Evans is a place on Earth: Lions in my Own Garden (Exit Someone).

"Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a pannic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!" - To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785, Robert Burns.

Rachel Maclean seems almost omnipresent at the moment. She represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2017, she spent a month last year living (and working) in the Bullring in Birmingham, she made a programme about that experience (as well as others) for BBC4, and she was responsible for an installation in Tate Britain that included, amongst other things, blue vomit and turds with dollar signs for eyes.

Her trademark style is a day-glo grotesquerie that pokes, both playfully and violently, at the sides of how we live today, and so it proves in her current (and free) exhibition in the National Gallery's Sunley Room, The Lion and the Unicorn. Programmed, it seems, to tie in with the National's smaller show focusing on Edwin Landseers' monumental and famous The Monarch of the Glen. One I attended but didn't bother writing a blog about.

Rachel Maclean - The Queen (2013)

She's taken on cyberbullying and shopping before, but this time she's looking at the often thorny relationship between England and Scotland, not least in the wake of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Maclean herself is Scottish (born Edinburgh, works primarily from Glasgow) and most of the artworks were made a year or two before that referendum took place.

So, with the background of the ongoing Brexit disaster, the show proves to be both absolutely topical and somewhat dated at the same time. The bulk of it pivots around a twelve minute short film (which you're not permitted to photograph) that you perch upon a selection of brightly coloured velvet ottomans to watch.

In it, we 'meet' two bouffanted bewigged OTT characters in intentionally strange animalistic outfits who sip wine to the sound of bagpipes, speak in the voices of Jeremy Paxman and Alex Salmond (though I'm fairly sure I heard the shitstirring tones of racist former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and failed PM David Cameron), argue over a Union Jack cake, and quote the poetry of Robbie Burns (above). There's also a parodic Queen figure stood outside a Scottish stately home (Traquair House, near Peebles) who says nothing at great length in clipped tones. So, much like the real one.

All pretty bizarre, then. But all par for the course. What it says about either England or Scotland, the Union, the independence referendum, or even Brexit is utterly moot, but it certainly makes you think about these things. In the latter case, everything fucking does at the moment. Just consider how many times a day you hear the word 'backstop'.

Rachel Maclean - St George and the Monster (2013)

The confusing film is accompanied by a selection of marginally less confusing (though technically excellent) digital prints. St George and the Monster sees the Syrian/Israeli/Greek saint (who's been adpoted by England - but also by Brazil, Bulgaria, Georgia, Montenegro, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia - oh, and for soldiers, archery, syphilis, and leprosy) slaying the Loch Ness Monster (who looks more like an alien toy for children).

Golfers and football fans rock up in Highland Romance and The Massacre, both set against an ultra vivid scene of what looks like a mountainous landscape but turns out to be a stock market indicator. A suggestion perhaps that our new Gods are money, commerce, and football. The Carling logo emblazoned on the sponsored Celtic jersey a symbol of all of this coming together.

Rachel Maclean - Highland Romance (2013)

Rachel Maclean - The Massacre (2013)

Rachel Maclean - The Baptism of Clyde (2013)

It's a similar story in The Baptism of Clyde, although the jolly little thistle fellow looks a lot happier in this one and, in the final series (Thou'll get thy fairin'!, Freedom, and It is Finished), we follow in the footsteps of Scottish church reformer John Knox as he meets with William 'Braveheart' Wallace, fights with greedy skeletons in kilts, wind turbines, and Mr Thistle (Clyde, we're on first name terms by this juncture) once more.

What does it all mean? Nothing, really. It's all a bit silly. Rachel Maclean seems to be saying that history and our appropriation of it (often quite incorrectly and to serve our own agendas) is, yes, bunk. We're better off laughing at it than taking it seriously. Of course, that may not be what she's saying at all but that's how I'm reading it. Just for one day trying to make sense of everything seems a little too much and, just for one day, here's some pictures, here's some art. Work it out for yourself.