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ALL FOR ONE was the result of an Artist in Residency at Tynecastle Park (home to Heart of Midlothian Football Club) in football season 2004-05.

It culminated in an exhibition at Stills Gallery in June-July 2005 and the publication of a book.
The book includes 35 colour prints and explores the public and rarely viewed private spaces of Tynecastle, and contains a discussion between Paul Gray and Stuart Cosgrove (co-presenter of BBC Scotland’s Off The Ball and head of Channel 4′s Nations and Regions).
ALL FOR ONE
Book Foreword

Season 2004-05 was a time of turmoil for Heart of Midlothian Football Club. Debts accrued over the years had resulted in the Board deciding to sell off their one and only asset – their home for over 100 years, Tynecastle Park. This would have left an uncertain future for a homeless and asset-less club. But, while the fight for its existence raged, Tynecastle continued to generate the kind of match day atmosphere expected from this intense and compact stadium.

As a Hearts fan, my season ticket would take me to the games, where I would cheer on my team and engage in the debates with, at times, inappropriate levels of passion. But as an artist the possibility of our spiritual home disappearing without proper record troubled me, so I approached Hearts to become Artist in Residence at Tynecastle Park. My intent was to produce a body of photography and video works that reflect the emotion and experience of fans and players alike, while also documenting the imprint of this experience upon the physicality of the ground. This work has been a real labour of love, culminating in this publication which accompanies an exhibition of photography and video works at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh. The images show an empty stadium, portraying a stillness in a place normally associated with large crowds. Expectancy hangs in the air of all empty sporting venues, whether it be a public playing field or the Colloseum in Rome, and while Tynecastle lays dormant between games, it exudes this same anticipation. Football in general has been in turmoil over the past decade and now we seem to be moving in to a far more realistic and certain period in the game’s history. Thankfully we haven’t had to sell our home and although we are not yet in the clear, Hearts can look to a more optimistic future. But one certainty is that the future will involve a major redevelopment of the ageing Main Stand. At over 90 years old, this is one of the last working stadia designed by the renowned stadium architect Archibald Leitch, who was responsible for most of the major football venues that were built in the early part of the 20th Century.

As football has developed so have the services a club is expected to provide and the Main Stand at Tynecastle has borne the brunt of these changes; it now stands as testament to the history and development of the game in Scotland and arguably, Europe as a whole. In the process of replacing the Main Stand, we will lose an important living archive that documents the changes in football, off the pitch and paradoxically, that records every fans’ presence through the cumulative physical imprint that is left on the structure.

Book:All for One
Author: Paul Gray
Price: £15.00
ISBN 0-906458-35-8
48pp
35 colour illustrations
A4 landscape

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC: Uneasy Spaces
September 12, 2006 – November 1, 2006
80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York University
Press Release Invite

This was a group exhibition in which I exhibited the following images:

222 x 40 cm
The graffiti states, “For a moment there I thought we were in trouble” is taken from George Roy Hill’s 1969 film ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’. It is the final statement by Butch Cassidy to Sundance before they run out of their hide out in Bolivia, guns blazing and unsuspecting of the number of troops that face them.

‘Ok, then how do we re-phrase the question?’
300 x 38cm
The re-phrased question was put to HAL in Stanley Kubrik’s film, ’2001: A Space Odyssey’. Asking HAL the re-phrased question lead to the death of all crewmembers on the spaceship Discovery.

These images are from a series of photographs depicting isolated locations which are visited in transit rather than as final destinations. Graffitied statements are then added digitally, becoming part of the location while reading from left to right across the surface of the image. The statements are taken from popular cultural references, such as pivotal moments in a movie.

Not exhibited but another example from the same series:

‘Here comes your second chance for a change of luck.’
300 x 27cm
The statement here is taken from Michael Mann’s film ‘Heat’. Robert De Niro states it to the ex-con in the kitchen of a diner, resulting in the ex-con driving the get-away car in a bank robbery. It ultimately led to the ex-con’s death.