Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 52
Monument to Experience
Installed in the shadow of Calton Hill with its many classical monuments which
earned Edinburgh the title ‘The Athens of the North’, Graham Fagen’s new
work, A Drama in Time, is a monument to everyman, celebrating not the lofty
achievements of a single individual, but the lived experience of mankind.
Consisting of five emblematic images made in neon, Fagen’s light installation
sits at the foot of Jacob’s Ladder, a steep set of steps leading from the Old Town
up to Calton Hill, named after the stairway connecting earth with heaven which,
according to the Book of Genesis, Jacob witnessed in a dream. Weaving in a rich
set of references to its surrounding locale, Fagen’s new work presents a symbolic
journey through life, from birth to death.
At the centre of Fagen’s installation, framed by rising and setting suns, stands a
skeleton, an abstract representation of man, as much as a reminder of our own
mortality. On either side of the central figure are two ships, communicating a
sense of a journey, but also a reference to the poet, Robert Burns, commemorated
in the monument at the top of the steps. On several occasions, struggling to earn
a living through his poetry, Burns had considered sailing to the West Indies to
take up a position on a sugar plantation. In ���� Fagen made a series of screenprints
of three ships on which Burns had booked passage but never sailed: The
Bell, Nancy and The Roselle. The neon ships in A Drama in Time are modelled on
these earlier works, and remind us of the paths not taken, as much as the roads
travelled.
Fagen’s installation borrows its title from the visionary town planner and key figure
in the conservation of Edinburgh’s Old Town, Patrick Geddes, who remarked, ‘A
city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time’. Geddes advocated a holistic
approach to the development of cities, believing in observation, and lessons
gained through experience: his motto was ‘by living we learn’. Fagen’s neons (a
material commonly used in shops signs and advertising) speak the language
of the everyday in their form as much as their content. Drawings in light, they
remember remember not the feats of heroes, but the forces that shape us, and
the lived, often haphazard, experience of ordinary life. lived, often haphazard,
experience of ordinary life.
Encoded Monument
If a monument is ‘anything that preserves memory of a person or an event’ (Note �),
then Ciara Phillips’ Every Woman can quite rightly be described as one, and at ��
metres long, it is certainly ‘monumental’. The work is Phillips’ response to the
‘dazzle designs’ widely applied to ships in the latter part of the First World War,