Generator Projects, Dundee, is delighted to present the new exhibition and film, Family Fugue, by George Finlay Ramsay & collaborators, opening on 8th October 2022.

Ramsay is a Scottish artist working with poetry, ritual and analogue filmmaking. He has presented recent work at Camden Art Centre, Rupert, BFI and Mubi. For this ambitious project he has teamed up with renowned artists Luke Fowler (cinematography and sound), Alex Hetherington (cinematography), irrepressible Dundee poet Mark Thomson and his entire family.

Family Fugue is an exhibition circling around a film about how we are haunted by, and in turn haunt our ancestors, and a family who cannot agree on how to tell their own story.

Ramsay states, ‘I grew up hearing these stories about my ancestors, about this 13th century wizard, this early 20th century female politician, this guy who died in the second World War and haunted his room. To be honest I found it quite boring as a kid, like who are these dead people? And what are they doing in my house? But as I got older I became more and more interested, this is my identity, whether I like it or not. So I decided to make this film.’

In addition to the film, the gallery space will be inhabited by the installation David’s Room, a facsimile of a haunted room in Bamff House, created with designer Nina Lopez le Galliard (Peeping Tom, Needcompany); 35mm production stills; fragments of forgotten lives, stuffed birds and exploded swimming pools.

Fresh from a sold-out screening at Camden Art Centre, Family Fugue (16mm to digital, 35 mins, colour, black & white, sound, 2022) is a film about a white snake, a red Duchess and a golden boy, spanning eight centuries and starting in a cave. It features performances from multiple members of the Ramsay family and a potent original score by Glasgow composer Rudi Zygadlo (Mad Decent, Planet Mu).

Beginning with the family’s origin story of Neish de Ramsay, a 13th century wizard who was said to have cured king Alexander II of Scotland using a potion from a white snake; it continues with Katherine Stewart Murray, Duchess of Atholl, a trailblazing female MP in the early 20th century who fell out of politics because she vocally opposed fascism; and concludes with David Ramsay, a polymath prankster whose life was terminated abruptly during action in World War II, suggesting his death was not final.

‘My (living) family is extremely intelligent and creative, and annoyingly opinionated. When I showed my novelist mother, Louise Ramsay, the rough cut of the film she was initially complimentary, but I knew something was up, so I probed and ultimately we had a big argument about it. Once I got over my strop I thought, this is perfect, it’s the family fugue, so we reenacted the argument, and it features in the film.’

Playing with these histories as a score to be interpreted, using documentary, reenactment and lush theatrical tableau, the film allows disagreement, criticism and self-doubt to flow in and out.

‘As well as telling these three ancestors’ stories, and some kind of indulgent identity seeking of my own, I hope to show some of my living family’s brilliance. I think one of the great attributes of photochemical film is its capacity to capture spirit, the flame inside people and things. In the words of my great great aunt Kitty:

‘Life is not the wick, nor the candle, but the burning’’