ALEXANDER SMITH investigates the current relevance of Concrete Art with the founders of HICA

THE HIGHLAND Institute for Contemporary Art (HICA) unveiled their impressive new exhibition space at Loch Ruthven, Dores, to open their 2010 programme last month. Northings spoke to Geoff Lucas and Eilidh Crumlish to discuss how this expansion will enable more ambitious programming and how they are attempting to reconsider the term Concrete Art through the work they exhibit there.

ALEXANDER SMITH: Can you talk us through the expansion and what it will enable the gallery to achieve?

EILIDH CRUMLISH: HICA opened in 2008, holding exhibitions in a small, purpose-built, white-cube space. As the first year progressed the shows all quite naturally expanded into the adjoining larger room. This larger room still functioned as a domestic space but it was clearly a space artists wanted to work with, especially the opportunity it gave to relate work directly to the immediate environment, with the views it has of the surrounding hills.

It was mainly the colour – a bright red – that prevented us from initially turning this over fully to being an exhibition area. Thanks to a generous donation from Fife-based paint manufacturers Craig & Rose, and an award from B&Q, we have been able to repaint the space, which makes a much calmer and more neutral gallery environment, one which doesn’t compete with the views outside.

Loch Ruthven, Dores (photo - Eilidh Crumlish)

We can now be even more ambitious with this new gallery in terms of programming, as it changes what was perhaps a slightly quirky project space to a substantial gallery space.

ALEXANDER SMITH: Apart from the space itself, which is very impressive, it looks out onto some genuinely stunning landscape. For me this prompted contemplation on conflict and harmony. Have many visitors commented on this and what are your personal thoughts on the relationship between the works and the visible landscape?

EILIDH CRUMLISH: We have had visitors’ comments along these lines and it is something we see as fundamental to how the space works – being able to judge things from different points of view, from that of the white-cube and the culture that might represent, to that of the hills and an idea of ‘nature’.

This gives different perspectives, not just on the actual artworks, but on the activities of making and showing artwork. The space explores the balance of natural and cultural settings in a related way to its exploration of the balance of form and content in the pieces shown.

This highlights the importance of context; the work meaning something different if viewed in one way or the other, and I’d think that all works we show purposefully engage with context in this way – investigating how meaning is created through a combination of work and its surroundings.

GEOFF LUCAS: One of the main aims of HICA is to create a suitable, appropriate environment for contemplating all this. The gallery allows visitors to be alone with the space and the work, though we are always on hand to discuss, or answer questions if need be. An art gallery can be an intimidating environment to enter, as we are so much in the landscape and on a working farm, with hens running around, and all sorts. We feel it makes it a less austere and more welcoming space.

The Highland Institute for Contemporary Art - HICA (photo - Eilidh Crumlish)

ALEXANDER SMITH: Could you provide us with some personal background on coming from Hackney and Edinburgh – how did you end up beside Loch Ruthven in the Scottish Highlands?

GEOFF LUCAS: In terms of background; we lived for a number of years in London and agreed that we would move to Scotland. Eilidh has family connections with Ross-shire and these have been a very important influence in her work. It made sense to move nearer these and the particular Highland landscape.

There are interests and enthusiasms in my own work, perhaps not so clear, that also make more sense in a rural environment, so our move has also been very beneficial from my point of view. Where we are now, and the HICA project, has focussed different elements very well for both of us, and enabled a much more unified approach to all our work.

ALEXANDER SMITH: With the term ‘Concrete Art’ having almost dropped out of usage, could you tell us a little about it’s principles and how HICA is attempting to reconsider the term?

GEOFF LUCAS: If you imagine a colour you might get a sense of how it makes you feel. Blue might make you feel calm; red, angry; yellow, warm; grey, cold; and so on. Concrete Art, in this example, starts from the proposition that the colour just has this meaning. It suggests that yellow might be inherently warm, grey might be inherently cold, etc.

So it developed through this approach to basic elements of artworks, primarily in non-representational painting and sculpture, in the first half of the 20th century. It gets more complicated, naturally: for instance, does everyone respond the same to the same colours? Can anything, even a colour, just be ‘itself’? Don’t we always understand something by it being like something else – “It makes me think of this, or it reminds me of that”?

Outside the HICA Gallery (photo - Jan van der Ploeg)

And if you objectify artworks in this way, what then are the edges of it … is it just what’s on the canvas, or does it include the frame, the wall it is hung on, the gallery it’s in, and so on. Mentioning the bright red of the previous HICA space would be a good example, where the intense colour strongly affected any painting hung on it, giving everything a red tinge, which might also have a psychological affect, ‘colouring’ responses to the work.

This could then illustrate how HICA is reconsidering these ideas through the manifestation of the shows and the space – how does changing an element, such as a wall colour, affect understandings? Concrete Art is a very easy and direct way-in to understanding artwork in this way: how does it ‘feel’? What sense do you make of it? In this way there’s nothing complicated about it.

HICA is partly about tracing the history of the movement, to gauge the extent of it’s influence. It seems that nearly all major art movements of the 20th century had some important relation to this area of thinking. So it’s quite staggering really that the term has dropped out of usage.

ALEXANDER SMITH: How does ‘Concrete Art’ reconcile with the current contemporary art scene?

EILIDH CRUMLISH: It seems to us that a great deal of what has come to be generally known as ‘contemporary art’ has roots in concrete ways of thinking; the ubiquity of Installation art would be a good example. Concrete Art is often connected with Modernism and has perhaps been out of fashion in our recent Postmodern times. HICA is investigating why this connection is made and whether Concrete Art actually stands apart from any discussion about Modern or Postmodern.

There are various strands to current Concrete Art activity: Minimalist or Geometric Abstract painting and sculpture continue as global phenomena. Our contention would be that Concrete thinking helps a general understanding of contemporary art. I mentioned Installation Art, but also Performance Art, Participatory artworks, Interventions – a very large proportion of what constitutes contemporary art could perhaps equally be understood as ‘concrete’.

Opening of the Jeremy Millar exhibition (photo - Susan Maris)

Richard Couzins’ work might illustrate this. He had one of the first shows at HICA (and has since become a member). He has also exhibited as a member of the Otolith Group, who have just been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize. I think Richard’s work is a good example of a contemporary interest in Concrete thinking, particularly in the way he uses spoken language: as sound as much as literal meaning.

One of the important things about Concrete Art, from the galleries point of view, is the directness of it, the fact that the work is immediately accessible to an audience on one level. In this way it’s not possible to misunderstand concrete art, there is no right or wrong way to look at it.

ALEXANDER SMITH: What are some of the issues running HICA in parallell with your own individual art practice?

GEOFF LUCAS: HICA has been a great way to combine our individual practice with more general concerns. It’s been a great way to pursue our own research, and it has really helped us in maintaining links, where distance could be a factor, as well as maintaining interest, when not getting to see art in other galleries might also be problematic.

EILIDH CRUMLISH: We run the space on a voluntary basis, so there are of course limits to the resources we can put into the project, though the time spent on it has been very valuable in other ways, and the balance of effort put in, to benefit gained, is becoming much more favourable to us as the project progresses.

Jeremy Millar installation (photo - Eilidh Crumlish)

ALEXANDER SMITH: HICA has a genuinely exciting programme for 2010, who are you particulary looking forward to exhibiting this season?

GEOFF LUCAS: Each show brings its own way of making something happen, so it’s very hard to say. We feel Jeremy Millar’s exhibition [until 6 June] works fantastically in the new space, and considers a sense of emergence, or unforeseen development, which is central to the creative process, in a quiet and meditative way.

Thomson + Craighead are working on a major new film piece and an intervention in the gallery’s picture-window as part of their show [20 June-25 July], which will further explore their concerns with a sense of location in time, which we’d feel will connect perfectly with the HICA space.

Esther Polak is the first international artist to have a solo show at HICA, and also the first artist to be working directly with the immediate environment of the gallery, using GPS technology to track the movement of farm animals.

The opening of her exhibition will be in conjunction with an event over a weekend in September, in collaboration with The Arts Catalyst, and the Outlandia project in Fort-William. Live performances are planned during the day as well as film screenings and talks in the evenings, which will make for a great day out as well as a memorable artistic experience.