Nathan Coley has erected an illuminated sign facing out to sea at Newhaven, Sussex – which went up the day the government’s Rwanda plan for refugees was announced. How will the locals react?
Coley’s material lies in the ordinary and the overheard, the notion of the readymade, something taken from one place and repositioned elsewhere. In this case, “I don’t have another land” was a line of graffiti he found on a wall in Jerusalem in 2005.
. He’s been encouraged by the fact that the parks near where he lives on Glasgow’s south side “have never been used more since they were designed by the Victorians” – especially by young people.He thinks that working from home, as well as the constraints of lockdown, sharpened questions of who owns, and how we use, the space that is home, and not. He calls them “these other arenas where we congregate, and where there are rituals and rules, even if they’re not written down.
“Visual art in particular in Scotland is absolutely on its knees,” he says. “It’s also due to there having been years of artists based in Scotland boxing above their weight – it’s been perceived that everything’s good. But there’s less opportunities than when I graduated.”