"The specific place of Donachie’s project – or rather ‘places’ – was the transport network of Scotland: not that of the daily commute, but rather that associated with rarer journeys, those of holidays or longer stays. The sense of anticipation, of change, that accompanies a journey permeates the project, which took two forms. The first, a small book of words and images, the most recent in a series of impressionistic, pocket-sized publications Donachie has produced since the early 1990s; and the second, a family of mobile sculptures, which used the language of trailers, and portable ramps familiar to anyone using the rail or ferry network in Scotland. While the book was distributed freely, far and wide across the country, from some of the venues participating in ‘GENERATION’ to passengers on various train routes, the sculptures were transported to different locations across Scotland during the summer of 2014, positioned at points of transition or departure – places defined by what lies ahead: the next leg of the journey. Strange, wordless sign-posts to journeys, or suggestive thresholds between one place and another, between work and holiday, between town and country, embodying the shift to a new place and the hopeful anticipation of the traveller."

Katrina Brown
Associate Curator

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