Awl-love. Courtesy Peacock Visual Arts

Stone circles, Julian Cope and magic mushroom tea are all coming to Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen on August 18 2006 in a film and installation by Stuart Gurden.

Running until September 23, Awl-love explores the popularisation of Aberdeenshire’s many stone circles and the different groups who celebrate them, often from competing perspectives.

Making mushroom tea. Courtesy Peacock Visual Arts

Glasgow artist Gurden visited 60 of the region’s circles on a 1,000-mile road trip, filming as he went and attempting to shoot the stones from the same angle as they are seen in Julian Cope’s gazetteer of British megaliths, The Modern Antiquarian.

The resulting work veers between documentary and over-the-top fiction, referencing the self-taught knowledge of the fringe enthusiast.

Viewers are led through the audio-visual landscape by a rambling, stream-of-consciousness voice-over that melts into a hubbub of vocal noise. This psychedelic soundtrack sets off an interruption in the journey where a dream-like re-enactment of a drinking game called Brick occurs. Things get even stranger with a plot to lace a famous distillery’s water source with homeopathic quantities of magic mushroom tea...

Cocohoho. Courtesy Peacock Visual Arts

“You will end up in a debate between scientific rationalism and creationism, and wide-eyed discussions of materialism,” says the artist about watching the film.

Alongside the film is an installation of cast bronze sculptures by Gurden, photography and works on paper.

Also opening on August 19 is a display of prints and paintings by Scottish artist John Taylor.