Glenfiddich Artist in Residence

12 Jun 2004

Taking the Long, Slow Route

Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown hosts an unusual Artist in Residence project. As this year’s programme gets underway, ANDY FAIRGRIEVE fills in the background for KENNY MATHIESON

IF YOUR IDEA of what kind of artwork might be found in a distillery runs more to Landseer’s ‘Monarch of the Glen’ than contemporary conceptual art, then the Glenfiddich Artist in Residence programme will make you think again.

Andy Fairgrieve is the Arts Project Manager at the Distillery, an unusual title for anyone in the whisky industry. Andy looks after the on-site gallery and the ambitious residency project, which was launched in 2002 and brought a new dimension to the connection between the distilling industry and visual arts.

Charles Grant, the current Chairman of the parent company, William Grant & Sons, was keen to establish a corporate art collection for the company. The distillery also had several unused houses on site, and after much discussion and what Andy describes as “tossing around ideas”, the idea of a residency project which would bring artists into the distillery emerged.

The houses and the building now used as the art gallery were refurbished with funds from the company and from Arts and Business Sponsorship. Each artist is housed on site for an arranged period, and at the end of the residence leaves a piece of work toward the William Grant Collection.

“The gallery is unusual,” Andy acknowledged, “but it does tie in well with the visitor centre at Glenfiddich. We get very varied reactions from people, but on the whole they are favourable. Most people come here for the distillery tour rather than the art, and some find the concept of an art gallery throws them a bit. They often have preconceptions of the kind of art we might show as well, and it isn’t what we have! It’s fresh and unexpected.

“I get the impression from our visitors that there is maybe a greater appreciation of contemporary art in some other countries than here – the tourist trail in Scotland can be pretty kitsch, and this is something different.”

The project works by supplying invited artists with housing for up four months in the summer. Each artist donates a piece of their existing work to the summer-long exhibition in the gallery when they arrive, as well as leaving a permanent addition to the collection when they go.

“In the first couple of years we tended to have a major changeover about half way through the process,” Andy explained, “allowing artists to show work in progress or something they made here, but that isn’t practical this year with the number we have coming at different times, so we are being more flexible about replacing work in the exhibition with new work at any time, and also using other areas of the distillery as display space.”

“We don’t want the artists to feel under any pressure when they come, which we see as the most conducive way to produce art.”

THE PROJECT is very much intended to promote Glenfiddich as a brand rather than simply provide altruistic support for challenging contemporary art, and falls in line with new thinking on marketing the product.

“The marketing of the brand was leaning toward a more contemporary look and appeal anyway,” Andy confirmed, “and the art project fell in neatly with that. It fulfils a number of roles for the company on both a local and international level. It provides a different marketing angle, and we get coverage in places we wouldn’t normally reach – here you are talking to me for the Arts Journal, for example.

“So that is valuable, and it also provides added value to the visitor centre aspect of the business. It creates a profile as part of our overall portfolio of sponsorship activities in other areas. Basically we are looking to create a new set of associations for the brand, and maybe for Scotland as well.

“We are not looking for instant returns here – we take a long-term view. This is an industry where patience is defiantly a virtue. You make your product, then you have to leave it alone for ten or fifteen or twenty years or more. It is a brave move for a distiller to get involved in contemporary arts, and perhaps in another business the pressure of getting instant results might be too much. That doesn’t apply here – we are used to being patient and to letting things develop and mature slowly, and that applies to this project as well.”

The project got underway again this year in early June, and will involve eight artists, or nine depending on whether you count the duo of you Little Warsaw as one or two. The full line-up of artists for 2004 follows, with brief biographies:

David Blyth lives in Aberdeen. His work is an autobiographical response to the local natural environment and, in particular, to the wildlife of the North East of Scotland. His sculptural objects take the guise of functional devices, props and instruments often intended for use in the field, an attempt to discover new ways of communicating with the natural world.

Christine Borland is from Scotland, living near Loch Lomond. She relates the History of Medicine to contemporary medical practice with an emphasis on areas of public interface. Combining new techniques and technology used in medical education with ancient crafts technologies like porcelain manufacture, she proposes far-reaching ethical questions for us to consider both as a society and on an intimate, timeless personal level.

Stéfanie Bourne lives and works in Paris. Her multidisciplinary practice explores our conception of an artwork and proposes alternatives to object based forms. Her practice ‘Vernacular’ engages in a variety of social contexts. Replacing the traditional end product as artwork, the protocol is materialised at these occasions in often ephemeral forms, as objects, publications, events, performances, meetings, etc.

Louise Hopkins is originally from England, now based in Glasgow. Her drawings and paintings subtly explore ideas of time, language and silence, control and chaos and the essence of the man-made, the ‘natural’ and the man-disrupted. She works with given surfaces i.e. sheet music, cartoon strips and world maps.

Little Warsaw are a two-man team from Budapest. The basic characteristics of their approach developed through the question of how contemporary art can be connected to its social and cultural context. Their work investigates the transformation of public spaces after the after the soviet colonial past.

Matthieu Manche is from France, now living and working in Tokyo, Japan. He investigates corporal function/dysfunction of objects by using diverse media such as installation, photography, video and fashion shows. He is currently working on product design projects combined with activities in the field of contemporary art.

Wilhelm Scherübl comes from Austria. His sculptural interest lies in the non-static, the ephemeral and the organic. The transformation of plants, humans, communities and other organisms are at the centre of his concerns. His installations, paintings and sculptures are made from plant and other organic materials.

Ross Sinclair lives in Kilcreggan near Loch Lomond. Since he had the words Real Life tattoed on his back in 1994, Ross Sinclair has produced performances, installations, photography and video exploring the political and the personal ramifications of the culture in which we are involved, asking us what constitutes the ‘real’ in society where so much is rendered inauthentic.

The 2004 exhibition runs at Glenfiddich Distillery, Dufftown, until 30 September, 2004. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 11am-5pm, and Sunday from noon-5pm.