An exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh of works by Glasgow-based artist Toby Paterson spans the last two decades and includes some work not shown in the UK before.
I was halfway through the Academicians’ Gallery of the RSA when I realised that I wasn’t focusing on analysing the artworks, yet I was very busy admiring them. This might be a reaction artist Toby Paterson would prefer, as he very kindly answered all my questions about the exhibition, telling me that his work is not about identifying beauty, but about communicating what he cannot get out of his head. After all, he says, ‘you don’t choose what fascinates you. It just gets stuck in your head.’
The exhibition, which showcases a range of projects from the last two decades, is not only about what you see in that exact moment, but also about what you already have, and what you take with you in your head, from Toby Paterson’s experience. It is a kind of encounter of experiences, and this is what he wants.
As one of the most notable contemporary artists of Scotland, Toby Paterson is also an architect and teacher. He is a person who dedicates a lot of time to thinking about and comprehending what makes the cities that directly shape our lives – and directly shaped by class politics. One should keep this in mind when discussing how Toby Paterson’s work consistently begins with a subjective experience of place. Speaking about the motivations behind his work, Paterson notes: ‘Cities have proved to be a source of limitless inspiration and my engagement with their physical qualities, their architecture and their social, political and economic origins not only underpins my practice but defines the very manner in which I engage with the world.’
This has a lot to do with his lifelong experience of Glasgow: a city, as Paterson states, ‘which seems to be in a perpetual state of flux, never achieving any sense of equilibrium let alone resolution, while simultaneously feeling vigorously alive in the face of entropy.’ For him, everything starts from there, the place as a teenager he wanted to get out of, which shaped his entire perception of cities and his life. One can read from his works what he learned during those years in the city he calls today ‘the city of contrasts’ and ‘the city of perpetual state of flux’. The reason he knows how to negotiate those contrasts very well, is that he has lived in those environments. He grew up as a part of a middle-class family, in a stable Victorian part of the city, as opposed to the part that was being demolished when he was a child.
Toby Paterson was born in 1974. In the mid 1970s in Glasgow the impact of modernism was being felt deeply. The city was beginning to de-industrialize and was in decline, and as he states, ‘trying to reinvent itself as a modern city by doing things like driving a motorway through the middle of it.’ This is how Paterson gained an understanding of how cities are in a state of permanent flux – and that shaped how he sees the world.
At the exhibition, among reliefs, studies, and prints, there’s a new wall painting created specifically for the Academicians’ Gallery: Crown Circus. Named after the exact location where he grew up, the piece has a ‘historical and synesthetic resonance’.
He left Glasgow for Chicago and continued his studies for his BA. It was a life-changing experience. One of the big things he took away from there was actually not so different from what he already knew. Chicago, like Glasgow, is slightly marginal within its own country, compared to other major cities like New York. It’s also a working city. ‘There’s a lot of glamour there, but it’s also gritty.’ He studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating from the former in 1995.
In the 2010 book published for Fruitmarket exhibition Consensus and Collapse, Fiona Bradley quoted him, explaining his work: ‘Although they look like abstract forms, and in part they are, they are also technically pieces of information that relate to specific places. One form might be several square miles from Dumfriesshire and another might be a street corner in Inverness’ (2009)
One of the artworks, Post Office, directly relates to Chicago and subtly references American sculptor Alexander Calder, who in 1974 was commissioned to create the Flamingo sculpture in front of a Federal centre. The city he experienced as a 19-year-old changed his life, with its ‘Mies van der Rohe modernism with the remains of industry.’ The city is both a home for the wealth and dilapidation. With this experience, he learned how to immerse himself in a city.
In Paterson’s work, music comes in on occasion. Over Martin, placed on the wall painting Crown Circus, relates to a song by the American Punk band Dead Kennedys. This artwork has a reference to Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay area.
The works in the exhibition are inspired by the places Paterson has been. There’s one exception, 51 Bar, which is based on photographic documentation. He has been to the site but not the building because it was demolished in 1952. It was one of the cafes on London’s South Bank during the Festival of Britain in 1951, and he is relating this site with an equivalent site in Silesia, Poland.
Paterson’s works are directly related to his life experience. They all start from a very subjective point. But how he thinks of the city is objective: what’s the history of this place? What kind of socio-economic and political forces have formed it? At the same time, he objectively considers his personal response to this, and stays ‘open and receptive’, he lets what he sees have an impact on him. And most importantly, he is always driven by aesthetics and form, colour, material and all the ideas involved in architecture, as well as how these elements influence the making of space. That is fundamental to what he has been doing for more than two decades, and Paterson sees this exhibition as an opportunity to place the new and older worlds in relation to one another, and to see the consistency in them.
The contrasts that feed his perception of cities are traceable in his way of creating. He is very aware of the political situations shaping the city and he reflects these facts in his work, but he is not an activist. He believes in the role that an artist can play in society, working in partnership with other people and communicating. But eventually, he returns to his studio and is alone when thinking about the things he has collected.
It’s not a coincidence that as a viewer in the Gallery, I felt like I was walking through a city that has been stripped of its people. But it was different from feeling alone – it was something that lets me concentrate more easily. And it gives strength to Paterson’s narrative. He likes the fact that the Gallery becomes an ‘analogue landscape’ that we, as viewers, can explore and navigate, finding our ways around. Isn’t it the same experience of us in the cities that we inhabit, for different reasons… noticing things that we never noticed before, in a very established structure, being clueless about what we’ll admire next… This is the same uncertainty Toby Paterson enjoys, in a space of positive thinking with geometry and architecture.
With thanks to Omur Sahin (Insta: @theartsreporter) for this review.
The RSA partners the Own Art scheme, allowing artworks to be purchased in 10 monthly interest-free instalments.
