Page 41 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: The Glamour of Backwardness

AF HM catalogue 2023 PRINT.qxp_Layout 1 15/06/2023 17:37 Page 39

Mint essay
mint – to try, to attempt, to essay, to aim at
the resemblance in the idea of the Scottish mint, to attest, to try, to essay, & the Mint, where the precious
metals are essayed, or tried as to their purity before they are coined into money, is curious, especially
when it is remembered that the Mint was formerly & is still sometimes called the Assay Office.

‘Ultimately, the production of an exhibition is an attempt at converting subjective value and personal
choice into social and cultural capital through the arrangement of the primary material that is art.
Within a field of operations such as art and its exchange economy.’ 1

1 The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s)–Paul o’ Neill, p87

4th estate
“For my father The Three Estates was what the physicists would call a point of singularity, a point at
which forces come together and then spread out afterwards, as when a rock is thrown into a pool.” 1

1 Confusion to our enemies–Arnold Kemp, p19 (on his father Robert Kemp)

Honeysuckle
“. . . honeysuckle is an invasive plant, needing to be cut back on an annual basis, an abundance
1
of honeysuckle (as there is in this poem) suggests the absence of people” ie.
“the energy of emptiness acquires the status of sign” 2

The piece is embossed ie undrawn = not gutted.
The piece has no black or colour ie the Gaelic ‘dubh no dath’, meaning ‘no sign’.

‘It is rhythm that is behind Scott’s structure, and we can only follow this rhythm if we approach
the Waverley novels without the yardsticks that were provided later.’ 3

Honeysuckle in Gaelic is iadh-shlat: slat meaning rod, twig etc but also a yard in length.

1 Sorley MacLean — Peter Mackay, p119 (on the poem ‘Air Suidhisnis’)

2 L. Blair, p8 The Grace of the Birch
3 Scott– Angus & Jenni Calder, p106