Get Your Own! | View Slideshow height="350" ..‘WELLRED’ - AN EVERYDAY VIEW‘WellRed’, the show curated by Justin Orde in August 2006 at a disused petrol station just off of the Haudagain Roundabout in Aberdeen was perhaps a prime example of how artists and their work can engage with the local community and provide comment on how global economic issues affect said communities.As one walked around the abandoned petrol station, a veritable health and safety nightmare no doubt ear-marked for conversion into private flats by council bureaucrats with no imagination, one could be forgiven for feeling that they had inadvertently walked into some utopian parallel world. A world in which petrol stations had been converted into art galleries, the health and safety industry had been outlawed, everyone cycled to work and didn’t suffer from road rage. As though a few of Chad McCail’s gouache storybook artworks had been made real. London based artist Kirsty Anderson’s textile works consisting of balloons covered in stitched fabric hang in random places. These inconspicuous balloons decorated with floral patterns appear to us out of the corners of our eyes and draw attention to the decaying architecture, the holes in the walls and the grass growing through the carpets. One is taken aback by the beautiful, perhaps even sublime way in which nature encroaches upon the fabric of the building, a property developer’s nightmare.In a deprived area of Aberdeen where there is little public amenities beyond fast food vendors, video stores and overpriced convenience stores, Orde has led the way in providing a progressive and imaginative model for future urban development. Currently the City Council are touting the plans for two more shopping centres1 in the already congested city centre in Union Square and the upgrading of the St. Nicholas and Bon Accord Centres. This will further advance the inexorable conversion of public spaces into identikit private space owned by facilities management companies for the sole purpose of profit with vague lip service paid to the arts in the form of a, ‘civic heart’2. Skateboarding or any other sporting activities not permitted. As shoppers leave the city centre in the late afternoon, the streets become filled with drunken night clubbers staggering, vomiting and urinating their way to the next bar. Scottish culture indeed. The cost of these nightly bacchanals in both financial and social terms must surely be considerable by even the most conservative estimate. In the face of this, ‘WellRed’ shows that disused buildings in deprived and derelict areas that would otherwise be empty can and should be utilised for imaginative events and exhibitions that reach out and engage with the local community. As proven in New York’s Manhattan district in the nineteen-eighties when artists were the first to convert low-rent disused industrial buildings into studios and galleries in now thriving cultural and economic areas such as SoHo and Greenwich Village, artists in their many guises can lead the way in urban renewal.Aberdeen artist Maria Peres’ artwork best encapsulates the ethos of the, ‘Wellred’ show. In her numerous plant pots the seeds of each fruit Peres has eaten during January grow tentatively into new plants, despite the Aberdeen climate. These new fruit plants having been saved from the landfill site are regenerated into plentiful sources of sustenance. A fitting analogy if ever there was one for our many underdeveloped urban spaces.© Iain Connell
Aberdeen
October 2006Sunday driver
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