This page features a work by Karen Strang installed at the Cowane Centre in Stirling as part of the S.S.A. "Sense of Place" exhibition.
It dealt with the experience of Scottish primary education. The material work was withdrawn from exhibition after the shootings at Dunblane Primary School on 13th March, as that event would change the apparent meaning of the piece in a way far from that intended.
The title originates from a sound piece, whose principal motif is the word "Ricky" as a child reads aloud to her teacher. This is be audible in the area of the installation. A further sound element is supplied by memories of the experience of Scottish primary schooling.
At the centre of the work is a school desk, situated on an island of sawdust under two large canvases. The desk is embellished with imagined carvings and scribbles which echo frustrations and fears, scrawls of terror and ingrainings of character.
This work is about the sense of loss, of subordination, fear, the rites of passage which most experience in attending school. In our time, these are regarded as entirely natural factors outwith political debate on education, which involves only argument over resource allocation within an institutional context. This work stands outwith that context as a commentary on the role of schooling in education.
A component work entitled "Wound, Strap, Watch, Table" consists of four pieces worked onto the surfaces of old Ladybird books (each 18mm x 12mm in size).
The props are situated in the golden age of Ladybird Reading Schemes, and the nostalgic element is a consideration. Like most things, schools have changed, but, like dunces' caps and hand bells, they remain cyphers for school and what that institution represents.
View Wound, Strap, Watch, Table
View a previous work "Insanadiorama"
Email the artist
Other information about "Sense of Place" exhibitions