Throughout New Work Scotland Shona Macnaughton developed her own on-going research into ideas of work, institution and labour. Using performance, film and sculpture Shona presented this new body of work in her exhibition Every Translator is a Traitor. This title is derived from an Italian proverb and provides an overarching idea about versioning and questions of authenticity of the original. Shona created a new fictional institution, a collage of existing educational, corporate and cultural institutions (i.e. Collective), which she herself has worked for. As the company founder Shona enacted her own process of employment which she uses to consider the role of the employee, the structures of brands and the positivistic language developed to support those structures. Shona questions the authenticity of her company within the exhibition by marking out different aesthetics and languages to represent specific elements of it including: the recruitment, training, the branding and view as an employee.

Download the exhibition information here

Read the New Work Scotland 2013 publication here

New Work Scotland Programme was an initiative launched by Collective in 2000. Through an open call, New Work Scotland Programme identified and supported some of the most promising new practitioners working in Scotland - providing them with the opportunity to create new work and bring it to the attention of a wider public. The 2013 participants were Frances Stacey, Calvin Laing, James Bell, Conor Kelly, Shona Macnaughton, Tom Varley and Rachel Maclean.