Burnsiana

This unique reflection on the world of Robert Burns places a range of photographic artworks by celebrated Scottish artist Calum Colvin alongside poems written in response to each work by 'weel-kent' Scots poet Rab Wilson.   Colvin's multi-referential artworks are concerned with the very process of looking, perceiving and interpreting. The potential meaning of any individual piece is intrinsically linked to the viewer’s personal deconstruction of the image. Utilising the unique fixed-point perspective of the camera, Colvin creates and records manipulated and constructed images in order to create elaborate narratives which meditate on numerous aspects of Scottish culture, identity and the human condition in the early 21st century. At times witty, controversial and tender, the images are presented alongside poems in response by Rab Wilson which equally reflect on the life and aspects of Burns to dwell on who we are, and where we have been, toward what we may become.

Rab Wilson Rab Wilson was born in New Cumnock, Aryrshire, in 1960 and worked in the Ayrshire pits until the Miners' Strike of 1984. He then left the mining industry to train as a psychiatric nurse in 1986. A Scots poet, Rab writes predominantly in Lallans, and his poetry has appeared in some of Scotland's leading poetry magazines, and regularly in The Herald newspaper's daily poetry column. He has performed his work to varied audiences throughout Scotland and has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, the Robert Burns International Festival, and was recently Festival Bard at the Wigtown Book Festival. Rab has twice been a prize winner of the McCash Poetry Prize, is currently a member of the Scots Language Society's National Committee and the Robert Burns Writing Fellow for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association. He lives in New Cumnock.