PRESS RELEASE

Grannies will love him. For them he is a returning messiah. Since TV pulled the plug on Kendo, Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy, and the supremely menacing Mick McManus, their hunger for thrills and spills has failed to find nourishment elsewhere.

But Harry Butler will change all that.

Of course, as anyone who has witnessed one of his acts will know, Harry is no wrestler (although he has mask is just as good as Kendo’s). Harry’s act owes more to the sublime folly of Evel Knievel. What’s more he shares with Evel a desire, no an obligation to entertain and delight. Harry is here to please us, and his BMX extravaganza certainly delivers levels of pleasure and entertainment some may find overwhelming. Of course, unlike Evel, Harry’s pursuit of the impossible doesn’t result in him landing on his rump.

But who is Harry Butler? Harry Butler is a man of mystery. An enigma. Some people say he works down the docks, that he’s a welder with dreams. Still others tell tales of him working on nuclear submarines as a cleaning rat. His daytime employment as a human brush in the torpedo tubes, giving no hint of his alternate personae. One thing’s for sure - he’s unique. At the Collective, evidence of Harry’s extraordinary life will be presented by his manager and life long friend Kevin Reid. In a series of videos and prints the expanse and magnitude of Harry’s life work will be captured. For the uninitiated, examples of his own death-defying feats, candid insights into his psyche, ruminations on his dreams and evidence of his obsessions (for example Chuck Norris in ‘Delta Force’) will be presented.

Despite human beings of the caliber of Harry Butler, it’s difficult not to feel downtrodden by the selfishness and hollowness of contemporary existence. Fortunately Ruth Ewan is making you a generous, altruistic offer. Rather than offering a tasteful selection of objet d’art, she has decided to transform the Collective art gallery into a center for the community. For some time now Ewan has been pursuing projects imbued with a generosity of spirit designed to test the limits and depth of Scottish humanism. Last year she opened a lending library, stocked with donated items, ranging from books to hammers to shoes to toys. Visitors borrowed objects on the basis of trust - it was up to them to bring them back. As a social experiment it was surprisingly successful. Who says we’ve all been corrupted by the stench of capitalist greed? At the Collective she will be developing and expanding upon the library, offering locals a timely vision of how we could all throw away the shackles of corporate culture. From such seeds a thousand flowers will bloom.

Catalogue essays by
John Beagles