The Real Face of Burns

Posted on March 26, 2015

The range of interpretations of Robert Burns in The Real Face Burns shows us the variety of influences the poet has had in the past centuries. With artworks including new interpretations and ones which relate to more familiar ones the exhibition provides a vast insight into the representations of our bard.

I particularly like the variety of media used by the different artists: pin-heads, steel, gold leaf, ceramics, gesso, graphite and Indian ink. All the different processes of production are also very interesting: there are drawings, paintings, lego toys and photographic prints.

The exhibition features works from world-famous artists, including To See Ourselves as Others See Us (b&w) and To See Ourselves as Others See Us (colour), by Graham Fagen (who is representing Scotland at the 2015 Venice Biennale). We have a life size model of Burns’ head, which was reconstructed using Burns’ skull and silhouette images of the poet, by forensic scientists at the University of Dundee. David Begbie’s Burns is a painted steel piece which represents an image of the poet that visitors familiar with him would recognise. The artist plays with space by lighting the sculpture strategically, creating a unique viewing experience!

Another artist who uses an interesting technique is Shannon Laing, who explains her piece The Young Ploughman Poet by stating: ‘Using other artists’ representations of what Burns may have looked like, in addition to descriptions of his appearance, I took photographs of men with similar features to Burns in a photographic studio under continuous lighting conditions. I then used photo editing software to combine these particular features to create a single face, and used this amalgam as a reference for my final graphite portrait.’ However, my personal favourite doesn’t feature Burns’ face at all. Tom Gallant’s To gie them music was his charge is an example of how folk culture paired with literary and social history can provide inspiration to contemporary artists. This work is made from cut paper and collage. Overall The Real Face of Burns is an incredibly inspiring exhibition featuring some of Scotland’s most prominent and emerging artists. Well worth a visit!

Elena Trimarchi – Learning Intern

The exhibition will be running until Sunday 14^th June, entry is free with admission to the Museum.

To Agnes Burnes, For Mother’s Day

Posted on March 11, 2015 Updated on March 11, 2015

In celebration of Mothers Day this Sunday, it seems appropriate that this week’s blog post should be dedicated to Robert Burns’s mother, Agnes.

The first of six children, Agnes Brown was born in March 1732 in Kirkoswald, Ayrshire, the daughter of Agnes Rennie and Gilbert Brown. However, as was tragically far too often the case, Agnes’s mother died, leaving a ten year old Agnes to keep the house and look after her younger siblings. Two years later, when her father remarried, this responsibility was lifted from Agnes’s shoulders as she sent to live with her maternal grandmother, Mrs Rennie. As to whether this arrangement was one that had been decided amiably, or was the result of a family argument, we are sadly in the dark, but for the next thirteen years Maybole was to become the home of Agnes Brown, and Mrs Rennie, her family.

In Maybole Agnes was to have two main romances. The first one was with ploughman William Nelson, but a long seven year engagement ended, perhaps due to improper actions by her fiancee. Then in 1756, at a fair in Maybole, Agnes had her second romance. Meeting William Burnes, where Maybole Health Centre stands today, she fell in love and married Wiliam a year later in 1757. Over the years of their marriage, Agnes was to have seven children, but the eldest, as we know, was to become the most remarkable.

Settling down in the Alloway cottage, Agnes gave birth to Robert Burns two years into her marriage, in 1759. In his early years, Agnes is said to have had a huge influence on Burns through her love of singing Scottish songs, hymns and psalms, so much so that historian Robert Crawford said that ‘she was his first source and teacher of song.’ One song Robert Burns recalled her singing was the Highland Song: Leiger m’chose.

Leiger m’chose, my bonnie wee lass
An leiger m’ chose, my dearie
A’ the lee-lang winter night
Leiger m’ chose, my dearie.

At the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum we celebrate Agnes by recreating the sounds of her singing in the cottage kitchen, and furnishing the house with items she would have used in her everyday life: milking stools, kirns, rolling pins, and spurtles, while her nursing chair is displayed in the museum. Sadly, not much history has survived of Agnes. Having received little education, she was unable to write letters, and thus what we know of her comes second hand, and passed down. Nonetheless, Agnes Burns must have been a strong woman. From taking care of a large family at the age of ten, to looking after her own large family as an adult, working a hard farming life, watching her husband die, living beyond the years of many of her own children, not to mention dealing with Robert’s many drama’s, Agnes Burnes was no doubt quite a woman.

So here’s to you Agnes Burnes: Happy Mothers Day!