Co-production by Untitled Projects, National Theatre of Scotland, Tramway and Summerhall

2013

With Untitled Projects

Between 1987 and 1989, in the run up to Glasgow’s tenure as European City of Culture, a young Scottish Director, Paul Bright created a series of radical performances based on James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Mapping the original locations from the classic novel, a series of individual episodes were staged in urban sites and landscapes across Scotland. This visionary project became a cult hit, expanding its budgets and audiences as it progressed before eventually imploding publicly in its insanely ambitious final instalment.

Now in 2013 we at Untitled Projects have been immersing ourselves in the traces of this influential production in an attempt to understand how it all came together and ultimately fell apart. We wish to share our fascination with this Scottish theatrical phenomenon by creating a new piece of documentary theatre that reconstructs Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

Using material from the original production such as models and archival video, as well as script readings and personal reminiscence, we aspire to engage a new audience with this historical live performance that, by the very nature of the ephemeral art form we work in, can no longer be experienced directly.

Single channel video

Commissioned by The Substation, Melbourne. Supported by Cryptic

Photography: Jamie Dale

2017

A 6-panel collage mural commission for The Substation, Melbourne.

Psychic Dirt explores psychedelic tropes, mystical imagery and the paranoid undercurrents of modern life, taking inspiration from a range of sources including astronomy, medical imagery, landscape photography, nuclear research and protest posters.

First shown as part of CCA Present Futures 2021, produced by Feral

thanks to:

Jon Macleod
Anne Campbell
Ian McHardy
Euan Macleod
Cass Ezeji

Standstill of the Moon in the North: part 1’ is a short film & initial culmination of research into Neolithic technologies & cultures of the Western Isles.

The erection of stone monoliths that chart the lunar calendar has been described as the “the fall” – a biblical reference to the way in which humans began to see themselves as separate from, and gain control of, the natural environment through the use of technology. This foreshadowing of the anthropocene pulls a thread between the nativity of society, the climate of environmental anxiety that we currently endure and the species’ drive towards salvation/destruction in the externality of space. In collapsing this 5000 year timespan through the use of graphics & film and a soundtrack of vocals & stone instruments we hope to find points of joyous collectivity, a poetic hauntology of rock as records and an impressionistic vision of the liminal places of perception.

4 Dec 21 – 22 Jan 22, An Lanntair

A multimedia installation which explores the twilight of the combustion engine as a metaphor for our age of consumption.

Reflecting on our contemporary environmental condition, END OF ENGINES uses oil as an alchemical motif. Linking the deep history of the earth to the present moment and our immediate environmental future, oil has the ability to transcend and connect aeons.

The aesthetics of petroleum architecture, Plutonic mythology and car customisation are welded together in an installation comprising of a collection of robotic and sound sculptures.

A Cryptic Commission in partnership with Cove Park