Kenny Hunter - Let's Forget.- 14 June - 30 August 2025
THE FINE ART SOCIETY LTD
6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
This exhibition for The Fine Art Society can be seen as a continuation of my ongoing efforts to deconstruct the monument as a permanent symbol of political and historic progress and instead re-present it through my work as a form in flux, open to varied interpretation. Whilst resolutely committed to a contemporary reflection of current conditions, it also cross-references ancient archetypes with post-war modernist attempts to create unifying humanist, monumental forms.
Working against historicist notions of meaning and progress, my art practice has been centred on understanding history as a fragmented, incoherent and subjective experience. This has been expressed in my work by inverting traditional monumental values and certainties with unexpected uses of scale, material and subject matter, opening up questions for the viewer rather than providing answers.
To create this exhibition I have experimented in the studio with different methods of display, while making new additional elements from scratch to combine with existing works. This process of remaking itself runs counter to monumentalist ideas of permanence and certainty. By presenting these new and reworked sculptures I hope to generate engagement from the viewer that will ask them to reconsider both the future role of the monument and its legacy, provoking questions such as: what are they for; what do they represent; who do they serve?
It is through the use of standard art-historical modes that my artwork can be traditional without becoming conventional, using archetypes against themselves so that something subtly provocative, speculative and newly relevant can emerge.
THE FINE ART SOCIETY LTD
6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
This exhibition for The Fine Art Society can be seen as a continuation of my ongoing efforts to deconstruct the monument as a permanent symbol of political and historic progress and instead re-present it through my work as a form in flux, open to varied interpretation. Whilst resolutely committed to a contemporary reflection of current conditions, it also cross-references ancient archetypes with post-war modernist attempts to create unifying humanist, monumental forms.
Working against historicist notions of meaning and progress, my art practice has been centred on understanding history as a fragmented, incoherent and subjective experience. This has been expressed in my work by inverting traditional monumental values and certainties with unexpected uses of scale, material and subject matter, opening up questions for the viewer rather than providing answers.
To create this exhibition I have experimented in the studio with different methods of display, while making new additional elements from scratch to combine with existing works. This process of remaking itself runs counter to monumentalist ideas of permanence and certainty. By presenting these new and reworked sculptures I hope to generate engagement from the viewer that will ask them to reconsider both the future role of the monument and its legacy, provoking questions such as: what are they for; what do they represent; who do they serve?
It is through the use of standard art-historical modes that my artwork can be traditional without becoming conventional, using archetypes against themselves so that something subtly provocative, speculative and newly relevant can emerge.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00My name is Kenny Hunter. I'm a sculptor and a public artist.
00:04I'm sitting here in the Fine Arts Society in Dundas Street, Edinburgh.
00:08This is the final hours before my show opens.
00:11The show is entitled Let's Forget.
00:13I guess it's a provocative title that tries to make us contemplate
00:18what we should remember and what we should forget.
00:21I think the imperative of public art is always to remember.
00:25That's often why these artworks are put out into the public realm.
00:29But with this exhibition, I'm questioning possibly what,
00:34if remembering is always the correct thing,
00:37because it can sometimes have a negative effect on society.
00:41It can make us prolong bitterness or avoid reconciliation.
00:45History can also be misused and misaligned and be used against us in a way.
00:52So I'm just trying to own up to the idea that history is quite a subjective field
00:58that can't really, one angle can't, from one angle you can't tell the whole story.
01:03You've got to come at it from lots of angles.
01:05And public monuments tend to be unsophisticated.
01:08They tend to be quite one directional.
01:11They tend to look at an issue or a time or an event from one perspective.
01:16So this exhibition tries to look at monumentalism in the round.
01:23And that's more about asking interesting questions of the genre,
01:26rather than giving a singular meaning.
01:28Well, I think they're very different environments, public art versus gallery work.
01:33But they're also interconnected.
01:36You know, they overlap.
01:37For me, at least, they do.
01:39I see the gallery as an experimental zone where I can test out ideas.
01:44I can build my identity as an artist as well.
01:48Because, as you know, public art tends to have a brief attach to it.
01:52We must remember this person or this event or this industry that's no longer here.
01:59So the artists can still bring their creativity to that process,
02:05but they don't completely control it.
02:08It's a negotiated outcome, which I love.
02:12So I'm not against that.
02:13I'm very pro the idea of listening as an artist and being part of a discourse
02:18and then negotiating an outcome.
02:21But I also need to go into that negotiation with a strong sense of who I am
02:25and what I can bring to that.
02:27In this city, I've got a memorial to the NHS health care workers
02:33at the Royal College of Surgeons.
02:35That's a COVID memorial.
02:38I've got a little head of Patrick Geddes,
02:41which is just off the Royal Mile.
02:44I'm currently working on another project for Edinburgh,
02:47but that's still in play.
02:50So I can't tell you much about that.
02:52In Glasgow, I've got Citizen Firefighter outside Central Station
02:56that commemorates the work of the Strathclyde Fire Brigade,
02:59and a few others.
03:00I've got work at the Tron Theatre.
03:02But I have artworks in Aberdeen.
03:06I have artworks in London, quite a few in London.
03:10But yeah, I would say all these experiences have really enriched my life as an artist.
03:19Let's start with the cliché of an artist.
03:22An artist is sometimes seen as somebody who's isolated, remote,
03:25you know, disconnected from everyday life.
03:29A dreaming person, OK?
03:32But creative and of value, but still dreaming.
03:37Whereas my experience as a sculptor has been one of being exposed to other people's lives,
03:43communities, working practices, incredibly diverse experiences I've been privileged to have.
03:53So yeah, I think that's where I want to be as an artist, I think.
03:58This is important.
03:59This show reflects on how I work in the studio, my own concerns.
04:04But it's not until I get, I feel like the kind of end point is the city, or the square, or the piece of land art, whatever I create.
04:15In fact, I would probably like to mention one other artwork, which is The Unknown, which is in the very north of Scotland.
04:23And that's a single figure.
04:26In fact, that one behind me, the skeleton, is the master copy of it.
04:30And it's a version of that cast in iron, which stands on a remote hillside in Sutherland.
04:35And it's all about absence.
04:37It's all about the human frame and about the eternal, but also about the absence of people as well.
04:44And it kind of intersects with Iron Age history as well, folk art, things like that.
04:51I mean, that's how I tend to, my strategy as an artist is often to try and create something that resonates meaning,
04:58but it doesn't have a kind of core meaning, right?
05:03You don't get it, if you know what I mean.
05:05It's just a thing that tries to bring influences together so they make some sort of resonance,
05:13some sort of charge that will engage the viewer.
05:17My education in art really began in this city.
05:20I did a higher art.
05:22After I left school, I went to Western Hills Education Centre to study art higher.
05:28And then that allowed me to then apply for art school.
05:31And I applied for Edinburgh and Glasgow and got into Glasgow, which was a fantastic bit of...
05:40It allowed me to change myself, if you know what I mean.
05:45You know what, if you leave your past, leave your old city, start in a new one.
05:49It's quite...
05:51It's an opportunity for...
05:53It can be catalytic, that's the word I'm looking for.
05:55It's a catalytic event because...
05:57It's hard...
05:59You can't really reinvent yourself in your own city.
06:02You know what I mean?
06:03Because you can't...
06:04You drag all your past with you.
06:06Whereas when I went to Glasgow, I felt like an opportunity to sort of like...
06:10Reset.
06:11As a reset opportunity.
06:12So Glasgow was incredibly...
06:14I was so lucky, I collided at a very key time in Scottish art.
06:18And there was a lot of really important artists who we didn't know at the time,
06:21but were going through art school at the same time as me.
06:24And so I came of age in a time, living in Glasgow,
06:28where people were doing amazing things.
06:31And people were making connections outside of Scotland,
06:35beyond London, to Europe, to America, etc.
06:38There was a sense that you could do things.
06:41That you could achieve things.
06:43That there was a...
06:45What's the word, a vital community of art
06:49who decided not to leave Scotland.
06:52You know, I decided to stay in Scotland, but connect outside of it.
06:55And that was incredible for the time.
06:57So yeah, I think everybody gets lifted up by that social moment, right?
07:01Everybody involved in that scene
07:03maybe achieved more than they could have done
07:05if they were in a sort of...
07:07A less...
07:08What's the word?
07:09A less engaged, less...
07:11A less connected city that Glasgow was at that time.
07:16My motivation really is undying, I suppose, the idea of sculpture.
07:22I think if I don't make sculpture, I'd basically become quite unhappy a person.
07:28It's that ingrained in my sense of my own identity.
07:33It's tied to it.
07:36And it doesn't take long for me to go off the boil.
07:39But of course, being an artist doesn't mean you get to go into the studio and make work every day.
07:43There's lots more to it than that.
07:45Stuff that we'd all rather not have to do, but we do.
07:48What interests me is what is here, what is now, what has always been.
07:52I'm looking for feedback loops within history.
07:57You know, where you can see something that's...
08:00Like I did a sculpture about urban deer hunting.
08:03And that was something that was...
08:05If you think of that, that's a manifestation of a very old practice.
08:09So hunting is basically as old as humanity.
08:12And it's probably the first ever subject in art.
08:15It was the hunt scene and the first ever paint was animal blood.
08:19It goes that far back as a subject.
08:21But I read the story about deers being hunted, urban deer being hunted by young folk.
08:28You know, so I thought, well, that's an interesting subject because it's connecting to our ancient past,
08:35but it's also manifesting itself in a very contemporary way.
08:40I mean, the horse and rider one, for instance, that's obviously a historical archetype.
08:47Yeah.
08:48And it's all usually about control and about power and dominance.
08:52And the figure on the horse is usually sort of dominating the animal.
08:56And we're supposed to be impressed by that.
08:58And it's elevated high up.
09:01So here we have a horse and rider in this show, which is, but it's a little, a young woman, young girl sitting on a pony.
09:08But there's a sort of peacefulness to it.
09:10And there's a sort of almost like a tacit agreement between the animal and the rider that they're,
09:16this arrangement they've come together, that they share as opposed to one.
09:21So it's a kind of just flipping a lot of the values attached to archetypes, attached to stereotypical monumental sculpture.
09:30That's the kind of strategy I have.
09:33I guess art doesn't have a function per se.
09:36I mean, we can argue, we can argue the case for art in society, but it doesn't have a practical function,
09:42an immediate one, like say a bend to put rubbish or a light so you don't bump into buildings or road markings so cars know where to drive.
09:50There's something, some sort of practical reason for everything.
09:52Whereas the art's much more, it's reason for existence is something you have to debate.
09:58And of course, as you say, you don't find a complete consensus.
10:02It will divide people to some degree as well.
10:05But you hope to take most of the people with you.
10:08I mean, it's quite often a public artwork will be loathed on inception and then accepted and then loved.
10:17That's hopefully the trajectory for most of the public art.
10:21I mean, it can, the work Citizen Firefighter you mentioned outside Central Station,
10:27that work was commissioned just before 9-11 and it was to commemorate the work of the Strathcred Fire Brigade.
10:34But within a few months, its meaning changed significantly because of all the firefighters who perished
10:44and a lot of companies in New York.
10:46And it created a kind of rawness within the fire service in Scotland.
10:53And they had connections with those emergency workers.
11:00So they decided to have a service around the statue.
11:03And so all the fire brigades of Scotland came around the statue.
11:08They played the pipes, they sang, laid flowers, had a speech.
11:14And right there you could see that there was a social function to sculpture.
11:18It wasn't just about making the city look more interesting visually or aesthetic.
11:22It wasn't just something you put up and forgot.
11:25It actually had a social role and it was to deal with this raw emotion.
11:29And it was a conduit that people could come or come around.
11:34A lightning rod maybe, yeah.
11:36And I think that's what sculpture can do.
11:38It can quietly exist and suddenly it is thrust into the limelight for a particular social reason.
11:45And it does, in a way, ask us what do we share as a community.
11:50What does this city share?
11:52What does this city...
11:55What do the citizens have in common with each other?
11:58My name's Jamie McKinnon.
12:00I'm an Associate Director at the Fine Arts Society on 6th Dundas Street.
12:04And really excited to be showing Kenny Hunter, Let's Forget.
12:08Kenny's been great to work with.
12:09It's been interesting to hang an exhibition in a more dynamic manner
12:13and also to recontextualize Kenny's public sculpture.
12:16The exhibition runs across August until the 31st from 10am to 6pm on Tuesday to Friday
12:23and 11am to 2pm on Saturdays which we're going to extend to 11 till 4 throughout August.