Murray Grigor Quotes

“The gallery context of Scotch Myths puts the objects on display in an interrogatory framework in a way that their presence in souvenir shops does not. Similarly, the exhibition catalogue explicitly poses the correct questions and reinserts the objects into a history spanning the mid-eighteenth century to the present day: James Macpherson (1736-96), Ossianism; European Romanticism; Walter Scott (1771-1832), the appropriation of Scott and Scotland by Europe and America; the internal reappropriation by Scotland itself of earlier external appropriations, via the emergence of Kailyard; Scottish militarism in the context of nineteenth-century colonial wars, both World Wars and beyond; the dissemination of the ensemble of images and categories of thought within successive practices and technologies - literature, lithography, photography, the postcard, the music hall, films, television. It is one thing to see the imagery of Tartanry/Kailyard in its so-called natural habitats of the souvenir shop or the wall of a Scottish home; it is quite another thing to see it reproduced on orange crates from California.”
― Colin McArthur, Cencrastus No. 7: Winter 1981-82

“I was tidying old papers when I came across a faded "1979" folder. Remember what a bad year that was for those who believed in a self-governing Scotland? In March, a referendum for a "Scottish Assembly", its terms skewed to ensure failure. Then a General Election which slaughtered the SNP down to a mere two MPs and brought Mrs. Thatcher to power. End of a dream?

Two things fell out of the folder. One was a giant paper rosette, all blood-red tartan and ribbons, inscribed "Have yourself a Dreich Decade!" The rosette came from irrepressible Murray Grigor, whose films and happenings still teach Scots to find self-confidence through self-mockery. Get a grip, he seemed to be saying, and you can turn these dreich 1980s into what they did in fact become - the most intense eruption of Scottish literature, drama, painting and history publication for a hundred years.

The other thing was a note from Tom Nairn. It began: "Dear Neal, the incorrigible optimist strikes again...”
― Neal Ascherson