AN AUDIO-VISUAL PRESENTATION INSPIRED BY THE CAST COLLECTION
Exhibition and soundscape in the Sculpture Court at Edinburgh College of Art, 14 August to 3 September, 2010
This is a unique opportunity to hear recordings of variety of voices reading from ancient Greek poets, Ovid, Virgil, Buchanan, Johnston, Byron and others, in their original languages in a uniquely classical, and uniquely Edinburgh setting. The combination of sound and spectacle is intended to evoke the long-standing Romantic, spiritual and intellectual connection between Scotland’s own artistic culture and that of the ancient world. The exhibition’s title was taken from a line from a poem by the Scots Renaissance scholar, George Buchanan, ‘When the barbarians broke the power of Rome Scotland alone was refuge for the Muses’
The exhibition explores the long standing relationship between Scotland and the cultures and languages of the ancient world, including ancient Celtic civilisation. Ancient art is sometimes regarded nowadays as dusty and obsolete, so the exhibition seeks to reanimate classical culture for the modern audience.
The casts displayed in the Sculpture Court originally belonged to the Trustees Academy (Edinburgh’s art school run by the Board of Trustees for Manufactures and Fisheries) and they were brought from the Royal Scottish Academy building to the purpose-designed Sculpture Court in 1913. The collection reflects the neoclassical culture of Edinburgh in the early 19th century: the city’s links with Lord Elgin who donated casts to the collection, and Edinburgh as the ‘Athens of the North’. The artist, Hugh William Williams (a graduate of the Trustees Academy), James Skene of Rubislaw (Secretary of the Board of Trustees) and, more famously, Lord Byron were Scots who contributed in different ways to the creation of the new Greek state following its independence from Ottoman rule in 1832.
The exhibition comprises a selection of poems and prose on the themes of war, mortality, myth, nature and love, mixed with other sounds from nature and ancient music, to evoke a suggestive soundscape. The visual display comprises the Sculpture Court itself with Graeco-Roman statues and the Parthenon frieze in situ around the walls.
