tramway 2
(Leon McDermott, Metro, February 2007)
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tramway 2 |
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Filmed routes
spanned the city: from Springburn, in the north east of Glasgow to Bellahouston,
south of the River Clyde; from Dalmarnock, on the eastern outskirts to Linthouse
in the southwest, and from Whiteinch on the north bank of the river, looping
through Glasgow’s South Side to return to Hyndland, in the West End. Moving
from peripheral estates through vacant sites (once filled with mainstreets,
shops and small businesses) the routes cut through the city centre to cross
the river, past ship yards and the regenerating river bank, with its space
age Science Centre and developments of ‘luxury, exclusive’ flats.
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The trolleys were designed to resemble (empty) museum cases, making reference to Tramway’s former role as Glasgow’s Museum of Transport and, perhaps, inviting visitors to consider what is preserved or discarded, remembered or forgotten, of the city’s heritage. | ||
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Moving up and down the tramlines, visitors trundling trolleys overlapped and intersected with the images projected onto the concrete fabric of the site. Others stood back, watching their ‘performance’, and the continual re-inscription of the site through the images projected onto the whitewashed bricks of the gallery wall. | ||
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‘Take a walk - or the
bus, since the trams stopped in 1962 - from Glasgow city centre to the Tramway,
a mile or so to the south and you pass old factories and schools, under
the bridges and through time. Ghost streets are hinted at by an orphaned
street sign on a crumbling tenement, or by a few yards of road abutted by
railway tracks. This old Glasgow is there, if you know where to look. Inside
the Tramway, Minty Donald’s installation brings it back, if not to life,
at least to collective memory [...] It’s a neat bit of psychogeography,
instantly focusing attention on the changing face of the city.' (Leon McDermott, Metro, February 2007)
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