Thompson, S., 2009.

Rocket to Variant: Artists' Writing in Scotland 1963-1984

The antagonistic and oppositional mode of publications of the 1960s, such as Rocket, and later manifestations of this voice of dissent and discontent in the pages of magazines like Stigma are almost indistinguishable in certain texts. Stigma was the direct precursor for Scotland's most long-standing visual art publication, Variant, established by students at the Glasgow School of Art in 1984. Examining some of the writings of artists who contributed to these publications is a way of identifying the ways in which art theory and criticism in Scotland both reflected and responded to broader Anglophone critical shifts. It is also a means of understanding the crucial generative nature of art writing in establishing an internationally renowned ecology of artistic practice in Scotland.