‘Magical, mythical, potentially folkloric’ – Anya Gallaccio in Paisley
From installations of fading flowers to carpets of rotting apples, artist Anya Gallaccio’s career has been dedicated to the ephemeral. Now the sculptor has brought the scent of chocolate to the town of her birth, Paisley, with a stunning new installation in partnership with SCAN member Jupiter Artland, which brings art, and the chance to participate in creative opportunities, to the local high street.
Gallaccio’s artwork Stroke is a wonder. The walls of an entire room have been gently coated in real chocolate, to create a cocoon of fragrant cocoa and a richly burnished visual backdrop in what was an abandoned shop. “You get hit by the smell,” she grins, as she tucks into toast at a nearby café on the morning of her opening. “Depending on your relationship to chocolate you’ll have a very different response to that smell. For some people it will be quite difficult, for others it will be fantastic.”
Like town centres across Scotland, Paisley is struggling with change. The difference is that Paisley recently opened a street -facing library and learning hub designed by Collective Architecture, and Gallaccio’s exhibition is across the road from the innovative and accessible museum store known as the Secret Collection. Paisley is making every effort to ride the storm. Stroke is part of a new vision for the town centre. “I love its contrast with the abandoned derelict shop,” says Gallaccio, “with the anaglypta wallpaper hanging from the ceiling. Paisley High Street in Victorian times would have been a different place.”
In partnership with Renfrewshire Council’s Future Paisley programme, the project is the third outing for Jupiter Artland’s Jupiter + project, which has taken contemporary art projects into our emptying high streets. Gallaccio’s work follows on from Don’t Buy Mi, an installation by Rachel Maclean housed in vacant retail space in Perth and Ayr. The move from Nicky Wilson and her team from the sculpture park outside Edinburgh is tied to an ambitious educational project: Creative Learning Programmes for school pupils will take place from September to December, offering local young people creative activities and new opportunities to access pathways into creative industries.
Gallaccio is currently very busy. She opens her biggest career survey to date at Turner Contemporary in Margate this month, and it has recently been announced she has won the competition to create a permanent HIV/Aids memorial in London. But she committed to the Jupiter+ project because of her established connection with Jupiter Artland, and with the town of Paisley itself.
“It’s really important to me, that I’m Scottish,” she explains. “I’m always telling people that and they roll their eyes because of my English accent… I think a lot of my work is grounded in social history and context, and in Paisley. I’m thinking about my interest in pattern making, carpets, textiles, gardening, all shaped by the industrial, colonial past of Great Britain. I was born in Paisley and lived in Glasgow till I was 5. On the Gallaccio side both my great grandparents met in Scotland, they both came from different parts of Italy and met in Brechin. Until I was nearly a teenager, I came to Scotland and visited Brechin and Glasgow every summer.”
Stroke is open at Paisley High Street until December. Year-round visitors can see Gallaccio’s work, The Light Pours Out of Me at Jupiter Artland itself. What connects that permanent installation, an astonishing grotto adorned with glittering amethyst, and the fragile, fading nature of painted chocolate? “They are both magical,” says the artist, as she smiles expansively, “mythical, potentially folkloric.”
JUPITER+ PAISLEY is at 18 High Street, Paisley, until 21 December 2024
Monday to Saturday, 11am – 5pm, free entry
Images:
Top: Anya Gallaccio in her installation Stroke
Middle: Stroke on Paisley High Street
Bottom: Screenprinted artwork made in the JUPITER+ Creative Learning Studio