GLASGOW.- The Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) has announced an ambitious new commission by Turner Prize winner (2014) Duncan Campbell. Presented by Glasgow Life, A New No will occupy GoMA’s main gallery over the closing months of its 30th anniversary year.
Duncan Campbell has lived and worked in Glasgow since the mid 1990s, moving to the city to complete a Masters at The Glasgow School of Art. In 2013 he represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in the Scotland + Venice Pavilion curated by The Common Guild. He went on to win the Turner Prize for that work in 2014. A New No is his first major work to be shown in a Scottish institution since then and is a significant new addition to GoMA’s 30th anniversary programme.
At the centre of A New No is a flip-disc electromagnetic screen, which animates graphic images using techniques from the ‘12 principles of animation’ formulated by Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. We see rising and falling graphs, flow charts, hand drawn lines, Soviet cut-out ‘poster’ animation and flashes of moving image film. A single narrator’s voice roams the gallery– a faltering protagonist who tries to understand the screen and their relationship to it. Rather than explaining the animations, the narrator is a counterpoint to the large ‘flip-dot’ electromagnetic screen.
Framed by the opulent neoclassical architecture of the former Royal Exchange, the screen is an opaque, but physical manifestation of the order of things. A version of the flip-dot technology it uses was first installed at the Montreal Stock Exchange to create a simplified picture-story of value as it peaks and troughs over time. The seductive impression of order that this creates - that markets have a vitality or life-force of their own - is a key touchstone for the work.
Campbell’s interest in flip dot technology focuses on its roots in Enlightenment efforts to create a map or rational picture of obscure structural movements of commodities and money. Using the Cartesian coordinate system, it was Scottish political economist Wiliam Playfair who developed graphical methods of charting economic data in the late 18th Century. Elaborated by further generations of economists, such as William Dow, the classic motif of increasing or decreasing value remains the point-to-point graph.
A New No was originally commissioned for Glasgow International with the support of the Sfumato Foundation and Art Fund in 2020. This exhibition, Duncan Campbell: A New No, is presented by Glasgow Life Museums with support from the Hope Scott Trust.
Duncan Campbell said: I would like to acknowledge my debt to Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable - the main reference for Olwen Four’s narration in A New No. In his novel Beckett’s protagonist is filled with voices but is uncertain if they flow from inside or outside their own consciousness. As well as the ideas that underlie the screen as an apparatus that frames ‘value’ that are written above, from The Unnamable, there is a recognition of the messiness and porousness of self-hood and how our individual and collective rationality is undone by the unconscious.
Jane Rowlands, Head of Museums and Collections at Glasgow Life said, “Duncan Campbell is a perfect choice to create a commissioned work for GoMA to go on display as the gallery celebrates 30 years of bringing contemporary art to audiences from Glasgow and far beyond. His career has developed since he first arrived in Glasgow in the mid-90s receiving international acclaim for his work and winning the Turner Prize in 2014. Since 1996, GoMA has been a centre for celebrating artists from Glasgow and who live and work here, becoming a key space for their creativity to be displayed and enjoyed.”
Rachael Browning, Director of Programmes and Policy at Art Fund, said: “Duncan Campbell’s A New No brings together art and technology in a fascinating way. Thanks to the generosity of our National Art Pass members, we’re delighted to be able to support this significant new commission and help it to enter GoMA’s world-class collection of modern and contemporary art. We hope as many people as possible will take the opportunity to experience this enticing work for themselves as part of GoMA’s 30th anniversary programme.”
