with buildering?
The act of buildering for me is not meant to be heroic. It’s not like Spiderman. There’s meant to be humour in it too. There’s an element of absurdity but also a seriousness as I’ve explored each building in depth by drawing it up and making maps. Each one has been seriously gone into, even though there is a slight absurd edge to it. Nomadic typifies the Scottish project for me.
Your latest work is to builder the Fruitmarket Gallery itself?
I’m turning the Fruitmarket gallery façade into a climbing guide of the front of the building. I climbed the front of it and have described and mapped the route. I’m transforming it entirely into a surface – into a giant poster if you like.
But I’m not proselytising for buildering in any way. There are people who take it extremely seriously, but I’m using it as a tool as a way of experiencing buildings and a way of describing to other people a different way of exploring architecture.
Alex Hartley
Edinburgh Art Festival Exhibition 27 July – 21 October 2007
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 11am-6pm Sun 12-5pm
Extended Edinburgh Festival opening hours: 4 - 31 August, 10am-7pm daily
