In a frame above the mantelpiece
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:25 am
An artist has been paid £15,000 of taxpayers’ money to not leave Glasgow for a year as part of an art project.
Academic Ellie Harrison was given the cash by the Creative Scotland quango after persuading it that staying in the city constituted a 12-month performance piece – even though she lives there anyway.
The Glasgow Effect project began at midnight on New Year’s Eve – and has already met with derision from many locals.
Miss Harrison, 36, is a lecturer in contemporary art practices at Dundee University. Publicity for The Glasgow Effect says: ‘The experiment will... encourage her to seek out “local opportunities” – testing what becomes possible when she invests all her ideas, time and energy within the city where she lives.’
The decision to back the idea with public funding has sparked a barrage of derision from Glaswegians and other artists on social media.
A Facebook page set up by Ms Harrison has been inundated with comment.
One correspondent, Kenny Leckie, wrote: ‘I know literally hundreds of people (including me) who’ve been creating art of all descriptions in Glasgow for years and funding it from our day jobs or from hosting fundraisers.
‘Doesn’t this disrespect everyone who doesn’t have that luxury of being funded to create art and who lives here because they can’t afford to move away?’
David Kirkland added: ‘I haven’t had a holiday for two years, I feel like Da Vinci.’
Miss Harrison, 36, describes herself as an ‘artist and activist’ who specialises in performance art criticising the ‘absurd consequences of our capitalist system, particularly climate change’.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z3wLBhpTqd
