what makes you and I different

“I say me, knowing all the while it's not me.” Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, 1953

The French structuralist linguist Emile Benveniste defined the essential characteristic of the first and second person – “I’ and “you” - as the possibility that one can become the other and that this is not possible between the third and any other person, who are always ‘somewhere else’ or absent.

How does an artist who features his or her self in the artwork manipulate this direct exchange or interchange with the viewer? What means do they employ to obscure, obstruct or encourage an autobiographical reading of the work? How does this fit within their practice as a whole?

Including two new commissions (Beagles and Ramsay/ Mark Neville) and the first exhibition in Scotland for Monica Castillo, what makes you and I different comprises work from internationally renowned artists whose practice to a greater or lesser extent manipulate the theme of the self-portrait to explore larger concerns.

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what makes you and I different

mit Matthew Barney, Beagles & Ramsay, Monica Castillo, Mat Collishaw, Peter Land, Bjørn Melhus, Mark Neville, Cindy Sherman , Melanie Smith, John Wood / Paul Harrison