09200020012002200320042005200620072008REVIEWOFTHEDECADE2009
Clockwise from bottom left: Calvin Harris, Simon Starling’s ‘Shedboatshed’, The Scottish Parliament, The Cutting Room, The Bacchae
country – from a Shetland musician to a Fife military regiment to an urban teenager with behavioural problems in care – onto a national and international stage, with a proactive touring programme that involves the nation and gets it thinking about what ‘national’ means again.
There’s a distinctive sense of joy in the art we’ve made this decade, one that keeps threatening to burst that old stereotype of the dour, downbeat Scot: pop-culture- influenced artists like Jim Lambie (sculpture), Douglas Maxwell (theatre), Alan Bissett (literature) and Calvin Harris (electronica) have all succeeded in creating upbeat, riotous technicolour work with distinctly Scottish cadences. For the longest time, despite the latter-day efforts of Arab Strap and Bis, the only band known for singing in a Scottish accent were the much-loved but regularly derided Proclaimers. After a flash of inspiration from Trainspotting in 1996, though, a generation of musicians up with representations of everyday Scottish speech on a world stage. These days, it probably wouldn’t even occur to musicians like Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad or the members of the Fence Collective not to sing in their own accents, or to audiences that there’s anything odd about that. grew
This new confidence is not just about having the power to lure the likes of Alan Cumming back across the Atlantic and into a bum- flashing golden skirt as he did in NTS’ 2007 production of The Bacchae (although that was rather lovely to look at), it’s also because we’re no longer just pointing to those few Scots whose success has been certified by Hollywood or London as evidence of our worth. Since 2005, there have been seven Scottish or Scottish-based Turner Prize nominees (and one winner, Simon Starling) – more than in the entire history of the competition before that point. Glasgow is now regarded as one
UK of the major international hubs for visual art and grassroots experimentation. What happened? Did the quality of Scottish contemporary art suddenly improve significantly, or did we simply grow tired of waiting for crumbs of approval from a London-centric arts establishment, and work on creating world-class galleries and scenes of our own? It isn’t hard to see how these successes are a by- product of the same mores that led us to devolution in the first place. An increasingly international outlook does mean we risk losing some of the things that made our national art distinctive in the first place. In literature, certainly, the Rebus-led, primarily commercial wave of ‘tartan noir’ Scottish crime fiction has dominated book sales this decade. However, the predominance of this trend has also increased marketability of literary writers like Louise Welsh, whose dark, brilliant 2002 debut The Cutting Room was far too complex to classify, and in itself contributed to the Glasgow literary boom in the middle of the decade.
the
led to
against Of course, this era of growth, confidence and consolidation took place the most economically prosperous time in recent memory. As we anticipate arts funding cuts to help levy up national debt, and the impending likelihood of a Conservative government ruling remotely from Westminster, it’s difficult to know whether this burgeoning optimism can sustain itself. Shifting the entrenched character of a nation doesn’t happen in a decade: we’re still prone to talk ourselves down our and national ‘celebrities’ like Michelle McManus, and are still surprised by the success of an Andy Murray, or a Scottish-based company like Rockstar Games. However, on the cusp of another period of uncertainty, let’s just take a moment to look back at the last ten years and say ‘didn’t we do well?’
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2002
2003 2004
AUGUST
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER DECEMBER
JUNE
SEPTEMBER JANUARY
The Cutting Room by
Louise Welsh is
published. It is met with high critical
praise, and credited
with bringing a literary edge into crime fiction.
Ashley Page leaves The Royal Ballet to take over as artistic director at Scottish Ballet. After a nine-
month break in which
he re-auditions and retrains the company,
they return to the stage in devastating
new form.
Glasgow’s clubbing scene is euphoric as Death Disco is born at the refurbished
Arches and Sub Club re-opens after three years’ closure due to
fire . . .
. . . but Edinburgh is Rosie Kane, Socialist
dealt a blow as nightclub La Belle Angele, comedy venue The Gilded Balloon and the Bridge Jazz Bar
perish in the
Cowgate fire that destroys part of the
Old Town.
MSP for Glasgow, calls on the Scottish Parliament to
condemn use of the word ‘ned’, claiming
it is hurtful and disrespectful to young people.
Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton star in the film adaptation of Alexander Trocchi’s Young Adam, written and directed by David
MacKenzie. ‘A flawless and coherent adaptation of a dark tale’ – The List, 18
Sep, 2003.
Gordon Ramsay’s Amaryllis restaurant closes three years after opening. The closure follows the death the previous year of Michelin- starred head chef David Dempsey, alleviating Glasgow of its only Michelin star.
3–17 Dec 2009 THE LIST 21