There Will Be No Miracles Here

[gallery size=full ids='5148' columns=1]This outdoor work by Nathan Coley on the lawn of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art sports eye-catching illuminated text. It originates from a project in which Coley posted a series of public announcements around the town of Stirling. One included these words, taken from a seventeenth-century royal proclamation made in a French town believed to have been the frequent site of miracles. The sign was meant to discourage eager pilgrims from overrunning the king's land in search of reputed evidence of the hand of God.What does the absence of miracles leave us with? Can we redefine the everyday as miraculous? Birdsong? Heartbeat? Laughter? Where does the ordinary cross into the realm of the extraordinary? All the time, it feels like. Which gives a curiously comforting ring to these other words above the gallery entrance: 

Everything is going to be alright.