Open Frequency
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Open Frequency is a programme area of Axis, the Scottish Arts Council funded online resource for the contemporary art community. Further details about Axis are available on their website.
Open Frequency is a curated online programme presenting new developments in contemporary art which have been supported by the Scottish Arts Council. Recently profiled artists include Katy Dove, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Camilla Low, Toby Paterson, Rob Kennedy and Hayley Tompkins. |
The Lonely Piper is a visual artist who is featured in the Open Frequency programme.
Read on for an introduction to the artist's practise by Jenny Brownrigg, University of Dundee Exhibitions Department Curator at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee followed by a statement by the artist himself.
The Lonely Piper was genesised in 1999 as the sole protagonist in the film 'I Can't Play The Bagpipes', a romantic yet humorous deconstruction of Scottish stereotype. His body of work to date has a Caledonian twist yet stems from the universal concerns of natural history, life, death, the paranormal and a love of folklore. Modestly referring to his output as 'not the most prolific', part of the enjoyment is that each piece has been re-worked and built up over time, slowly creating a mythology that is tangentially unique to the Piper. Drawn towards a visual form of storytelling, he treats folklore as a contemporary rather than antiquated concern.
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In an ongoing painted series of spider's webs, the 'silk' from his spinneret weaves a sentence and a story into each web, entrapping a voice from the natural or spirit world. In 'The Water of Life, a Spirit Not To Be Exorcised' (2006), the bon-motif of the web reads 'The Haunted Dram', which alludes to the following piece of Piper paranormal folklore. |
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"The Haunted Dram' refers to a memory system in which everything remembers, not just humans. A murder from the 1700s remains unsolved. Stabbed over a petty financial or political squabble, 'he that shall remain nameless' was buried in unconsecrated bogland. Through centuries the land changes. Drained to become farmland, it now grows barley to supply the local whisky distillery.
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The distillation process accentuates a paranormal window for these barley heads that have sucked up the victim's horrific last moments. The mind of any drinker tasting this particular dram becomes a conduit for the re-animation of this dying man.' In 'The Water of Life, a Spirit Not To Be Exorcised' (2006), the bon-motif of the web reads 'The Haunted Dram', which alludes to the following piece of Piper paranormal folklore. |
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For The Lonely Piper, the memory system of his own work alternates between the story he carries with him, the actual artwork and its title. In another web, 'Every Moment's a Masterpiece' (2005), the woven inscription 'The Rugged Grandeur Gallery' resonates as a crystal phrase but also more so when one learns from the Piper that, 'This gallery exists out-with architectural confines. It is a geographically and geologically defined gallery of unpainted landscapes. The Highlands of Scotland are distilled into a gallery that the Lonely Piper represents, rather than the other way around.' |
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The Lonely Piper also makes collages that unite the natural world with the transcendental. 'Frozen Waterfall Traversed' (2006) depicts a group of salmon going one step further than the river's source, encapsulating them mid-leap on a mountain summit. 'The Cosmic Monarch' (2006) is a photomontage representing a 'Pagan Rudolph' against the backdrop of The Horsehead Nebula. His nose is a red Fly Agaric mushroom. This multi-layered approach to meaning is also apparent in The Lonely Piper's sculptural work 'The Cancerian' (2007). The shed antler of a red deer has very subtly had its top fork shaped and painted to represent a crab's claw.
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It is no surprise that in noting the eloquence of words in his artwork, The Lonely Piper is also a gifted writer, with a unique style drawn to both archaic and contemporary language. His swiftness of mind and unerring love of puns has clocked up many memorable phrases. In his 2007 essay for the Crafts Council of England, a group of potters are referred to as 'serial kilners'.
Jenny Brownrigg, February 2008 |
The Lonely Piper is my artistic nom de plume. He's a man whose physical age is 32, metaphysically however his vital essence is older than myth. A solitudinous soul and ancient provocateur, who wanders, ponders and ventures back and forth beyond the Scotch Mist Veil. An artistic individual whose work is informed by the geographical, historical and cultural landscape and fictitious and fact based Caledonian narratives. A supernaturalist and peculiar Highland Timelaird of sorts and a bog-cotton picking son of a Neil M.Gunn, romantically entwined with the unrivalled splendour and rugged grandeur of his spiritual environs. Deriving inspiration and vital insight from the tireless and non-technological web-making endeavours of his own metaphorical cave dwelling spider, albeit an arachnid offshoot of The Lonely Piper's psyche, who weaves poetic verse-lets and cryptic narrational starting points in high tensile threads of text. A form of inspiration personified in silk by the artist's own eight-legged thought process, a spinner of linguistics which are in a sense, stronger than steel.
A man transported creatively, instantly and without fail by the all-pervading summer- sweet -scent of his Bog-Myrtle muse, the olfactory Princess of The Piper's realm of the senses. Oft guided by elemental forces, he's a man of the future, of the past and of the present, with a third eye for the ladies only when bequeathed with a second wind of the second sight; before it departs like drunkenness and leaves him with a seer head in the morning. During the warmer months he is also prone to the romantic malady of Heather Pollen Lung, when he sometimes wishes he could shrink to a size diminutive so's he could hug a midge.
Biography
The Lonely Piper (C.R.M b.1975, Inverness / T.L.P b.1999, Rannoch Moor) graduated in 1998 with BA (Hons) Fine Art Printmaking, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee. The Lonely Piper lives and works in Dundee. | |