Travelling Gallery returns to the road marking 40th birthday

Travelling Gallery presents a new solo exhibition Black Box Take Stock by Glasgow based artist Gordon Douglas.  To mark Travelling Gallery’s 40^th birthday, Douglas was invited to explore the archives and travel with the bus in order to produce an exciting new installation for the Travelling Gallery’s Autumn 2018 exhibition. Touring across Scotland, the contemporary art gallery in a bus will continue to ensure people from every background and community have the opportunity to engage with excellent, experimental and inspiring art practices.

Douglas became interested in the operation and upkeep of the vehicle itself and, as a performance artist, what acts of maintenance go into performing the narrative, social collaborations and technologies of the gallery. Using the literal mechanics of the bus to create a personalised birthday celebration, Douglas has created an entertaining exhibition which also explores bigger questions about the sustainability of the organisation.

The exhibition borrows its title from the two meanings of Black Box. Firstly, within contemporary set design (ie the Black Box Theatre); and secondly within transit technology (ie the device used in aircraft to monitor and evidence the vehicle and driver’s performance). Taking Stock refers to Travelling Gallery’s 40th birthday celebrations, which has seen the organisation pause and look back at its rich history before looking ahead to its future.

On the occasion of Travelling Gallery’s 40^th Birthday Douglas became concerned in what it might mean to embody a birthday celebration – to become a birthday specialist. He therefore uses the profession of the birthday-gram, a singing telegram who writes and performs personalised greetings for friends and family as a gift, as this birthday embodiment. Originating from the telegram, the birthday-gram was an attempt by Western Union in the 1930s to raise the popularity and opinion of the communication method, which had previously been associated with delivering bad or tragic news. The new singing telegram could be hired to sing joyous messages that would comically relay private and intimate details about the recipient.

For Black Box Take Stock, Douglas collaborated with Mike Collins, aka ‘The Wandering Minstrel’, a birthday-gram based in Barrhead to write and perform a new song for Travelling Gallery’s 40th birthday. Mike sang the song in various behind-the-scenes locations on Travelling Gallery’s tour, for example the bus depots, petrol stations, lay-bys, and car pounds – all the places the bus uses when it’s not open to the public. Mike’s performance was recorded using the reverse-cam on the bus, transforming the Travelling Gallery into an oversized video recorder. Each subtle manoeuvre of the HGV becomes a choreographed series of tracking shots, with the driver acting as cameraperson. The result is a clever and captivating video work which informatively tells the viewer about the Travelling Gallery, its dedicated team, and its journey.

Accompanying the video are four colourful and exaggerated costumes representing typical birthday-gram characters: the chicken, the crooner, the jester, and the barbershop quartet. Each costume is handmade by Gordon, with many of the fabrics and ornaments being resourced from his personal collection. Although, not fully embodied in the exhibition, these costumes will be enacted through individual performances, and exist independently in the exhibition throughout the tour.

Councillor Donald Wilson, the city’s Culture and Communities Convener, said:

Yet again the Travelling Gallery plays host to a unique and thought-provoking exhibition, highlighting some of the best contemporary art being produced in Scotland today.

Claire Craig, Curator of The Travelling Gallery said;

It has been hugely enjoyable, inspiring, and fitting to work with Gordon Douglas in Travelling Gallery’s 40^th year. The exhibition continues Travelling Gallery’s excellent history of collaborating and commissioning new work by young Scottish artists.