Scottish Sculptor Kenny Hunter - Let's Forget - 14 June - 30 August 2025 - video Dailymotion

The Scotsman

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.

Transcript

00:00I guess it's a provocative title that tries to make us contemplate what we

00:17should remember what we should forget. I think the imperative of public art is

00:22always to remember that's why often why these artworks are put out into the

00:26public realm but I'm with this exhibition I'm questioning possibly what if

00:33remembering is always the correct thing and because it can sometimes have a

00:37negative effect on society it can make us prolong bitterness or avoid

00:42reconciliation or history can also be misused and misaligned and be used

00:49against us in a way so I'm just kind of trying to own up to the idea that

00:53history is quite a subjective field that can't really one angle can't from one

00:59angle you can't tell the whole story you've got to come out from lots of angles

01:02and public monuments tend to be unsophisticated they tend to be quite

01:07one directional they tend to look at an issue or a time or an event from one

01:13perspective so this exhibition tries to look at monumentalism in the round and

01:20that's more about asking interesting questions of the genre rather than giving

01:25a singular meaning. Well I think they're very different environments public art

01:29versus gallery work but they're also interconnected you know they overlap for

01:36me at least they do. I see that galleries as an experimental zone where I can test

01:42out ideas I can build my identity as an artist as well because as you know public

01:48art tends to have a brief attached to it we must remember this person or this event

01:53or this this industry that's no longer no longer here so the artists can still

02:01bring their creativity to that process but they don't completely control it it's a

02:08negotiated outcome which I love so I'm not against that I'm very pro the idea of

02:13listening as an artist and being part of our discourse and then negotiating an

02:18outcome but I also need to go into that negotiation with a strong sense of who I

02:23am and what I can bring to that. In this city I've got a memorial to the NHS health

02:29care workers at the Royal College of Surgeons that's a COVID memorial I've got a

02:37a little head of Patrick Gerriss which is just off the Royal Mile I'm currently

02:43working on another project for Edinburgh but that's still in play so I can't tell

02:48you much about that. In Glasgow I've got Citizen Firefighter outside Central Station

02:54commemorates the work of the Strathclyde Fire Brigade and a few other got work at

02:59the Tron Theatre but I have I have artworks in Aberdeen I have artworks in London

03:07quite a few in London but yeah I would say all these experiences have really

03:11brought a enriched my life as an artist because the I'd start with the cliche of

03:19an artist an artist is sometimes seen as somebody who's isolated remote you know

03:24a disconnected from everyday life a dreaming person okay but creative and

03:32have of value but still dreaming was my experience as a sculptor has been one of

03:39being exposed to other people's lives communities working practices incredibly

03:46diverse experiences I've been privileged to have so yeah that's I think that's

03:53where I want to be as an artist I think this is important this show reflects on

03:58how I work in the studio my own concerns but it's not until I get I feel like the

04:04kind of end point is the city or this or the square or the or the piece of land

04:10art whatever I create in fact I would probably like to mention one other artwork

04:16which is the unknown which is in the very north of Scotland and that's a single figure in fact that

04:25one behind me the skeleton is the master copy of it and it's a conversion of that cast in iron which

04:31stands on a remote hillside in Sutherland and it's all about absence it's all about the human frame and

04:38about the eternal but also about the absence of people and as well so and it kind of intersects with

04:46iron age history as well folk art things like that I mean that's how I tend to my strategy as an artist is

04:53often to try and create a something that resonates meaning but doesn't have a kind of core meaning right

05:00doesn't you don't get it if you know I mean it's just a thing that tries to bring influences together

05:07so they make some sort of resonance some sort of charge that will that will engage the viewer my

05:15education and art really began in this city I did a higher art after I left school I went to

05:22Western Hills Education Center to study art higher and then that allowed me to then apply for art school

05:29um and I applied for Edinburgh and Glasgow and got into Glasgow which was a fantastic uh bit of

05:39it allowed me to change myself if you know what I mean you know what if you leave your past leave

05:45your old city start in a new one it's quite uh it's an opportunity for it can be catalytic that's the

05:53word I'm looking for it's a catalytic event because it's hard you can't really reinvent yourself in

05:59your own city you know I mean because you can't you drag all your past with you whereas when I went

06:05to Glasgow I felt like an opportunity to sort of like reset as a recent opportunity so Glasgow was

06:11incredibly I was so lucky I collided a very key time in Scottish art and there's a lot of really

06:16important artists who we didn't know at the time but were going through art school at the same time as

06:21me and so I came of age in a time living in Glasgow where people were doing amazing things and people

06:29were making connections outside of Scotland beyond London to Europe to America etc there was a a sense

06:38that you could do things that you could achieve things that there was uh what's the word a vital

06:44community of art uh who decided not to leave Scotland you know decided to stay in Scotland but

06:51connect outside of it and that was incredible for the time so yeah I think everybody gets lifted up by

06:58that social moment right everybody involved in that scene maybe achieve more than they could have done if

07:03they were in a sort of a less what's the word a less engaged less less less uh connected city uh that

07:13Glasgow was at that time my motivation really is is undying I suppose the idea of sculpture I think if I

07:21don't make sculpture I basically become quite unhappy a person um it's that ingrained in my sense of my own

07:30identity um it's it's tied to it um and it doesn't take long for me to go off the boil and that's but

07:37of course being an artist doesn't mean you get to go in the studio and make work every day there's lots

07:41more to it than that uh stuff that you know we'd all rather not have to do but we do what interests me

07:47is what is here what is now what has always been I'm looking for um feedback loops within history you

07:55know where you can see something that's like I did a sculpture about um urban deer hunting and that

08:01was something that was if you think of that is that's a manifestation of a very old practice so

08:07hunting is basically as old as humanity and it's probably the first ever subject in art it was the

08:13hunt scene and the first ever paint was animal blood it goes that far back as a subject but I read the story

08:21about uh deers being hunted urban deer being hunted by by young folk you know so I thought well that's

08:28that's interesting subject because it's it's it's connecting to our ancient past but it's also

08:35manifesting itself in a very contemporary way I mean the horse and rider one for instance that's

08:40obviously a historical um archetype yeah and it's all usually about control and about power

08:48and dominance and the figure on the horse is usually sort of dominating the animal and we're supposed

08:54to be impressed by that um and it's elevated high up so here we have a horse and rider in this show

09:01which is but it's a little a young woman young girl sitting on a pony but there's a sort of peacefulness

09:08to it and there's a sort of almost like a tacit agreement between the animal and the rider that they're

09:14this arrangement they've come together that they share as opposed to one so it's a kind of just

09:21flipping a lot of the values um attached to archetypes attached to stereotypical monumental sculpture

09:29that's the kind of strategy I have I guess art doesn't have a function per se I mean we can argue

09:35we can argue the case for art in society but it doesn't have a practical function an immediate one like

09:41say a bend put rubbish or a light so you don't bump into buildings or road markings so cars nowhere to

09:47drive there's something practice some sort of practical reason for everything whereas the arts much

09:51more it there is reason for existence is something you have to debate and of course as you say you don't

09:58find a complete consensus it will divide people to some degree as well but you hope to take most of

10:05the people with you I mean it's quite often a public artwork will be loathed on inception

10:12and then accepted and then loved um that's hopefully the trajectory for most of the public art

10:19i mean they can the work citizen firefighter you mentioned and sent outside central station that

10:25work was commissioned just before 9 11 and it was to commemorate the work of the strathcad fire brigade

10:33and but within a few months its meaning changed significantly uh because of those all the

10:41firefighters who perished and the ladder companies in new york though and it created a kind of

10:47rawness within the fire service in scotland and they had connections with those emergency workers

10:58so they decided to have a service around the statue and so all this the the fire set fire brigades of

11:04scotland came around the statue they played the pipes they sang laid flowers had a speech

11:11and right there you could see that there was a social function to sculpture it wasn't just about

11:17making the city look more interesting visually or aesthetic or it wasn't just something you put up

11:23and forgot it actually had a social role and that was to deal with this raw emotion and it was a conduit

11:29that people could come or come around a lightning rod maybe yeah for and i think that's what sculpture can

11:35do it can quietly exist and suddenly is thrust into the limelight for a particular social reason

11:44and it does in a way ask us what do we share as a community what does the city share what's the city

11:53what are the citizens have in common with each other

Scottish Sculptor Kenny Hunter - Let's Forget - 14 June - 30 August 2025

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