Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Edinburgh
2011
Your Leaning Neck - Song as Portrait offered an expansive way of considering portraiture. Featuring unaccompanied vocal performances by performers from Scots oral tradition and contemporary visual art backgrounds, an objective of the performance was to challenge preconceptions relating to who or what is represented in a portrait.
Created as a site-specific response to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's collection of portraits from the Scottish Enlightenment the event reframed the performance work of: Sheila Stewart, Hanna Tuulikki (with Nerea Bello and Lucy Duncombe), Arthur Watson, Elizabeth Stewart, Ruth Barker.
While presented as a singular performance the placement together of Scots Folk song, contemporary art performance and traditional portraits, aimed to open up new perceptions of each element.
Following the event at the portrait gallery a second part of the project will take place at Peacock Arts in Aberdeen in February 2012. A video installation will be exhibited at Peacock Visual Arts, accompanied live re contextualisation of the performance at St Andrews Cathedral in Aberdeen.
Exhibition Saturday 18th February - 10th March 2012
Performance date - Friday 24th
Peacock Arts
Aberdeen
http://www.peacockvisualarts.com/archive/340/your-leaning-neck-steven-anderson
Photo credit
Performer: Elizabeth Stewart
Photography: Clyde Jones and Mairi Lafferty