Là Buidhe Bealltainn (May Day)

Digital pigment print, image size 56 x 76 cm paper size 66 x 86 cm in a an edition of 20, 2018.

Commissioned and developed for ‘Third Text’ arts magazine special issue:
‘Lost in Europe: in the wake of Britain’s inner emigration’
Richard Appignanesi: guest editor. Responses of artists throughout Europe to 'Brexit'.

The work presents tercets from ’Là Buidhe Bealltainn’ in a visually totemic form and framework which pulses with the more ancient vibrations present in poet and writer Rody Gorman’s work.

This is augmented by a broad series of ‘Scottish’ iconographic images which are influenced by the notions of ‘imperial fantasy’ which have surfaced in the Brexit debate and the confusion surrounding Scottish national identity and the power of democracy in the aftermath of the recent referendums on the future of the nation.

“While the Brexit vote was certainly underpinned by a melancholic longing for a glorious past, the era it sought to relive was less the Second World War than the longer, less distinguished or openly celebrated period of empire. For if memories of the war made some feel more defiant, recollections of empire made them deluded. Our colonial past, and the inability to come to terms with its demise, gave many the impression that we are far bigger, stronger and more influential than we really are.” Gary Younge

A hybrid Actaeon/Charles Edward Stuart/landowner figure and Brittania herself (from Walter Crane’s slightly subversive map ‘Imperial Federation Map of the World Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886’) preside over the visual interplay. Any concomitant narrative is at the viewer’s discretion.

“Scots’ and ‘Gaels’ are not and should never be interchangeable terms. The destruction of Highland culture was an inevitable result of encroaching modernity, hastened by the outrageous abuse of the fealty of the Highland Clans by the Stuart monarchy. The destruction of antiquated ways of living had been occurring across Europe for centuries, and ‘the Scots’ and ‘the Gaels’ would go on to demonstrate just how brutal such processes would become across the globe, as they played a key role in establishing white settler colonies in the Americas, Antipodes and Africa."
Tommy Aikenhead