MANY of us will have felt a little intimidated by an art gallery. Those stark white walls, the supercool folk at the desk, the little labels of text under works so obscure you suspect an elaborate joke.
“You can be like: ‘Am I even allowed in here?’” says Claire Craig of Travelling Gallery, an organisation which this year celebrates four decades of taking art to communities across Scotland via a double decker.
“We’re showing the same good-quality art as other galleries, it’s just a much more accessible environment,” Craig says, noting that Travelling Gallery’s “art bus” is often the first experience of a gallery for younger audiences. “There is something really friendly about the art bus. Everyone knows how to get on and off a bus. It’s that simple.”
Travelling Gallery’s spring exhibition, Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat?, the third show Craig has curated for the not-for-profit organisation, tours throughout Scotland until June.
A celebration of its work since 1978 will follow at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre later in the year.
Travelling Gallery’s aim has remained the same throughout: to take art “directly to people who live where there is little of it”.
From Shetland down to the Borders; from the Western Isles to rural Aberdeenshire and beyond, Travelling Gallery’s art bus visits town centres, community hubs and libraries, often running public workshops alongside the exhibitions.
“We go to relatively isolated rural areas but also to areas across the central belt,” Craig says. “It’s just as important to take exhibitions there.
“We also go to a lot of schools, especially outwith the big cities. It’s a huge effort to get a group of schoolkids on a bus to go to an art gallery. Instead, we can take the gallery to them.”
Centring around themes of adolescence and adulthood, Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat? features work by Edinburgh photographer Arpita Shah, Glasgow artist Holly White, and Alice Theobold, an acclaimed London-based video artist rarely shown in Scotland.
While Theobold’s witty, poetic short film The Next Step is projected at one end of the bus, the walls display Shah’s pre-Raphaelite-inspired portraits of young people, pages from old teenage magazines sourced from the Museum of Childhood and White’s Heartbreak Library, a collection of self-help books nestled in cosy woollen pockets.
“Holly is very clever as she tries to walk the line between fun and sincere,” Craig says. “Like all of the artists here, there’s a generosity too. Maybe because of the aesthetic she uses, her pieces look very childlike, but they have teenage themes that are still relevant to extended adolescence.”
It’s no longer just those between the age of 13 and 19 who are teenagers, she continues. Or, at least, with a quarter of adults under 30 said to be living with their parents, the idea of adulthood is perhaps different from what it once was.
“There’s a discussion to be had about that,” Craig says. “What does it mean by the affirmation: ‘I am an adult’? Are things as unobtainable as they are made out to be? Jobs and careers aren’t as stable as they used to be, but could that also be an exciting thing?”
A joy of contemporary art, she says, is its potential to inspire such discussions. Last year, Travelling Gallery teamed up with Glasgow Women’s Library for an exhibition which toured as the Women’s March, the pay gap, reproductive rights and sexual harassment were regular news stories.
“There is always a member of staff about to answer questions and have a discussion, if that’s what you want,” says Craig. “We find our audiences often want to. We learn so much from them.”
Today, Eastwood Theatre Eastwood Park Rouken Glen Road, Giffnock, 9.30am to 3.30pm; Mar 20-23, Argyll and Bute; Mar 26, Aberdeen Grammar School; Mar 27, Bridge of Don Academy; Mar 28, Oldmachar Academy; Mar 29, St Machar Academy; Mar 30 Aberdeen City.
Apr 17-21 Renfrewshire; Apr 23, Alness Academy; Apr 24, Moray College; Apr 26, Lochaber High School; Apr 27, Plockton High School; Apr 28, Broadford Co-op Car Park, Isle of Skye; Apr 30-May 4, Uist, Harris and Lewis; May 15-19, East Ayrshire; May 28-Jun 1, Borders; Jun 4-8, Perth and Kinross; Jun 11-15, Edinburgh.
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