Path Users

Path Users
Niall McCallum
30/09 – 15/10/23
Open Saturday and Sunday, 12 – 5pm and by appointment.

You start at the bottom. Entry-level is the employment hierarchy jargon for it, but plainly speaking you are on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder. It doesn’t have to be this way forever. Craning your neck upwards and through squinted eyes as the sun beats down on you, you allow your imagination to visualise what might be waiting up there for you.

Through hard work, dedication, being a team player, being an independent worker, by thinking outside the box, and occasionally inside the box, you start to slowly ascend. It feels like unknown territory for you – a wild frontier that you are now navigating and traversing as you climb upward. Each surefooted step met with just the right amount of resistance to keep you stable and in your place. The further up you go the sense of achievement swells up inside you, until all you feel is accomplishment.

You get high up. While stopping for breath you admire your progress by looking down at the neatly carved path stretching out far below you. You look around now too, and see flocks of people on either side of you. They are doing the same thing at the same time at the same pace in the same direction, in the same way. A gust of realisation hits you – you are not staking out your own career path, you are gently following in the steps of everyone else who has started in the same place as you.

***

The objects on display in Path Users are representations of real objects. They are fake, – in fact they are double fake. Not only are they not the real objects which they represent, but by being placed in a gallery they have been further altered into artworks. Real artworks made from fake objects which represent real objects are additionally a physical stand-in for Niall McCallum’s creative practice and research into several different areas of interest.

As such, the real-fake-real-artwork-objects go through one more transformation. They become a further representation of a period of research. Real-fake-real-artwork-objects becomes real-fake-real-artwork-object-text as the physical work on display must be deciphered as if it were a passage of text if we are to attempt to fully understand what is on display.

Scale is important here. We must not get too bogged down in the details. Instead we need to look around and survey the scene. Up, down, left, right. This exhibition, created with several real-fake-real-artwork-object-texts has the appearance of a diorama, because it is a diorama. Look around again, this time out the window too. Where does the artificial finish, and the real begin?

– Fraser Whiting

Notes on materials

Cloud shaped balloons indicate ascension on route up and into the 4th floor studio/gallery. Foil balloons. 60x30x15cm

An illuminated panel hangs suspended from the ceiling by wire cables depicting an overhead skyscape. LED ceiling panel, surface mounting frame, wire suspension cables, hooks. 60x60x100cm

Two semi-cylindrical sculptures are mounted to the left of the bay windows. A culvert pipe cut in half is lined with geotextile membrane and printed with an image depicting a person looking out across an expanse of landscape having just ascended to a high altitude. The materials used in the sculptures are the only two artificial materials used in tourist mountain path construction, according to the 3rd edition of the Upland Pathwork Construction Standards for Scotland (2015) . The images are appropriated from instagram posts tagged #munro. Culvert pipe, Inkjet print on geotextile landscaping membrane, card. 13.5x11x7cm

Outside the bay windows of the gallery an artificial plant grows from cracks in the outer facade of the 4th floor studio\gallery. Edelweiss cultivates only in high altitude rocky environments, the resilient qualities of the plant led to its image being adopted as a symbol by various alpine groups and military factions with often opposite ideological viewpoints. In the late 19th century it was placed on the endangered list due to excessive collection of the plant as a trophy. Artificial plant, cracks in outer facade of 7 Water Row. Dimensions Variable

Two images bordered with geotextile membrane hang framed on both sides of the gallery’s glazed partitions, one image shows a culvert pipe directing a natural spring underneath an artificial mountain path after becoming exposed by heavy footfall. Another image depicts the preserved remains of George Mallory after being discovered at 27,000ft on the slope of Everest’s North Ridge in 1999; 75 years after his failed expedition famously documented in “The Epic of Everest” (1924). Inkjet print on paper, geotextile landscaping membrane (Framed) x 2 . 32x32x2cm

A metal pipe with a hooded eyepiece extrudes from a hole in the gallery wall. Looking through the peephole into the studios next door reveals a scene showing a view of the top of the world from outer space. Painted aluminum pipe, hooded viewfinder eyepiece, plywood, rotating motor, globe stress ball, gloss paint, spray paint. Dimensions variable

–  Niall McCallum

Photo credit: Malcolm Cochrane

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