LOOKING UP - Curatorial Notes
Stations of the Cross (Inverkeithing), 2025
SUBJECT: The function of contemporary art in late capitalism / Philosophy of art
READING: Boris Groys, Arthur Danto, Accelerationism, military R&D
The art philosopher Boris Groys believes anything displayed in a gallery is ideological by definition. Even if the content itself is ambiguous, abstract, or personal, he would argue that merely choosing what to show, how, and where is an ideological act. That idea stuck in my mind while this show brewed quietly in the background of my brain.
I knew I wanted to place an actual missile at the heart of this show – as a device for artists to respond to, and also as a result of what I believe to be a logical conclusion of where art and capitalism end up; the pointy end, quite literally. The Hellfire R9X – radiating its cold omnipotence at the heart of this show – is intended to be a non-artwork, non-ironic, and certainly not part of the ‘art industry’.
Although it offers a hint of engineering porn, the missile itself has no ‘artist’ attached to it* – only a lineage of military R&D and CIA funding. It is pure cold-speed capitalism: efficient, brutal, laser-guided, operational. Granted, it’s symbolically powerful, but in here it’s pretty useless and inert. Like capitalism, it’s both hella impressive and hollow at the same time.
The context it sits within is another story. Looking Up contains fragments of faith, myth, humour, tragedy, and sovereignty – even the narwhal tusk, believed for over 500 years to be a unicorn horn, sits there like an embarrassed casualty of belief. But it has no interest in telling you what it’s “about”, tying it up neatly, or giving you the ending you think you deserve.
Is truth subjective?
This instability of meaning isn’t a side effect – it’s the work. Across philosophy, critical, and cultural theory, there’s a commonly shared recognition that meaning is impossible to fix in place. Post-structuralists like Derrida and Foucault argue it is always shifting, deferred, and shaped by power. Baudrillard might say none of these things ever meant what we thought they did anyway. Situationists like Debord would frame the refusal to provide a unifying narrative as détournement – hijacking familiar symbols and turning them into dead ends and forcing the viewer to face their own craving for spectacle. For Deleuze and Guattari, meaning is a bit more rhyzomic, a network of unstable connections, always rerouting. Yet I’d hesitate to call the show meaningless – for better or worse, it has occupied my life for almost a year. Meaning here isn’t so much absent, but unsettled and easily undone.
By bringing together objects that resist easy interpretation due to their shifting ontologies – a missile without a war, a crucifix without a Christ, a horn without its unicorn – the exhibition stages these ideas in real time. While the artworks in this show don’t overtly depict instability (Jake Chapman’s work might be pushing the boundaries a wee bit here), they do perform it, revealing how our craving for clear, stable meaning has been engineered by the systems we think we’re resisting. It’s narrative comfort versus the logic of the feed.
What art is
I wanted this show to come together loosely, a nice change from my usual desperation to control everything, its various threads unravelling over time – some eventually connecting, others left hanging. Although I’d been inspired by Arthur Danto’s ideas around how each of us ‘creates’ the meaning of art, I suspect my ongoing reading of Accelerationist thought – the idea that capitalism can’t be beaten, only intensified to hasten its inevitable collapse – had a much bigger influence than I realised. Especially now it’s obvious to anyone that late capitalism has zero interest or motivation in regulating itself, its supposed equilibrium now spinning dangerously out of control.
Intensity over speed
One of the most potent, and least commodified, moves in left-accelerationist thinking is the deliberate avoidance of safe explanatory arcs. And in a culture addicted to narrative closure, easy polemics, and ‘outcomes’, such refusal feels almost violent. Capitalism thrives on resolution. Every disruption is quickly narrativised, branded, and reabsorbed – whether it’s Basquiat on a Primark T-shirt or the tragedy of Gaza as a Netflix special. Meaning itself has become commodified, flattened into easily digestible content, brand messaging, or Instagrammable insight. Today, capitalism not only sells products, but packaged narratives.
Here, the semiotic field feels too saturated for that. It mirrors the feed, the war, the state, the algorithm. Too much. Too fast. Too slippery. Too fractured. A denial of the catharsis we’ve been trained to expect, and a telling indication of our craving for certainty right now, even in art. Can a small gallery down a cobbled lane in Edinburgh even become a space of narrative overload and interpretive breakdown? I think so. At the very least, it chucks a spanner into the reading machine while simultaneously questioning art’s function. It’s a really interesting philosophical diversion, and I’m sure there’s a lot more to explore here.
I’m less sure about the weird ongoing role galleries might play in both defining and legitimising meaning – deciding what art is (and isn’t) allowed to say – not least what gets to be called art at all, especially under current conditions.
Either way, the missile couldn’t give a fuck.
Scott Lawrie
12 August 2025
*That said, the fabrication of the missile was commissioned by the gallery from young artist Oliver Cain.