As Red Sea finishes tomorrow we are preparing to open Gary McMillan’s exhibition Outside, we find ourselves reflecting on how “19” has forever altered our sense of the indoors vs outdoors, safety vs risk equation. 19 has certainly changed our perceptions of what “outside” means. For those of a more nervous disposition, being outside may’ve always carried more inherent sense of risk – the notion of hunkering down inside, out of the weather, away from the madding crowds, safe and warm... or cool as the season dictates, was the best immunity. However, since then outside has felt synonymous with fresh air, sunlight – “is there a way to get that inside the body somehow”, liberty in general, but ironically carrying with it a greater risk of transmission. This is truly the stuff of “Sci-Fi”, or worse “horror”, or heaven help us both. This noirish territory has always pulsed away in the background of McMillan’s paintings – from the skewed rear window vistas of a car in flight, to the “triffid-like” treatment of the streetlights... or are they simply deep-state surveillance devices. I’m not suggesting that McMillan is Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, but he may well, like me, be increasingly nostalgic for the time when a good conspiracy was largely part of Hollywood fiction rather than front page news on Fox. For those isolating indoors, the outside became more than simply losing the pleasures of “al fresco”. Anxiety about the impact of the virus, simple FoMO, or as David Bowie conveyed in his apprehensive and unorthodox, (when were they ever not?) 1995 album, Outside... It happens outside The music is outside It’s happening outside The music is outside It’s happening Now Not tomorrow Yesterday Not tomorrow Of course, Bowie always liked a glorious fiction. He himself came from Mars, possibly brought the virus on his red space boots. Wherever it came from, Wuhan market or Lab, or indeed the Red Planet courtesy of Ziggy Stardust, it seems that we’re going to spend much of our future debating whether the most protected place to be was in or outdoors, yesterday or tomorrow... #foxjensenmccrory #foxjensengallery #garymcmillan #painting #ziggystardust #opensoon