A humorous look at Cupar’s judicial heritage will be a highlight of the town’s art festival as its court prepares to be consigned to the history books.
Artist Anthony Schrag will dress as a pig and invite people to hunt him down and mete out their own “Cupar justice” on him as part of the Cupar Arts Festival in October.
The event will follow a more serious exploration of the town’s judicial history amid the impending closure of its sheriff court. It takes its themes from two sayings that hark back to the time when the town was the seat of Fife’s justice system.
The proverb of pigheadedness: “He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar”, applies to those who foolishly persist in the face of certain failure, while the term Cupar justice reflects the tale of an obstinate prisoner who drowned when his cell was flooded in an attempt to coax him out for his trial.
Schrag, whose previous projects have included kidnapping councillors and staging riots, will host a series of workshops looking at how the loss of the court will affect the town ahead of his main event on October 13, when townspeople will be encouraged to seek him out in his pig costume.
Festival director Gayle Nelson is delighted to have secured Schrag and other high profile artists for this year’s programme.
She said: “We hope to get a huge gathering of people on the second Sunday of the festival looking for him while he is dressed as a pig. A lot of people are quite excited about it: it will be good fun.”
Other well-known artists taking part in the fourth Cupar Arts Festival from October 5 to 17 include collaboration artists Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen.
Gayle said: “This is our most ambitious and exciting programme yet.
“Every year we do the festival the applications we get change and this year we have had a lot of applications from international artists, so we have a group coming from Italy, someone based in Taiwan and someone from Japan.
“The festival keeps growing in terms of its profile and reputation, which is great for the town.
“One thing which is different this year is we have a lot of artists who work more in performance arts so a lot of our programme is event-based.”
Among them will be guest artist Pernille Spence who will give a series of performances lasting up to 14 hours from inside a giant, glass case, including readings and making etchings.
Other highlights will include historic buildings being flooded with video projections of people immersed in water, detailed drawings of mythological creatures lurking on the walls of medieval closes and an installation in the cells below the County Buildings.
Temporary public artworks will be found around the town, including Alan Bond’s The Planetarium, a dome atop a circle of second-hand doors which will be in Ferguson Square and Palombiere, a floorless treehouse and suspended furniture in Hill of Tarvit gardens.
Alongside more than 30 exhibitions, installations and performative visual arts events, there will be a series of music events and talks in venues across the town.
Headlining the music programme will be Found, supported by Kid Canaveral, at a concert in SRUC Elmwood Campus.
Also in the programme are numerous family events and workshops, including creative writing, sustainability, animation techniques, papercraft, story-telling and puppet-making, made possible by funding from The Robertson Trust.