Your Leaning Neck - Song as Portrait

Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Edinburgh
2011

Your Leaning Neck - Song as Portrait offered an expansive way of considering portraiture. Featuring unaccompanied vocal performances by performers from Scots oral tradition and contemporary visual art backgrounds, an objective of the performance was to challenge preconceptions relating to who or what is represented in a portrait.

Created as a site-specific response to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's collection of portraits from the Scottish Enlightenment the event reframed the performance work of: Sheila Stewart, Hanna Tuulikki (with Nerea Bello and Lucy Duncombe), Arthur Watson, Elizabeth Stewart, Ruth Barker.

While presented as a singular performance the placement together of Scots Folk song, contemporary art performance and traditional portraits, aimed to open up new perceptions of each element.

Photo credit

Performer: Sheila Stewart
Photography: Clyde Jones and Mairi Lafferty