Video; 33.11 min.
Camera, editing, research, text, sound, voice: Julia Zinnbauer; Scotland 2020
In
2020 I spent the summer and early autumn as an artist in residence at
the MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, in the South of Scotland. In this context I
started researching about the English architect Peter Womersley, who
lived and worked almost all his life in Galashiels, a town in the
Scottish Borders.
In the late 1950s Womersley transported the
idea of the modernist bungalow to this rather rural area and also built
several Brutalist buildings, like e.g. the Gala Fairydean Stands. I
travelled to Galashiels twice in order to visit as many of Womersley's
buildings as I could reach by bycicle. I took photos and videos and also
recorded interviews with people who had a personal relationship with
Womersley and his architecture.
Peter Womersley's best friend
was the textile designer Bernat Klein, for whom he designed a bungalow
in the late 1950s and a studio close by in the early 1970s. This artist
friendship is a beautiful link between modernist architecture and the
textile tradition of the South of Scotland, so it was important to me
that two outfits designed by Klein were part of my video. Moreover I
embedded the whole story in the landscape as well as the literature of
this area, as it was in Galashiels where the Scottish author Sir Walter
Scott had lived in the 19th century.