Justified Sinners

This anthology investigates all aspects of counter culture in Scotland, tracing a timeline of seismic events, ideas and art-actions that were retranslated by each succesive generation. It has a running commentary - peering into the strata of four decades, picking through the archological remains - in letters by Edwin Morgan, Helen Douglas, Stephen Willats, Malcolm Dickinson and Craig Richardson. The book surveys the literary avant-garde of the 1960s, when Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan were influential in the international Concrete Poetry and Sound poetry movement, Alexander Trocchi was a leading light in the counter cultural scene in Paris, New York and London, and Tom McGrath was in London editing the seminal journal of counter culture, "International Times". It then moves on to the adventurous art scene that gravitated to the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh in the 1970s, with Joseph Beuys on Rannoch Moor, performances by Paul Neagu, Marina Abramovic and Kantor, and the work of Scots adventurers into mindscapes and landscapes, from The Boyle Family to Ian Wilson and Bruce Maclean.


The book then looks at the wilderness of Thatcherism, the post-Referendum dark age, and the revolt that produced the new Glasgow renaissance, defining Glasgow as Worker's City. It covers the writers - James Kelman, Tom Leonard and Alisdair Gray - and later, in the 1990s, the art of the Irascibles - Douglas Gordon, Ross Sinclair - and the incredible energetic scene that flourished in and around Transmission gallery. Finally, the book reaches the end of the 20th century, through Beltane, post-punk and dance nation, the voice of young Scotland, Rebel Inc and Irvine Welsh, and the K Foundation burning a million pounds.