Hi, G’day, Kia ora: Meet Scott Lawrie

I was brought up in Moredun, a sprawling working-class housing estate in the South of Edinburgh. I think that’s given me a really interesting perspective on the ‘art world’ (a term I like to use to describe the commercial and ideological business ontology which art has become). Inspired by my high school teachers at Liberton High, in 1988 I scraped into Edinburgh College of Art, where I studied Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking – later gaining an MPhil in Humanities where I was particularly interested in Marxist theory and the critical thinking of the ‘Continental Philosophers’. After that I milked the corporate teet for 15 years by going into advertising as a creative writer. I had a lot of fun working at the coal face of commerce, but I also gained invaluable first hand knowledge of how capitalism works – and ultimately how it’s sold to us a fact of life, with no viable alternative.

Art has been in my veins since I was a boy. Nothing else has ever interested me for so long, or affected me so deeply. Growing up, art was a place of liberation; perhaps an escape from some pretty grim parts of my childhood, but more often than not as a way to simply see the world through someone else's eyes. That’s still one of the most fundamentally useful things about art (in addition to its glorious uselessness which is equally worth celebrating).

Work took me around the world. I set up my first gallery in a regional gallery space in New Zealand, which led to three further iterations of Scott Lawrie Gallery. I’d had some commercial wins, found some truly generous and kind supporters – not least lots of really interesting artists – and did the big Art Fair thing. But something felt off. And as the gallery progressed and grew, I kept wondering how I could get closer to the fundamental truth of art and its transformational power again. As a result, in 2021 the gallery pivoted to become a gallery practice, just like those of the artists it represented, where a more experimental focus and an emphasis on non-traditional work could be showcased against my writing and thinking.

I’d always been an ‘artist-first’ gallery, but now I could speak freely and openly critique what I believe are the systematic structural, and more recently, ideological issues that are having a detrimental effect on the arts – from cancel-culture and soft criticality, to a shut down of opposing viewpoints, or any form of counter-narrative. The experience of art today can often feel like a one-dimensional meta-narrative; a bit like seeing Coldplay for the fourth time.

Art is primarily a force for social good; a portal, if you like, to a multitude of new experiences and perspectives. But until it gets back to having to be the neccessary disease, rather than the cure, I fear we may be sleepwalking into one of the most dull Chapters art history has ever produced. Which is a bit embarrassing really. (Then again, why would anyone bother when a job at Tesco's pays more?)

As a gallery practice, all exhibitions become partnerships between curator and artist, and ideas are thrown around, pulled apart, and ultimately merged to form a basic premise for each show, which is then explored through the work itself, a well-researched accompanying essay, and sometimes films, talks and performances. All the time cherishing the freedom to critique and exercising that right as often as possible. (Or as one Kiwi critic reminded me, ‘Art is the one place we have left to argue like mad, but still leave the room as friends.’)

Today, after 20-odd years of living and working in Australia and New Zealand, I’m back living in Edinburgh, where my journey began. I’ve set up a new space at 2 Chuckie Pend (the lane behind the Filmhouse) and imaginatively named it Scott Lawrie Gallery. It’s a not-for-profit Community Interest Company with a focus on regular shows, plus free public exhibitions.

At the moment, the practice is particularly interested in two streams, which occasionally converge; Accelerationism and Marxism, particularly as they relate to technology and the effects of capitalist realism on art and culture.

Cover portrait © Craig Ray