Page 19 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: The Glamour of Backwardness
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AF HM catalogue 2023 PRINT.qxp_Layout 1 15/06/2023 17:36 Page 17
The Wallpaper of Political Life
2018, oil on linen triptych, each panel 29.7 x 21 cm (a4)
‘The sociologist Michael Billig once coined the term ‘banal nationalism’ to describe a nationalism
that is so dominant and deep-rooted that it does not need to be publicly articulated or proven
in explicit terms, a nationalism that is simply taken for granted. The historian Colin Kidd has adapted
the concept …’The Union, indeed, was part of the wallpaper of Scottish political life..’
Tom Devine, Independence or Union, p.92