Shaun Hadnett
posted 3 May 2007

‘Shotgun Wedding: Scots and The Union of 1707’, a video installation in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, marks the tercentenary of the Union of 1707 and brings to mind the current state of affairs, yet masks this at its most complex point.

Artists Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen have projected upon walls slowly moving fragments of portraits and photographs that relate to the Union. There are six display bays of which three show pro-Union imagery and three have anti-Union art projections. The strength of this format is that the viewer can track back and forward through glimpses of time. In addition, some of the original paintings used in the projections are hung upstairs in another part of the gallery so further knowledge can be gleaned.

Bay one is pro-Union and offers video chunks of a portrait of William of Orange. The fragments used detract from the sense of pomp he presumably had in the 1680s. Bay two, also pro-Union, shows fragments including the eyes, nose and mouth of a portrait of Queen Anne. By following directions upstairs to the original portrait and explanatory text beside it I learned two things: that she was the last of the Stuart dynasty to sit on a throne (ruling in the early 1700s by virtue of her Protestantism) and that she appointed the Commissioners who negotiated Scottish aspects of the Union. So far, so chronological and the art clearly illustrates the presence of unelected dynasties in the making of the Union.

Remnants of the dynasty that didn’t move with the times are illuminated by returning to the video installation. Fragmentary representations of the famous Catholic Stuarts, ‘old pretender’ Prince James and his son ‘bonnie Prince Charlie’ fill bays four and five. They receive as much space in this exhibition as William of Orange and Anne Stuart, despite Protestant monarchy being the clearly favoured religious and political practice in Scotland by the 1680s.

At this point the exhibition veers towards the currently popular yet foolish pursuit of counter-factual history. Whether in museums, universities or bars, images of the Jacobite rebellions between 1689 and 1746 centring on the deposed Stuarts abound, encouraging us to get mawkish about ourselves. Mackenna and Janssen play along to this sentiment through their allocation of space equally between pro and anti-Union art. This is probably better than a monolithic fanfare hailing the importance of everything Orange, but the complexity of modern attitudes towards the Union is glossed over. Instead we are invited to reconsider the convoluted squabbles of royalty and aristocracy.

The artists tell us what they think our present reality is in bays five and six. Bay five is quite accurate in showing the weakness of modern royalty and its parliamentary counterpart. A videoed fragment of Queen Elizabeth II’s clothing wavers close to a video of prime minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown’s stubbly cheek and ear. The fragmentary approach that dims the historical pomp of William of Orange highlights the lack of character in today’s defenders of the faith.

Bay six is inaccurately anti-Union, as it gives short shrift to ordinary urban Scotland and its cultural and political expressions. The fragments here include Rangers football fans in red, white and blue and Jim Sillars, the left-wing nationalist politician of the 1970s and 1980s, in monochrome. It is simplistic of the artists to use football followers in the anti-Union side of the exhibition. The attachments of modern Rangers supporters, with their flying of French, Israeli and St Andrew’s flags along with Union Jacks, deserves better artistic treatment than simply casting them as antisocial sectarians.

The inclusion of Sillars in the anti-Union bay six makes more sense. Jim Sillars represented the downsizing of egalitarian ambitions in the 1970s and 1980s by switching his political focus from Britain as a whole to Scotland in particular. Conflating that political nationalism with an appraisal of the Jacobite failures shows the essential weakness of anti-Union momentum then and now.

The fragmentary technique used by the artists forces the viewer to think about the reality of Scotland in the present day, but the viewer has to think hard. In its entirety the exhibition makes a nice show of the Union’s origins and early decades, and depicts a constitutional Monarchy that is presently and irreversibly weak. Less nicely the installation simplifies the quizzical and complex response to the Union embodied in football and nationalism today.

Today sees elections to the Scottish Parliament. The outcome will be a chamber that debates local transport, police on the beat and further regional identity for Scotland within the United Kingdom. For all the shortcomings of Mackenna and Janssen’s video exhibition, these artists ask more of their audience than meek assent to mediocrity. If time is at a premium my advice would be to avoid the polling booth and head for the art gallery.

Till 6 May 2007. Admission is free.