Seeking virtues

MATT BAKER tells Georgina Coburn about his latest thinking in his ongoing work in the visual arts component of the Inverness city centre regeneration project

Matt Baker is the Inverness City Partnership visual artist on the project. He curated the Imagining the Centre project last September, and current developments include a plan to introduce a new work on the theme of the Three Virtues to replace a Victorian piece representing Faith, Hope and Charity that once stood in the town centre. The public were invited to text their suggestions on what present day virtues might be – the results can be seen on the Inverness City Partnership website (see link below).

GEORGINA COBURN: It seems particularly apt that you should be looking at the city’s core in the “three virtues” project. What kind of response has this exploration had so far?

MATT BAKER: Extensive and interesting in a way I had not anticipated. On the website there are about 70 different suggestions at the moment. It will be difficult to narrow it down to just three! I noticed when I was walking around the city parables on buildings, biblical graffiti in the underpass, there is a sense that this is a place where foundations, morality and virtues are important.

The project is about updating them for the 21st century. People have taken it on in a reasonable way. At moments, it seems as if the Highlands is one of the last places in which it is possible to feel the world as it was before cynicism took over as a guiding principle.

GC: There would seem to be a lack of confidence surrounding city status and a historical lack of self determination in terms of Inverness’s development. Since you’ve begun your work in Inverness do you believe that the city is starting to see itself differently?

MB: I do. I feel that there’s a rising energy, a willingness to grasp the nettle about becoming a city and, as such, being a player on a bigger stage. It is totally understandable that (this process) is a big scary thing. Inverness can become its own sort of city, not just adopt a model from elsewhere.

GC: How pivotal are artists in that process?

MB: Artists are always pushing the boundaries of things. We are taught to think freely outside the box and imagine what could happen! We are courageous in our explorations in the way that many other folk are courageous late at night after a few drams!

Putting artists in the public eye can give others the confidence to bring their ‘best selves’ into their everyday roles in the city. The drive behind my public art project is use ourselves as artists as research tools to uncover a potential identity for the city and create a permanent artwork, interventions to support that identity in the way that people approach public space.

GC: What do you think the city’s greatest assets are? What excites you about working here?

MB: Its people, its history and sense of place, its unique situation being a regional capital, a capital of a wilderness.

GC: A man-made wilderness.

MB: Yes, I mean wilderness in quotation marks.

GC: What are the greatest challenges to the city’s cultural development?

MB: Practical things, building rents and rates. There is a job to be done to create a climate of support and recognising economic value. There is a misconception of the arts as a hobby, that it isn’t important. This is one of the things that Inverness must grasp. It must significantly extend its cultural vocabulary outside tartan and shortbread.

GC: What has it been like working closely with local artists and the wider public? Does this differ significantly in relation to other projects you’ve worked on?

MB: Since coming to Inverness, I’m almost questioning whether I could do this anywhere else. The good aspect of a small town mentality is its connectedness, people from all walks of life really do know each other and listen to each other. This top to bottom communication is unique and extraordinary.

My practice is about engaging public participation. Like a pebble in a pond, people gather the ripples and practice develops. Other places are much more stratified. This experience is causing me to re-evaluate everything I’m doing as an artist.

GC: What kind of preconceptions did you have and have they been challenged during the course of your work on ‘Imagining the Centre’, and now ‘three virtues’?

MB: With the European Capital of Culture bid I thought I was coming to a cultural capital! I do now see it as a cultural capital, but not in the established sense. A capital dispersed amongst the hills. (It was) wonderful to see two articles on Inverness in MAP magazine, placing it alongside significant cultural places across Europe.

GC: Something to be built upon.

MB: Yes, absolutely. I have people asking me about Inverness not just because I’m doing work here. People feel it’s all happening in Inverness and want to come here and see it for themselves. Evi Westmore has made a huge contribution. She really exploded a bomb when she arrived.

GC: I find it ironic that rather than utilising imagination and creativity as a guiding principle of urban or town planning there is a tendency to bring in artists once it all goes pear-shaped. How do you view the relationship between local authorities, regeneration projects and artists?

MB: For a long time artist’s came in at the end to do the twiddly bits.To some degree this is a result of protective practice by other professionals, fear of artists entering their territory which is not surprising. The way this tends to manifest itself is through patronising indulgence, i.e., that the ‘real’ work happens once the artist has left the room. There are certain things that say only an architect or engineer can do.

As artists we have nothing like this, we blunder into it as individuals and try and hold our own. There are growing initiatives to give some organisational status to our role in public space, but this is somewhat doomed given that most of us are pathologically resistant to any form of structure!

It is my experience that in most developments there is little pre-design stage. In an artist’s process time is spent throwing ideas against a wall, immersing oneself in possibilities. In city and environmental planning they’ll bring in a team of engineers and jump a stage.

When artists get the chance to be ‘in at the start’ by our presence, we force a Vision phase, in doing so we’d become part of the furniture and have an important role right through to the twiddly bits – but now these twiddles have meaning!

More often than not, we’re still leaping straight into traffic engineering, but there are now good examples of projects with artists integral to the foundations and these stories are spreading.

GC: How important is it to document that story?

MB: Evi stressed the importance of legacy and documentation. It’s all there – just a job to be done in writing it up. In personal terms I’ve kept an Inverness sketchbook and when I speak about the project it helps put it into shape. I have a timeline of power point presentations.

We did a book of the Gorbals regeneration project, it became an art commission in its own right as it explored the role of artists in place, making use of the Gorbals work as a context for discussion.
 
GC: Are there any plans to document your Inverness projects in a similar way?

MB: I’d love to. The project is always evolving. It is something to think about.

GC: The Six Cities Design Festival this year is really the first time that Inverness has occupied the same platform as other cities in Scotland. How do you see Inverness culturally in relation to Scotland’s other cities?

MB: It’s the new kid on the block. People are interested in what has it got to say for itself. Can it sing and dance? It is seen as the wild cousin from the North. How wild will it be?

GC: All the more reason to shout loudly!

MB: I agree. I think a trick is being missed – there is a theme within 6 cities called ‘designing cities’. Inverness is literally deciding what kind of city to be. I feel that there is an argument for presenting Inverness as a radical work-in-progress rather than just following the model laid down by these old established cities.

GC: What do you feel will define Inverness culturally in the future?

MB: The strange phenomenon of the regional capital – a region unique in its relationship to open space and nature. What Evi calls the ‘Northern Exposure’ thing.

GC: Do you think that a modern audience will identify visually with three modern virtues just as a Victorian audience would have understood “Faith, Hope and Charity”? How would you define visual literacy in a modern context and what affect does this have on the creation of public art/ your own practice?

MB: I think our visual literacy is sophisticated.

GC: Sophisticated or just deluged?
 MB: I’ll clarify that, it’s a conditioned response. As artists we try to navigate through that terrain. There has been a massive leap from Victorian times. We are used to things playing games with us. A lot of video work these days employs the same techniques as ads, smart camera work but it isn’t saying much. I feel it is important to be pointing at truth rather than playing with veils and secrets.

Truth is the new hype! (Laughing) Digitalisation creates difference and globalisation makes everything the same.

GC: So who wins?

MB: The two co-exist. I think the desire is for individuality and difference supported within a sense of tangible community (i.e. not global). Inverness has the chance to grab this now. Show its quirkiness, its uniqueness – exactly what grew out of “Imagining the Centre”.

It could be argued that Britain is a largely literary culture. In the Highlands aural, literary and musical tradition is more developed. The three virtues will not be three figures. It is a piece about words. The visual aspect of it is about place.

The visual message should be simple, clear and direct, about elements of nature leaching into town. Cardinal virtues of Christianity were like bedrock. The piece is about natural materials being pushed through the man-made street to express 21st century bedrock.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

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• Matt Baker