Scotland the Brave: A Graphic History of Scotland 1514-2014
- Submitting institution
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The University of Cumbria
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Fowler1
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Edinburgh
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- October
- Year of first exhibition
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Scotland the Brave: A Graphic History of Scotland 1514-2014 (2014) is a series of graphic satires, presented in the form of a contemporary aide-memoire, which reframe iconic moments from Scottish history. Conceived in response to the Scottish Independence Referendum (2014), these thirty-five hand-made ink drawings (42cm x 59cm), developed from a period of extensive research into the conditions – social and economic - which underscored the debate, were intended as a series of discordant images problematising existing notions of Scottish identity.Subsequently, the chosen aesthetic for the drawings, appropriated from British 18th century graphic satire, was intended as cover for a conscious displacement or subversion of traditional, or mainstream readings of Scottish history. These dissident drawings, exemplified in works such as The Massacre of Glencoe (1692) , The Force-Feeding of John MacLean (1918) , and The Opening of the Scottish Parliament (2004) , are intended to reveal the hidden generative structures concealed behind the polarising narratives of both Unionism and Scottish nationalism.Influences which informed the series include the political poetry of the Glasgow writer Tom Leonard and the draughtsmanship of James Gillray and the Weimar Republic’s most infamous satirist, George Grosz. Taking their lead from these unique combinations of social commentary and political modernism, the cartoons were intended to be an intellectually democratic riposte to mainstream conceptions of Scottishness as grounded in the dominant, but seldom acknowledged, ideologies of free-market economics and Protestant hegemony.Accordingly, Scotland the Brave offers its audience a counter-canonic perspective upon a debate which, on many occasions, was notable for both its reductionist character and partisan simplicities.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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