CERTAINTY//MAYBE
CERTAINTY//MAYBE
Public Preview; 24th March, 1-7pm
Show runs; 25th March - 16th April, Thurs-Sun, 12-5pm
Generator Projects is so excited to bring you new works by Glasgow based artists Oktavia Schreiner and Murphy Scoular. Both artists explore boundary spaces and the ways humans impose order on the world, drawing on lived experience, otherness and outsider perspectives. Scoular is interested in challenging the distinction between natural and unnatural, linking this to Queer theory and narratives of control; in Schreiner’s work, visitors are invited to consider divisions between religion and science, proof and fiction.
Oktavia Schreiner
Was raised in Berlin by an atheist, scientific family. She then moved to a very small, medieval, catholic Southern Italian town. Here, she was faced with understanding the two juxtaposing experiences. Using rituals and symbols, Schreiner invented her own religion and through this form of imaginary play began to make sense of the world around her; exploring the boundary between science and religion, ‘proof’ and ‘fiction’. She learned there is power in storytelling
In the first half of the room, two large earthenware columns mark a site of wildness and the unknown: a forest, deep and uncontrolled. More, Less, Magic, Transparency, their inscriptions read. Not running into freedom. The words written onto the colourful clay can be read in any order, different for each visitor’s approach. The phrasing is ambiguous, suggesting freedom as a space that can be inhabited (or not), and an uncertainty about whether the experience ought to be desired.
A large archway sits in the centre of Schreiner’s exhibition, creating a link to the historic past and signifying a transition between outside and inside, human-made and natural, and between the past and the future. Inside are ceramic sculptures of forget-me-nots, an important symbol for Schreiner, representing vessels that contain stories of the past, asking not to be forgotten.
On the far side of the gallery, The invention of religion and the order of the planetoids is a single sculpture, drawing influence from planetary diagrams and a desire for mankind to understand their position in the cosmos. Each planet holds imagery from the religion that Schreiner invented in Italy as a child.
Next to this piece is Confession. This sculpture is like the forbidden apple, representing the original sin that led Adam and Eve to be banished from the Garden of Eden in exchange for knowledge. Split into sections, it allows the visitor to look inside and see beyond the object. There is a confessional hatch cut into the apple vessel which can also be looked through, linking rituals of the confessional to modern day science and practices of therapy. Schreiner uses the story of Adam and Eve to represent anthropological transition, such as the settling on the land by hunters and gatherers or the emergence of capitalism.
Murphy Scoular
has created an immersive installation inspired by bower bird nests. Their work dissolves the barriers between manmade and natural, and explores technology and ecology through a queer lens. Scoular encourages visitors to question why distinctions exist and how they might be used to exert power and control behaviour. Scoular’s core belief is that ‘Nature’ is a political term, existing only to exclude and punish the ‘unnatural’.
Scoular argues that conceptual divisions between natural and man-made have been used for hundreds of years to create a hierarchy. The perceived value and complexities of man’s craftsmanship have been used to justify the existence of God and to create the illusion that man is not only separate to, but above, nature. This viewpoint is not only challenged by the emergence of climate change but also by an emergent trend in thinking that challenges dichotomies.
Whilst the Queer experience is at the core of Scoular's work, this piece expands to challenge how society has been encouraged to view some behaviours, sexualities and identities as less natural than others. These distinctions are widely used to encourage normativity and discriminate against those that do not conform.
Scoular describes bird’s nests as innately Queer. Bower birds build nests using found materials in a feat of complexity that straddles natural and unnatural boundaries to create a complicated architectural structure. It is very much both (and neither) ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’. Scoular explains that building a home despite its unnatural appearance is essentially very Queer, as is finding a home in unlikely places.
These two artists have taken on some very serious and philosophical subjects, but their work has culminated in an exhibition that is actually very playful and joyous. We cannot wait to welcome you back into the galleries and invite you to explore the boundaries between religion and science and question the existence of ‘nature’. Our opening will be starting earlier than usual, at 1pm on 24th March, so let’s hope the sun will be out for us! We are aware that many people will still be working so the preview party will run on into the evening, until around 7pm. See you all there!