A R T SCOTTISH ART NEWS
ISSUE 17 SPRING 2012 £3
WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM BEHOLDER: ON THE NATURE OF BEAUTY RESIDENCIES FOR SCOTLAND INVERNESS OLD TOWN ARTS ARTIST ROOMS 2012
Blair
Lyon & Turnbull are delighted to announce the sale of the contents of Blair, Ayrshire, on 14th & 15th March 2012 in our Edinburgh saleroom. The auction will comprise the contents of the house; including fine antiques, paintings, silver, swords and other Blair memorabilia. The collection will be on view 'in situ' at Blair from 24th-26th February (entry by catalogue), before moving to our Edinburgh saleroom for viewing 11th-13th March, prior to the auction. The catalogue will be available in early 2012. To be kept informed about this sale, or to order a copy of the illustrated catalogue, please contact us via info@lyonandturnbull.com or call us on 0131 557 8844.
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Peter Graham ROI
A Glasgow Painter’s Journey
18–22 January 2012
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Maturing Sun, Iona, 25 x 26 inches oil Peter Graham ROI
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Preview: Sunday 27th May 2012, 12–5pm Exhibition continues until 15th June
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John Duncan Fergusson, RBA La Plage Royan £70,000 - £100,000 To be sold 19 April
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Craigie Aitchison (1926-2009) Portrait of Betty Van de Geld oil on canvas, 1976 550 x 440 mm (21 ⁵⁄₈ x 17 1/4 in) Est. £18,000-20,000
THE CRAIGIE AITCHISON SALE TO INCLUDE WORKS FROM THE STUDIO & ESTATE
Thursday 26th January 2012, 1pm Viewing at London Art Fair, Islington Wednesday 18th January 11.00am - 9.00pm Thursday 19th January 11.00am - 9.00pm Friday 20th January 11.00am - 7.00pm Saturday 21st January 10.00am - 7.00pm Sunday 22nd January 10.00am - 5.00pm
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PATRICK NASMYTH (1787-1831) COWES, ISLE OF WIGHT OIL ON CANVAS, 28 X 39 INCHES SIGNED AND DATED 1821
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Scottish Art News 4
CONTENTS
THE FLEMING COLLECTION 13 Berkeley Street Mayfair London W1 The Fleming Collection
Scottish Art News
THE PERFECT VENUE FOR ANY OCCASION
8 W. Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives
22 Scottish Art News round-up 24 Martin Boyce: Turner Prize winner 2011 26 Residencies for Scotland
Each of our two elegant galleries provide an opportunity for entertaining in a versatile and creative setting. Treat your guests to an exclusive private view of our current exhibition or permanent Scottish collection
16 In Focus: Margaret Mellis, Passing in the Night, 1994
HE
Ahead of a new exhibition opening at The Fleming Collection which explores the Scottish connections in the work of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, William Summerfield discusses the focus of the exhibition and publication with its curator Lynne Green.
Margaret Mellis arrived in St Ives before her contemporary Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, at a time when the Cornish fishing town had become a thriving hub for contemporary artists to live and work. In this context, Sophie Midgley focuses on Passing in the Night, a work by Mellis in The Fleming Collection.
In partnership with the Royal Scottish Academy, a variety of art spaces across Scotland are offering artists the opportunity to apply for a wide range of funded residencies.
30 The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Residency Programme Barns-Graham’s Scottish home, Balmungo, now hosts residencies for artists and writers, as Helen Scott of the Trust explains.
34 Inverness Old Town Arts (IOTA)
Katie Baker looks at arts organisation IOTA’s latest public art project taking place on Culloden battlefield.
38 Beholder and Beheld
N O I T C OLLE
Situated in the heart of Mayfair, The Fleming Collection offers a unique backdrop for a variety of events, from daytime conferences, inspiring champagne receptions to intimate dinners
C G N I FLEM
For further information please contact a member of the events team on 020 7042 5738 or by email at events@flemingcollection.com
To celebrate the tercentenary of David Hume, an exhibition at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh seeks to explore taste and subjectivity in the visual arts through a selection of works chosen by invited artists, individuals and organisations across Scotland, by Bill Hare.
44 Alexander Fleming and the Sublime: In Petri Veritas Page 8
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, White Cottage, Carbeth, c.1930s, oil on canvas, 41x51 cm (BGT1118) © Courtesy The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust
Artist Kate Whiteford in conversation with Rosemary Harris on her recent commission for Hammersmith Hospital in which art and science combine.
50 litttlewhitehead: Controversial or ‘equally unimportant’?
Jakub Koguciuk meets Glasgow-based artists littlewhitehead.
flemingcollection.com 5
Scottish Art News 6
EDITOR’S NOTE
To subscribe to Scottish Art News please complete the subscription form on p.72 of this magazine. Alternatively, contact The Fleming Collection.
This issue has a contemporary focus, from artist Kate Whiteford’s
T: 0207 042 5730 E: admin@scottishartnews.co.uk, or complete
research into the work of Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Sir
a subscription form online at
Alexander Fleming, to public art projects which are transforming
www.flemingcollection.com/scottishartnews.php
key sites as part of Inverness’ city centre regeneration. A focus is
Scottish Art News is published biannually by
also upon the town of St Ives as the exhibition Wilhelmina Barns-
The Fleming Collection, London. Publication dates: January and June.
Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives opens at The Fleming Collection. After the war St Ives had become a centre for modern and abstract
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developments in British art. From around 1950 a group of younger
Briony Anderson | T: 020 7042 5713
artists came to live and work there, among them, Margaret Mellis (In
E: briony.anderson@flemingcollection.com
Focus – p16), and later, Barns-Graham. Although the St Ives School
was at its height in the 1950s and 1960s, its significance in the art
Behind Scottish Art News at The Fleming Collection:
world has continued, not least by the opening of Tate St Ives in 1993.
Editor: Briony Anderson | briony.anderson@flemingcollection.com
Interns: Sophie Midgley, Jessica Rimmer, William Summerfield
From informal conversation to critical writing, the feature
articles in this issue hope to provide not only an understanding
Editorial assistance: Lindsay Boyle
of the artwork, projects and ideas covered, but to open this out for further thought and discussion. In 2011 a symposium organised
Revised design concept by Flit (London) and Briony Anderson
by arts organisation Deveron Arts asked the question ‘Can we be
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both critical and publicly accessible when it comes to discussing
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contemporary art?’ Instigated perhaps by the assertion that some writing on contemporary art can alienate rather than engage its audience, a number of artists, arts practitioners, writers, curators and journalists discussed ‘who they are writing for’ and the critical
Scottish Art News Issue 17 is kindly sponsored by:
question as to knowing when to write and whether the art work needs the words. In terms of different types of arts writing, there Page 60
shouldn’t be any antagonism between them – rather there is a place for all types of writing and strength can come from this difference.
Regulars 54 Art Market Round-up by Will Bennett 56 Books 58 Film 59 Preview 2012 ARTIST ROOMS 2012, various venues 26 Treasures, National Museum of Scotland
George Bain: Master of Modern Celtic Art, Scottish National Gallery Alison Watt: Hiding in Full View, Ingleby Gallery British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, The V&A You, Me, Something Else, Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)
66 Listings 68 The Fleming Collection News and Exhibitions 70 Events
7
The Fleming Collection is widely recognised as the finest collection of Scottish Art in private hands and was originally conceived as a corporate collection in 1968 for Robert Fleming Holdings Ltd in the City of London. Since 2000 the collection has belonged to The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation which aims to promote Scottish Art to a wider audience. The collection consists of works by many of Scotland’s most prominent artists, from 1770 to the present day, including works by early nineteenth century artists, the Glasgow Boys, the Scottish Colourists, the Edinburgh School and many contemporary Scottish names. In Gallery One, The Fleming Collection holds regular exhibitions drawn from the Collection, as well as loans from public and private collections of Scottish art which can be viewed free of charge. Selected works from the Permanent Collection are displayed in Gallery Two which opened to the public in June 2011.
Artists, we imagine, in most cases don’t want to fix
© Scottish Art News 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
meaning in their work, instead wishing to give an accurate account
reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written
of their work but one that avoids limiting interpretation. In some
permission of the publisher. Scottish Art News accepts no responsibility for loss or damage
cases this can lead to what has been described as content which is
of unsolicited material submitted for publication. Scottish Art News is published by The
‘vague’, or ‘opaque’, as one journalist has put it. Good writers can
Fleming Collection but is not the voice of the gallery or The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation.
bring a starting point to the work, perhaps filling in gaps with new ideas for interpretation. Publications can often be the element in
All images copyright of the artist or artist’s estate unless otherwise stated.
an exhibition budget deemed to be expendable, and so at a time of budget tightening for museums and galleries, the importance of writing to increase our understanding and enjoyment of art work must be underlined.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all
the artists, writers, and staff at The Fleming Collection who contribute to Scottish Art News, and to thank all the advertisers in this edition, in particular Lyon and Turnbull, Scotland’s oldest established auction house, for their continued support and generous
The Fleming Collection | 13 Berkeley Street | London | W1J 8DU tel: +44 (0) 20 7042 5730 www.flemingcollection.com | gallery@flemingcollection.com
sponsorship that makes this magazine possible.
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10am–5.30pm Gallery One: Admission Free Gallery Two: Admission: £3.50 / £4.50 Gift Aid Children (6-16 years) / Students: Admission Free Friends / Members: Admission Free
may have. (Briony Anderson)
And in the context of arts writing and readership
response, we as always welcome any feedback and suggestions you
Cover Image
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136 paint on wall: as installed (ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate) ARTIST ROOMS: until November 2012 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004)
Expanding Forms (Entrance No.2) Touchpoint Series, 1981 (BGT598) Oil on hardboard, 59.7 x 59.2 cm © Courtesy The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust
Scottish Art News 8
West Sands (St. Andrews) July, 1981, acrylic and pencil on board, 27x38 cm (BGT760)
WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM
A SCOTTISH ARTIST IN ST IVES 9
William Summerfield in conversation with Lynne Green, curator of Wilhelmina BarnsGraham: A Scottish artist in St Ives, opening at The Fleming Collection in 2012
T
he Fleming Collection, in association with The Barns-Graham Trust, ignite a new appraisal of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) in an exhibition that centres on a new thesis by curator and biographer Lynne Green. In recent years the artist has begun to regain her previous standing within the history of British art, reasserting her position as one of the most prominent abstract painters of the twentieth century. While much was made of her work in the early 1950s, alongside prominent artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, this exhibition allows for greater examination into the entirety of her career that spanned much of the last century and the first decade of the 21st. Lynne Green, who not only worked closely with Barns-Graham in the latter stages of her life, but also wrote the monograph W. Barns-Graham: a studio life, has tackled this exhibition with fresh insight, bringing to her work a new source for interpretation. ‘What I most remember of my first real encounter with her work,’ says Green, ‘is the energy and vitality of her line, together with her bold command of colour. But there was another dimension to this encounter. I ‘recognised’ this art, was instinctively drawn to it because I both saw and felt reflections of a common cultural heritage. Barns-Graham was clearly a consummate draftswoman and colourist. I had no doubt that these and other aspects of her art belonged to, were expressive of, her native artistic traditions and experience. As I grew to know the artist and her work, I became convinced that my first response had been correct.’ For Green, a fellow Scot, it was the notion of heritage that was significant in looking at her work, a factor that has frequently been overlooked in subsequent analysis. In 1940, having finished her artistic training at Edinburgh College of Art, Barns-Graham left Scotland for St Ives in Cornwall, ostensibly for health reasons, but with the true intent of establishing her own personal freedom in pursuit of artistic success. St Ives had become known as a safe haven for artists since the beginning of the twentieth century for its combination of spectacular views, perfect light and geographical interest. Internationally renowned artists flocked there in their droves, innovators and traditionalists in equal measure. In the 1940s it also became an escape from the dangers of war. Barns-Graham soon became a key part of this community, which included her close friend and Scottish ally Margaret Mellis, and founders of British Modernism, Nicholson, Gabo and Barbara Hepworth. Certainly her work played a major part in this movement, and equally the intellectual concerns she discovered there fed into her own work. However, the identification of Barns-Graham’s output as merely an offshoot of the St Ives group is misleading, not only neglecting her unique position and innovations as an Scottish Art News 10
artist, but ignoring a major factor in its inspiration and later development. National heritage has played a key part throughout the canonical history of Scottish art. This can be as overt as the images of the highland clearances from the nineteenth century, to the more subtle approach to landscape and its national meaning of the Glasgow Boys. For Green, this deep association with national history is something that even Barns-Graham is not free from, particularly in her constant strive for independence throughout her life and in her work. However, this link to her cultural past is felt most strongly in an even deeper form. Green cites writer and National Galleries’ director J.L. Caw’s Scottish Painting, in which he characterises twentieth-century Scottish art as filled with an ‘intense love of Nature’ and a constant return to the reality of the world around. [LG] ‘Her personal and professional engagement with life was both profound and passionate. She was captivated by its factual realities and surface beauty, and also by her apprehension of underlying meaning. Her imaginative response to the world was expressed in a personal vocabulary that encompassed both the representational and the abstract; each as capable as the other of conveying the essence (the truth) of her vision. However abstract her language as a painter became, her work was always grounded in her sensual experience of, and great joy in, the world’. This tension
between the abstract and the representational was to remain a constant in her career. Despite the deeply abstracted forms in such works as Variation on a theme (Splintered Ice No.1), 1987, a grounding in the natural world remains, not only through the demands of the title, but also by her dual precision of line and colouration. The use of colour by Barns-Graham forms a significant connection to her Scottish lineage – not in any crude or formulaic manner – but in the continuing sensitivity and delight in colour that has saturated the work of all great Scottish artists working in the twentieth century. This trail is not one of coincidence as this exhibition seeks to assure. [LG] ‘Barns-Graham did not arrive in Cornwall as a blank canvas. She could not have left Edinburgh College of Art unaffected by the traditions and concerns embodied in the teaching there. Nor could she have been entirely indifferent to the artistic lineage and wider cultural heritage of her native country. When she alighted from the train in St Ives in March 1940, the exemplar of her tutors and through them of Scottish – as well as recent and contemporary European, largely French – painting, were in her baggage together with the materials and tools of her craft. Not only were these the foundations upon which her mature practice was built, they continued to provide structure and support for her life-long exploration as a painter and draftswoman.’ Scorpio Series no. 1, 1995, acrylic on paper, 56x76 cm (BGT948)
Barns-Graham arrived at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) in October 1931 during what has been deemed retrospectively the institution’s creative heyday. Under its new principal Hubert Lindsay Wellington, the college had an aesthetic and intellectual outlook beyond the boundaries of Britain, with interest in the concerns of modernism and the international art scene. During the 1930s, artists William Johnstone, Alan Davie and William Gear were also studying at the college. While her early years in Edinburgh were to provide the rigorous academic training that would establish the formal basis for an entire career, her undergraduate years according to Green ‘introduced her to the pleasures of the medium’ of painting, inspiring the modernist streak that would continue to inhabit her work until her death in 2004. For Barns-Graham, three tutors especially
Her personal and professional engagement with life was both profound and passionate: she was captivated by its factual realities and surface beauty, and also by her apprehension of underlying meaning
Island Sheds no. 2, 1940, oil on board, 33x40.5 cm (BGT1072)
11
This tension between the abstract and the representational was to remain a constant in her career
characterised her time studying – S.J. Peploe, William Gillies and John Maxwell. Peploe, one of the group of artists popularly known as the Scottish Colourists, was to play a significant role in her development as a painter, despite the brevity of his teaching at ECA. Often referred to as the ‘painter’s painter’, Peploe engaged even more fully than his fellow Colourists with the work of European exponents of modernist painting. This Scottish Art News 12
Composition (Sea), 1954, oil on canvas, 46x61 cm (BGT6407)
was most prominently in his exploration of form, based on the influence of Cézanne, in addition to an early examination of the diverse material qualities of his medium. His teaching also revealed the joint potential for joy and beauty in colour, fundamental to Barns-Graham’s work. From William Gillies, Barns-Graham learned of the implicit pleasures of painting. He taught of the necessity for a sensitive use of colour and a ‘tactile handling of paint’. The teaching of John Maxwell, in addition to a continued stress on form and colour, proposed an emphasis on the imagination, in particular in relation to the unconscious, based on the ongoing experiments of the Surrealists in Europe such as Marc Chagall and Joan Miró. ‘The independence of the imagination was of course crucial to the whole modernist enterprise,’ says Green. ‘Her confidence in the ability of her imagination to convey meaning through abstract language, blossomed in the freedom of life in St Ives. But it was in the Edinburgh studios that she first encountered the idea, under the guidance of tutors who were themselves engaged with art’s changing agenda since Cézanne, and with the new directions in European and British modernism.’ However inventive and far reaching its programme during the 1930s was, teaching staff at ECA continued to ground themselves in the immediate visual world with an emphasis placed on direct visual experience and analysis. Artists were restrained from moving into pure abstraction. William Gear, a close friend and contemporary of BarnsGraham, received strong criticism of his work that settled fully on abstraction. Again this provides an insight into how Barns-Graham’s career was formed right from the outset between realism and abstraction, never restricting itself to either extreme, even in her later years. In addition to these influences as a student, she was also to learn much from the friends she made, with many of these relationships having a significant impact on her life and career. The most important of these was with Margaret Mellis, who not only shared her 13
Variation on a Theme, Splintered Ice No.1, 1987, oil on canvas, 91.5x122 cm (BGT6463)
artistic sensibility, but was Barns-Graham’s first contact in St Ives, providing the catalyst for her prominent position within its community. Other friendships were made with William Gear who shared her exploration into abstraction, and the Two Roberts (Colquhoun and MacBryde), whose strict adherence to their Scottish heritage was a constant reminder. Barns-Graham worked not just on the brink of experimentation, but was fully immersed in her own visual language and experience of modernism. ‘What Barns-Graham took to St Ives, was an aesthetic in part influenced by the English painters, but which was mediated through the work of her most valued tutors,’ continues Green. ‘In a process common to all young artists, the example of others was filtered and assimilated: made her own through the light of her personal vision and the strengths of her own aptitudes.’ This creates an image of an artist far removed from being simply a mere satellite of twentieth-century modernist painting, but an intriguing figure in her own right, developed dually from her Scottish past and British future. The next two decades of Barns-Graham’s life were spent almost entirely in St Ives and it is in this period that the much rehearsed narrative of her encounters with British modernism took place. During this time her painting style was to develop from her early experiments with form and colour, which still retained their strong hold on the deemed ‘real’ world, to her perhaps erroneously attributed ‘mature’ work of the late 1950s and 60s. Island Sheds, no. 2, 1940, through its simplicity, blocked use of exact colour and flattening of form is directly related to the work seen and experienced while studying at ECA, most notably work by William Gillies such as The Harbour, 1934-37. By the end of the 1950s this hold on reality was lessened, with works such as Composition (Sea), 1954, forming more strongly out of geometric patterns with variation in line and painterly technique. What is clear, however, is that the guidance she received while studying never left her work, aiding her own unique take on the visual movements around her.
The Blue Studio, c.1947-8, oil on canvas, 92x122.2 cm (BGT3281)
After the death of her aunt in 1960, Barns-Graham inherited her maternal family home of Balmungo in Fife, an event that was to have an impact not only on her work, but on her relationship with her native country. From this point on she was able to split her time between St Ives and Balmungo, alternating between the former’s bustling artistic community and the tranquil retreat of the latter. [LG] ‘She delighted equally in the differences and similarities: the interconnections made what might otherwise have seemed a disjointed life feel like a continuum. There is little doubt that without these twin creative centres Barns-Graham’s work would have developed differently: that without her Scottish base important themes might never have emerged. Her creative imagination was informed by her experience at both ends of the country – they fed into each other.’ From this fresh escape from the constant of life in St Ives and the strain of artistic criticism, her work was able once again to find new sources of inspiration and a new painterly freedom. Drawing returned to the forefront of
her practice, an element that never left her since the early academic rigour of Edinburgh. Later in her career a new simplicity was found, allowing her work to delve even deeper into the relationship between form and colour. The Scorpio Series, for example, emerged in the 1990s – works created with broad strokes of pure colour, perfected through her continual examination of the effect of line. At this late stage in life, Barns-Graham also became involved in printmaking, largely through her relationship with Graal Press in Scotland. Although printmaking had featured in her early career, it was only at this stage that it reached its zenith. The process of screenprinting was a liberating one, enabling a greater ease in variation and working in a sequential manner. Singular marks could be worked and reworked, playing with gesture and colour balance. For Green, the ‘vitality and inventiveness of the printmaking process extended into the artist’s work on paper and canvas too, unlocking it seems an ultimate freedom to paint some of the most daring works of her entire career: Scottish Art News 14
The language may be abstract, but the artist’s emotional imperative and aesthetic intention was nearer to the symbolic and metaphoric. In this as in so much else, she was in reality a profoundly romantic artist; and as such deeply connected to her native consciousness, artistic heritage, and to the Scottish temperament White Circle Series I, 2003, Screenprint, six colours on paper Edition of 70 by Graal Press, 56x56 cm All images Courtesy The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust
encompassing the lyrical, the joyous, the meditative and the profoundly moving’. Barns-Graham’s career has never ceased in its unwavering progression, continually reassessing itself and working towards a greater level of visual clarity and expression. Most notably it is a career of opposites; between the past and future, between the Scottish and the international and most importantly between direct representation and abstraction. In A Scottish artist in St Ives a new image is projected of an artist absorbing the world around her, not just from her years in St Ives, but those as a student and a later life shared between her two homes. Green accurately surmises: ‘The language may be abstract, but the artist’s emotional imperative and aesthetic intention was nearer to the symbolic and metaphoric. In this as in so much else, she was in reality a profoundly romantic artist; and as such deeply connected to her native consciousness, artistic heritage, and to the Scottish temperament.’ Lynne Green is an art historian whose specialist fields are British modernism and contemporary art. She is the author of ‘W. Barns-Graham: a studio life’, first published in 2001 by Lund Humphries; an expanded and revised 15
edition was published in autumn of 2011. Other publications include ‘Painting with Smoke: David Roberts: Raku Potter’ (2000, revised edition 2009) and ‘Yorkshire Sculpture Park: Landscape for Art (2008), as well as numerous exhibition catalogues and essays. In 2007 she founded greendrake press. William Summerfield is an intern at The Fleming Collection.
10 JANUARY—5 APRIL • LONDON
W.Barns-Graham: A Scottish Artist in St Ives Curator: Lynne Green. An illustrated catalogue is available Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London w1j 8du 3 MARCH—16 APRIL • DEVON
A Discipline of the Mind: Ωe Drawings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
1912 – 2004
CENTENARY EXHIBITIONS JANUARY—JUNE 2012 london, harrogate, perthshire
Curator: Mel Gooding. An illustrated catalogue is available The Burton Gallery & Museum, Kingsley Road, Bideford, Devon ex39 2qq 28 MARCH—12 MAY • LONDON
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Line of Drawing 1943–1993 Art First, 21 Eastcastle Street, London w 1 w 8 d d 20 APRIL—2 JUNE • HARROGATE
Ωe Art of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham 108 Fine Art, 16 Coldbath Road, Harrogate hg2 0na 5 MAY—5 JULY • ABERFELDY
A Joy of Colour: The Prints and Late Paintings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham The Watermill Gallery, Mill Street, Aberfeldy, Perthshire ph15 2bg For information about Ωe Barns-Graham Charitable Trust and other events and exhibitions for 2012 visit www.barns-grahamtrust.org.uk Ωe Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Balmungo House, St Andrews, Fife ky16 8lw t. 01334 479953 info@barns-grahamtrust.org.uk
19 MAY—20 OCTOBER • PERTH
A Discipline of the Mind: Ωe Drawings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Curator: Mel Gooding Perth Museum and Art Gallery, George Street, Perth ph7 3nf
Wilhelmina
Barns-Graham A LINE OF DRAWING 1943–1993
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives 10 January – 5 April 2012 The Fleming Collection 13 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DU Tel: 020 7042 5730 www.flemingcollection.com Tuesday – Saturday 10am–5.30pm Admission Free The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives by Lynne Green and published by The BarnsGraham Charitable Trust.
EXHIBITION 27 MARCH–12 MAY 2012
Stromness,1986, (detail) pencil and wash on paper 56.5 x 77 cm
Art First 21 Eastcastle Street London W1W 8DD +44 (0)20 7734 0386 info@artfirst.co.uk www.artfirst.co.uk Scottish Art News 16
IN FOCUS Margaret Mellis (1914-2009)
Passing in the Night, 1994, found painted wood, 57.1x87.6 cm THE FLEMING-WYFOLD ART FOUNDATION
D
uring the early twentieth century, the unlikely Cornish fishing town of St Ives became a thriving hub for contemporary artists to live and work, producing artworks that would embody a dramatic shift in British art and its reaction to modernism. The now renowned artists Ben Nicolson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo settled in St Ives in the late 1930s to experience the calm of the Cornish coast and the influence of the exceptional light, though more importantly it was to visit friends who were already established there: the writer and painter Adrian Stokes and his artist wife Margaret Mellis. Not the only Scottish female painter to journey to St Ives, Mellis arrived before her contemporary Wilhelmina BarnsGraham, who sought out the inspiration and recognition of a stimulating and exciting artistic community of which Mellis was a founding member, perhaps even a catalyst, for the years of pioneering art that categorised the St Ives group. The young artist and her husband opened their home near Carbis Bay to Nicholson and Hepworth, their three children and later the Russian sculptor Naum Gabo and his wife Miriam as they fled London in the wake of the Second World War. Mellis described the situation as ‘an unusual combination of people’, though one that would undoubtedly influence her work and allow her to flourish as a competent constructivist artist in her own 17
right, without relinquishing her strong personality and the lightness of the individuality in her work. Despite perhaps lacking the modern-day fame enjoyed by several of her female contemporaries, Mellis deserves the same level of reappraisal and recognition as Barns-Graham for her playful yet precise compositions and unique eye for harmonising colour, bringing a less serious and often more earnestly organic take on modern British abstraction in St Ives. It is this attitude that allowed Mellis to evolve her compositional style through the tight focus of her understanding of colour, producing work which transcended boundaries and categories. This is particularly clear in her later work, which marked a new synthesis of the prevailing idioms while ultimately retaining the magic of her colour and ingenuity for formal relations. Colour was exceptionally important to Mellis, tying her to her Scottish heritage as well as acting as the binding force of her works. Mellis once asserted that she had ‘the innate Scottish feeling for colour’, always knowing ‘exactly what to do with the colour without the slightest trouble… It was quite convenient because if you can’t do the colour, you can’t really do very much in modern painting’. Born in Wu-King-Fu in China in 1914 to Scottish parents, the young Margaret was forever infatuated with the exotic nature of colour, later claiming to be S.J. Peploe’s ‘best pupil’ during her time at Edinburgh College of Art – ‘I always Scottish Art News 18
managed to make things the right colour – nice colour, you know, not nasty messy colour’. Awarded a travelling scholarship in 1936, Mellis relished her study in Paris where she encountered a modern structural approach under cubist André Lhote, adding to her enthusiastic apprenticeship in colour in Scotland. It was also here that she met her future husband Adrian Stokes, a charismatic critic, artist and poet, whose forceful personality and interest in psychoanalytic theory inspired Mellis in a more ideological way than the other St Ives artists. Her experience in Paris and her romance with Stokes led her to articulate ‘an immense desire to get the thing inside you transformed into something tangible’ in an almost surrealist manner, culminating in her later constructions. During the next stage of her life, Mellis and her new husband decided to leave London at the outbreak of war, choosing St Ives over Suffolk ‘because it was much more like Scotland’. In a similar spirit to friend and contemporary Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Mellis’ emotional tie to her Scottish heritage is undoubtedly reflected in her work, both thematically and aesthetically. However, it was the environmental changes that truly dictated its direction, and the style which she developed and considered to be most essential in the work of an artist – the interpretation of the ‘spirit’ that the artist is compelled to ‘embody’. While the experience of living in St Ives undoubtedly influenced her painting, it was principally the advice and encouragement of Ben Nicholson that set Mellis thinking in a more abstract way, moving away from representational painting to experiment with collage and relief, and prompting her to ‘think in a different way, not in colour which was natural to me’. This way of describing her work, typically through the language of colour, exposes Mellis’ adaptive and inquisitive nature and her openness to experimentation as a way to express her artistic vision. In 1945 Stokes left Mellis for her sister Anne, forcing Mellis to go ‘back to the beginning again’ and causing her to lose her taste for abstraction, which she only began to regain after spending time in France with her second husband, Francis Davidson. It can be argued, however, that Mellis did not fully find her stride until 1978, by then in her mid-60s. Living peacefully alone on the Sussex coast since 1950, it was the growing pile of fragments of jetsam – collected for firewood – in the corner of her studio that inspired and formed a series of works spanning over 20 years. The driftwood constructions were the culmination of all that Mellis had journeyed towards in her quest for a personal and opulent abstraction. At times purely formations of shape and vivid colour, at others, figures, scenes and even semi-representational icons (as in Three Saints, 1987-99), 19
which ‘inexplicably “emerged” from her intuitive process’ and were ‘fashioned with the involuntary artifice of a sleepwalking toymaker’. In describing a later work, Bogman, 1990, in the film A Life in Colour, Mellis articulates brilliantly the process of the formation of her constructions, for it is surely an organic and slow-moving, almost unconscious process. While arranging and rearranging wave-worn pieces of wood until they ‘looked right’, the pieces would often be left on the studio floor for days and weeks, being kicked and nudged out of place by the everyday life of the studio. It was not until a sudden moment of recognition by the artist, moved to suddenly resume work on the arrangement of fragments, that she knew ‘exactly where each bit needed to go. There was no choice. They had to be fixed at once, they couldn’t wait another minute.’ Conjured from ‘those ephemeral still lifes’ of Mellis’ domestic surroundings (she was often observed by friends instinctively adjusting the placing of ordinary objects) into a work of art, the constructions achieve a sense of self-agency. It was Mellis’ strict policy not to interfere in any way with the objects she had found – the omnipotent drive of the artist determined to produce a transformed whole. Bogman especially captures the essence of Mellis’ construction. As Mellis commented, ‘This piece works by the left out shapes, the splits and the gaps left by the wood which doesn’t join, and the angles at which the pieces of wood lie. The colour is equally important. I haven’t painted any of it.’ Her own agency as an artist is instantly overcome by the natural placement of the objects alongside one another, forming a complete work of art only by her decision to arrange them in the same place. What is negated in the work is of equal importance as the artist is unable to fill the gaps, only to create them. Passing in the Night, 1994, created at a time when Mellis was at her most prolific in the production of her driftwood constructions, is the only work by Mellis in The Fleming Collection. In the work, a ship-like form is roughly bolted down against a sea of tattered blue. The depth of the construction is achieved through the shadows created by the shattered pieces of wood, smoothed by the Suffolk sea, dispelling any sinister illusions. The yellow perfectlyproportioned cube which sits atop this ‘boat’ recalls the playful nature of Mellis’s early collage. The individual shapes in works like Collage with Dark Red Oval, II, 1942, clash together to form a whole, as with the driftwood constructions, perhaps ironically given their original purposelessness when discovered by the artist. This work secures the comfort with which Mellis allowed her work to form, almost without the intensity often cited by artists. Instead her works take on an individuality, not only in
Bogman, Jan-March 1990, driftwood construction, 176.5x49x5.5 cm © Estate of Margaret Mellis
Scottish Art News 20
MADE IN SCOTLA ND 17 April – 2 June 2012 Works by some of Scotland’s leading contemporary artists and craftsmen will go on sale in Made in Scotland. A percentage of all sales will go towards supporting The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, the charity that runs The Fleming Collection, now regarded as an embassy for Scottish art in London. Image: James Denison-Pender - Stipple Engraving illustrating some of the Rabindranath Tagore ‘Gitanjali’ poems Stipple engraving is the art of creating pictures on glass made up of tiny dots scratched on the surface. The greater the density of dots the lighter the tone becomes. Traditionally a diamond point was used but in modern times Tungsten carbide is more usual. No power or acid is used. This traditional art form originated in Holland in about 1720 and flourished until about 1810. Then it vanished until it was revived in England in 1935.
The Fleming Collection
Gallery One: Admission Free
13 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DU
Gallery Two: Admission: £3.50 / £4.50 Gift Aid
Tel: 020 7042 5730
Children (6-16 years) / Students: Admission Free
www.flemingcollection.com
Friends / Members: Admission Free
Tuesday – Saturday 10am–5.30pm
Collage with Dark Red Oval, 1942, collage, papers, ink and pencil, 13x19 cm © Estate of Margaret Mellis
THESCOTTISHGALLERY CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842
Forthcoming Exhibitions 2012 regards to the aesthetics of the work, but more importantly to her artistic practice; unavoidably relaxed and yet precise, encouraging an aesthetic which would house and emanate from the ‘desired’ spirit. Why, then, is such an unusual and distinct artist with an extensive output of work so incredibly overlooked in relation to other St Ives artists? As Andrew Lambirth writes, it is easier to list the books on the St Ives School and British modernism which she was discounted from than it is to list those she was included in, yet the first version of Collage with Red Triangle, 1940, reached nearly £10,000 in a Sotheby’s action in 2002. Perhaps the reason her unsuspecting and accessible works are easily overlooked is because they could be accused of possessing little depth, and despite her established existence in St Ives during the subsequently influential formative years of British modernism, the ideological overtones in her work are perhaps not as obvious as, say, Nicolson or Gabo’s. However, the successful Summer Exhibition 2011 at Tate St Ives, which showed Mellis’ work in the company of influential St Ives artists Gabo and Lucio Fontana, and several retrospectives at London gallery Austin Desmond
Fine Art, perhaps suggests a rejuvenation of her image in a similar way to Barns-Graham. Yet the difficulty of the female modernist appears even more acute with Mellis. Despite her independence as a woman and her prolific artistic output, it is something more that holds her work back from a mainstream audience – though perhaps this should not be seen so negatively. As Lambirth writes, ‘Mellis’ artistic development from Scottish realism to St Ives abstraction, back to figuration and then steadily onwards to a new and honed-down form of constructivism in old age…[shows] the trajectory of [Mellis’] art may be seen as a process of liberation’. Her final works are surely that. Sophie Midgley is an intern at The Fleming Collection. All quotations from: Andrew Lambirth, Margaret Mellis (Lund Humphries, 2010) Interview with Mel Gooding for Artist’s Lives Michael Bird, ‘The Transformed Total: Margaret Mellis’s Constructions’, from Margaret Mellis, Austin Desmond Fine Art, 2008
10 January - 3 March Sir William Gillies William Johnstone 7 - 31 March Selected Royal Academicians Robert Macmillan 4 April - 2 May John Houston Derrick Guild 7 - 30 May Sir Robin Philipson Campbell Sandilands Aleksander Zyw 4 - 30 June Michie Family Realist Landscapes THESCOTTISHGALLERY 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ 0131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk Mon - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 10am - 4pm www.scottish-gallery.co.uk Image: Sir Robin Philipson ‘Women Observed’
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Scottish Art News 22
SCOTTISH ART NEWS ROUND-UP
within a community setting. For Bàta Brèagha, based in Portree, a huge variety of works were created, including dance performances and workshops. The highlight was Celestial Radio, an ongoing sculptural piece formed from a boat called Celeste. Celeste was covered in lights and mirrored tiles, then set sail accompanied by a broadcast of songs and stories, accumulated specially by art collective Walker and Bromwich. The duo have worked together over numerous years and projects, their work based primarily on notions of society’s relationship with the environment, particularly environmental and political transformation. www.atlasarts.org.uk / www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk
Museums Galleries Scotland has launched an intern programme based on placements across Scotland. This initiative has been widely popular, attracting as many as 3,200 applicants for a mere 20 places. The scheme will give tax-free bursaries of £15,000 for the year-long internships, which aim to provide graduates with useful working skills provided within a professional setting. Such an experience is hoped to encourage future careers within the sector. Support has come from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Skills for the Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich, Celestial Radio New sound work Celestial Skye commission by Atlas Arts 2011 Radio station on mirror-tiled Boat, 6x2.3x9.4 m Image courtesy of Colin Gray
From Sculpture Show: Martin Boyce, Untitled (after Rietveld), 2000, flourescent lights, fixings, dimensions variable, edition of 3 Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow
future programme, and includes placements at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum and the Scottish Maritime Museum. www.musuemsgalleriesscotland.org.uk
Sir John Lavery, The Dentist, 1929, oil on canvas, 85x62 cm © BDA Dental Museum. Image courtesy of the BDA Dental Museum
The line-up for events in Scotland as part of the London 2012
summer include Italian Giovanni Battista Lusieri, along with two
Festival has been released. The programme will run in unison
blockbuster shows featuring respectively the symbolists and
with the London Olympics from 21 June to 9 September, and will
twentieth-century master Picasso, set to be the first exhibition of
The British Dental Museum has bought a painting by John Lavery
the building now made available to the public, the newly opened
form the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad. Highlights include
its kind in Britain.
entitled The Dentist for £60,000. John Lavery is known throughout
space includes a brand new display with works shown not simply
Martin Creed’s No. 1197 for which all the bells in the UK will be rung
www.nationalgalleries.org
the Scottish art world firstly for his connections with the Glasgow
chronologically, but with a thematic and subject-based approach.
as loudly as possible for three minutes, and a performance by the
Boys and later for his standing as a society portrait painter in
Over 600 exhibits are new to the portrait gallery, with 211 having
Kronos Quartet of Terry Riley’s Sun Rings at the Riverside Museum
London. Known for his personal and artistic links with James
never been shown in public before. New spaces for photographic
in Glasgow. Additionally, Scottish artists Claire Cunningham,
October brought about news of the latest budgets for museums
McNeill Whistler, notable subjects of Lavery’s work included Queen
and contemporary portraits feature specially-commissioned pieces
Caroline Bowditch and Marc Brew have received funding as part
in Scotland. For the majority of institutions there will be a freeze
Victoria. The Dentist, painted in 1929, depicts Conrad Ackner
made for the site. Many of the building’s original features have been
of the Unlimited programme. Specially commissioned pieces by
in funding for 2012-13, with figures remaining at the levels of the
treating Lady Lavery, the artist’s wife. The BDA Museum, the only
restored, previously hidden behind an accumulation of twentieth-
each artist will be performed in 2012 in venues across the country.
previous period. Because of inflation, this will mean an effective
museum in the UK dedicated to dentistry, was able to make this
century interventions, while essential modern services have been
As a result of these events next year, a three-year long celebration
reduction in revenue for such institutions as the National Galleries
purchase thanks to donations from individuals, in addition to grants
incorporated. www.nationalgalleries.org
of Scottish culture has been proposed by the Cabinet Secretary for
of Scotland and has led many museums to hint that in future
from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Art Fund.
Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hislop.
admission prices may be necessary merely to sustain costs. The
www.bda.org/museum/
www.creativescotland.com
new budget did, however, spell out good news for the V&A Dundee,
Glasgow-based artist Sue Tomkins is among the 2011 recipients
which will receive a monetary boost for its continued development.
of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award. Each artist in the visual
The government aims to continue to support the reported £45m
On Monday 5 December Martin Boyce was announced as the winner
arts category receives £45,000 in funding. The awards – three equal
The National Galleries of Scotland has announced its line-up for
fund necessary for its completion, reinforcing the significance of the
of the Turner Prize 2011. Boyce beat critic’s favourite George Shaw,
installments of £15,000 over three years – are the most generous
2012. A strong mixture of local and international names will appear,
project for Dundee and the nation.
along with fellow Scot Karla Black and video artist Hilary Lloyd
arts awards in the UK. First given in 1994, the awards have now
aiming to draw crowds to Edinburgh in the year of the London
www.museumassociations.org
to the £25,000 prize, making it the third year in a row for Scottish
supported over 100 individual artists, with total funding exceeding
artists. Boyce was nominated for the prize following a solo exhibition
£3m. www.phf.org.uk
Olympics. The highlight at the SNGMA will be the Sculpture Show starting in December and running through to the summer. This
at the Galeria Eva Presenhuber in Zurich. (see pp.24-25)
will feature works from the nineteenth century all the way up to
In September Atlas Arts produced its first major public event,
current Turner Prize winner Martin Boyce and nominee Karla Black.
entitled Bàta Brèagha or Bonnie Boat. Atlas Arts is a visual arts
Alongside this the new year will see displays of works by Turner
organisation based in Skye and Lochalsh that was established in
at the National Gallery and a variety of nationalistic exhibitions
2010 and seeks to promote art made outside of the traditional gallery
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery reopened on 1 December,
at the newly-opened Portrait Gallery. Exhibitions lined up for the
space. A focus is also placed on educational projects and art made
after a £17.6m restoration. With previously inaccessible parts of
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www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize
Scottish Art News 24
MARTIN BOYCE Turner Prize winner 2011, the third Scottish artist in a row to win the prize
M
Martin Boyce Turner Prize 2011 Installation view BALTIC presents Turner Prize 2011 © BALTIC & the artist Photo: Colin Davison
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artin Boyce’s 2011 victory may come as a surprise to those who felt that nominee George Shaw, seemingly the critic’s favourite, had produced a more insightful and gritty body of work. Indeed, Boyce’s winning installation Do Words Have Voices is playful and poetic, providing an absorbing and accessible first impression. The subtle colour, configuration and dynamics of the piece are quietly moving and retain a calm dignity, yet the way in which the viewer must navigate through the installation enforces a disruption to this flow. At the heart of the work are three towering trees, each like concrete pillars of a housing estate, delicately completed with an intricate mobile of white paper leaves, dappling the space with an ethereal light. A misshaped rubbish bin and a giant stone slab on one of the walls, spelling out the words ‘petrified songs’, add to the evocation of an urban park scene. The feeling that the viewer has stumbled upon a dreamscape of a distorted playground continues as a bench, surrounded by coloured mobiles, reveals a wooden surface covered in child-like graffiti. At the prize-giving ceremony Boyce himself described the work as ‘walking a tightrope between the hard textures of the urban built environment’ and a more pensive and reflective mood, particularly evoked by the origami-inspired autumn leaves scattered on the floor, conjuring themes of abandonment and melancholy. These aspects create in Boyce’s entry, and his work more broadly, a deeply arresting effect on the viewer. Combining a sense of melancholia – suggestive of a loss of childhood – and a poetic delight in the captivating details of the work, he produces a haunting atmosphere. The inspiration for the work derives from the concrete trees from a Dutch modernist architectural exhibition of 1925 by Jan and Joel Martel – a recurring motif throughout Boyce’s work in his reinterpretations and deconstructions. With Boyce’s work for the Turner Prize, judges felt he had made a ‘pioneering contribution to the current interest which contemporary artists have in historic modernism.’
Born in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Boyce’s win comes hard on the heels of Glasgow-based artists Susan Philipsz (Turner prize winner 2010) and Richard Wright (2009), placing contemporary Scottish art at the forefront of current British art and culture. An inventiveness and ingenuity, particularly in installation, has become increasingly evident in the Turner Prize, reflected by all three artists who demonstrate a strong yet sensitive understanding of the context in which they are showing. Along with Boyce, a second Glasgow School of Art graduate Karla Black was also nominated this year, proving the city’s strong position as a significant force in the British art world. In his acceptance speech Boyce paid tribute to an ‘amazing, supportive peer group’ which he had encountered at the School during the late 1980s. Notably, this period produced 1996 Turner winner Douglas Gordon and 2007 nominee Nathan Coley, both having studied the previously unheard of course ‘Environmental Art’, undoubtedly influencing Boyce. 2011 was the first time the prize has been held outside a Tate gallery – at the Baltic Centre in Gateshead. The smaller galleries allowed each work to command the space it occupied, and afforded Boyce’s work in particular a unique setting, especially as Boyce often conceptualises his installations around the display space, making them site-specific and large in scale. Even the ventilation grilles of the Baltic were customised to harmonise with the rest of the installation, demonstrating Boyce’s almost obsessive attention to detail and the intricacies of Do Words Have Voices. The melancholic beauty of the work combined with the artist’s thoughtful academic influences has undoubtedly resulted in a worthy Turner Prize winner, as well as a continued expectation in Scottish art and of Glasgow’s far-reaching influence over the production of cutting-edge, innovative art. (Sophie Midgley)
Scottish Art News 26
RESIDENCIES FOR SCOTLAND An ambitious programme offering visual artists the chance to undertake residencies in a range of art spaces across Scotland
T
he Residencies programme is a major initiative developed as part of the Royal Scottish Academy’s long-term modernisation strategy, which began in 2007 under the presidency of Ian McKenzie Smith. At that time, the RSA expanded its list of officially recognised artistic media from painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture to include any kind of media being used by artists to create work. In addition, the aims of the original 1826 charter were updated; revisions focused on supporting visual arts and upholding a standard of best practice for contemporary art and architecture in Scotland. The aims inherent within these revisions are central to the ideas behind the Residencies programme. Initial discussions about this ambitious project began in mid-2008. Programme Director Colin Greenslade and RSA Secretary Arthur Watson recognised the network of arts venues across Scotland and began looking to link the work of these organisations with the work of the RSA, utilising the RSA’s large network of artist contacts in the process. Other initial discussions focused on the independent nature of the RSA and the decision to establish a new RSA Trust, which would allow access to existing but previously inaccessible funds. RSA Treasurer Ian Howard 27
said: ‘We wanted to be able to continue developing our work at the RSA and obviously the Residencies programme is a major part of this, so it was crucial to create the Trust to make these funds available, not just for this but for other future RSA initiatives too. It’s a bold and exciting step to take but we believe doing so will help cement our position as the foremost independent visual arts organisation in Scotland.’ Residency centres were contacted, extra funding was secured, partners were welcomed into the project and on New Year’s Day 2010, David Sherry took up residency at Deveron Arts in Huntly as the first RSA resident artist, where he investigated the effects of an overbearing health and safety culture. The Residencies programme invites artists who are born or based in Scotland to apply for an award of up to £5000 to fund residency positions at over 25 RSA partner venues across Scotland. The residencies can last from one week to six months and there is potential for an artist to use the funding to spend time at more than one centre. Lorna McIntosh, who has recently been shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize and was recently invited by artist Victoria Crowe to exhibit at this year’s RSA Annual Exhibition, spent three months at Balmungo House in St Andrews with the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust. For McIntosh, ‘living and working at Balmungo was very easy. The studio facilities were excellent [and] I was reluctant to leave at the end of my three months. The fact that this residency was purely for me to focus on my work was an ideal situation. I really appreciated the freedom involved, with the emphasis very much on experimentation, research and creation of new work.’ (Barns-Graham Trust Residency feature pp.30-33) Other projects that have developed from the Residencies programme include a new series of printed work by Frank Pottinger RSA, who spent two weeks on the Isle
Euan Heng, Catch. Resident at The Steeple, Newburgh (WASPS), September–November 2010. Made during his residency this work is a preparatory drawing for a now completed painting, executed in Melbourne.
Scottish Art News 28
of Lewis, and Aspect Prize-winning paintings by Patricia Cain, which were executed at WASPS Studios in Glasgow. Trans-Pacific connections were created via Australiabased Euan Heng, who spent three months re-engaging with his home country at The Steeple in Newburgh, Fife. Speaking about his time in Newburgh, Euan commented that ‘an unanticipated outcome of the residency was how quickly I connected to my past…how my Scottish education has informed my practice... Being back in Scotland I felt connected.’ At the time of writing, there are four artists still in residency positions (Helmsdale, Orkney, Selkirk and Glasgow) from Year 2 of the programme. The project is young and new ideas are constantly being discussed and incorporated into the development of the programme. For Colin Greenslade, Programme Director at the RSA, the development of this initiative has forged stronger and more integrated relationships with artists, venues and within communities across Scotland: ‘We can see the new research being completed and have the opportunity to include it in our own exhibition programme or work with the residency venue to host an exhibition with them at their locale. It is important to the Academy that we reinforce our national remit, and if research which we have funded is premiered in the communities where it has been researched then this
David Sherry, Instructions for Drinking Juice. Resident at Deveron Arts, Huntly, January–March 2010. From the Ill-Fated Fete event at Deveron Arts, in collaboration with Anthony Schrag. Part of the Health & Safety Effects project. Images courtesy Deveron Arts
is a bonus for us. Likewise, introducing artists into these new networks has been a lynchpin of the project from its inception, giving rurally-based artists the opportunity to integrate into city networks and vice-versa’.
“introducing artists into these new networks has been a lynchpin of the project from its inception, giving rurallybased artists the opportunity to integrate into city networks and vice-versa”
There has been mention of expanding to residency centres in Europe. Through existing international links, residency opportunities are being investigated in Sienna, Dusseldorf and Wyspa, Gdansk. The RSA does already offer an international residency through the John Kinross Scholarship in Florence, but if these further investigations into European territories come to fruition, opportunities offered to artists by the RSA would be greatly expanded. Lindsay Boyle is a freelance editor based in Brighton. The RSA would like to acknowledge the help and support of all the residency centres involved in the project and to thank their funding Partners in this project: the Friends of the RSA, Creative Scotland,
“The fact that this residency was purely for me to focus on my work was an ideal situation. I really appreciated the freedom involved, with the emphasis very much on experimentation, research and creation of new work”
the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust and CABN/Borders Council.
ABOVE FROM TOP David Sherry, Mirror Man, performed on the steps of the RSA building – ensuring people did not trip over the steps – Edinburgh, 3 August 2010. Part of the Health & Safety Effects project. Patricia Cain, Riverside Museum Interior #1, resident at WASPS Artists Studios, Glasgow, March–July 2010. LEFT Euan Heng, Catch, 2010
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Scottish Art News 30
THE BARNS-GRAHAM CHARITABLE TRUST RESIDENCY PROGRAMME Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s Scottish home, Balmungo House, is host to one of the funded residency placements organised as part of the RSA’s Residencies for Scotland programme, as well as a critical writing residency in association with the University of St Andrews
O
ver the last year, the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust has seen significant expansion in its range of activities. The Trust was established in 1987 with the aim of securing Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s work and archive for future generations and came into effect following the artist’s death in 2004. Since then, the Trust has been concerned with organising exhibitions, providing student scholarships, and furthering knowledge of Barns-Graham and her life’s work. In early 2011, the redevelopment of the artist’s Scottish home, Balmungo House, entered its final stages and opened up a variety of new opportunities for the Trust. One of the most exciting of these was the chance to host residencies for contemporary artists and writers. Balmungo House is situated near the Fife coastal town of St Andrews. Barns-Graham inherited the property from her aunt in 1960 and upon taking ownership of the house, the artist set about upgrading it, and established a studio there. Thereafter, she began to divide her time between her Scottish home and her studio apartment in St Ives. BarnsGraham used Balmungo as a retreat from the intensity of life in St Ives, but also as a place of creative inspiration in its own right. Many of the themes, ideas and motifs in her art emerged directly from the experience of living and working at Balmungo. Barns-Graham wanted Balmungo House to be at the heart of the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust. Since her death, much effort has focused on redeveloping the building to serve as the Trust’s administrative centre. Making provisions for a residency programme was a key strand of this transformative process; it was a means of re-establishing Balmungo as a place of creativity. Residencies would provide artists and writers at different stages in their careers with opportunities for reflection, fresh inspiration, and the realisation of new work. With this vision in mind, the residency programme was launched in 2011. The scheme can support two residents 31
Balmungo Artist’s Studio. Photo: Coline Russelle
at a time with self-catering accommodation and workspaces. Artists are based in Barns-Graham’s original studio, a generously proportioned, north-facing room. Writers have use of a private study at the top of the house, overlooking the front lawn. All residents have access to the estate’s mature grounds – a source of inspiration for Barns-Graham’s work. In addition, those staying at Balmungo can explore the artist’s library, which contains her personal collection of art books, magazines and exhibition catalogues. Residents are also able to access the Trust’s art and photographic collections, and to visit the Barns-Graham archive at the University of St Andrews. Most residencies at Balmungo House are arranged in partnership with other organisations. This enables the pooling of resources, and increases the opportunities
available to residents both during and after their stays. Residents may, for instance, have the chance to exhibit their art or to give public readings. Since Balmungo can accommodate two residents at any one time, there are also opportunities to make new connections, or even collaborate. These possibilities are open-ended, with participants able to choose their own directions and objectives. Unlike many similar programmes, the Trust’s scheme does not impose requirements on residents in terms of involvement with particular groups or projects. Its essential purpose is to afford artists and writers the freedom to concentrate on their work for a sustained length of time, away from the pressures of their normal living and working environments. In 2011 the programme was launched with a critical writing residency. The art critic Giles Sutherland stayed at
Balmungo for three months between May and July, working on established writing projects and researching BarnsGraham’s art. While Sutherland is perhaps best known for his exhibition reviews and features in journals and newspapers, the residency gave him the opportunity to become immersed in the work of Barns-Graham. Inspired by etchings of trees in the Trust’s collection, Sutherland chose to study the artist’s treatment of underlying structure and form. In addition to researching this field, he produced a series of related photographs and poems. Ultimately, he plans to unite these interdisciplinary elements in a small publication. The second residency was organised as part of the Royal Scottish Academy’s Residencies for Scotland scheme, which supports contemporary artists by matching them to funded residency placements across Scotland. Scottish Art News 32
Its essential purpose is to afford artists and writers the freedom to concentrate on their work for a sustained length of time, away from the pressures of their normal living and working environments
Edinburgh-based artist Lorna McIntosh was selected for Balmungo. McIntosh, whose art is informed by her research into emblematics, early meteorology and geology, worked in Barns-Graham’s studio between July and September. Her residency was a time of intensive study and experimentation, in which she elaborated on her existing research and practice, and cultivated new ideas. She sketched in the Balmungo grounds, and engaged with new materials. During the residency, McIntosh was nominated for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2011 and plans to exhibit her new work at the Open Eye Gallery in 2012. The final residency of the year was another collaborative venture, this time with the School of English at the University of St Andrews. The International Writer’s Residency programme is a five-year project, which brings creative writers from outside the UK to pursue their work in St Andrews. Canadian poet Karen Solie was the first writer to be selected for this annual residency, opting to stay at Balmungo between October and December. Winner of the 2010 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, Solie had visited St Andrews before to participate in the StAnza Poetry Festival. However, the residency at Balmungo enabled her to settle into the area, and undertake a more sustained period of writing. Over the course of her stay, Solie led creative writing workshops at the University of St Andrews, and gave a public reading at an event organised by StAnza. Going forward, the Trust aims to expand its residency programme, strengthening ties with partner organisations and developing links with new ones. This commitment to supporting creative practice is something that Barns-Graham would have been proud of, and it is hoped that many more artists and writers will find inspiration at Balmungo in the coming years. Dr Helen E Scott is Manager of The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust.
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Lorna McIntosh Balmungo gardens Photos: Coline Russelle
Lorna McIntosh, Invisible animacula, 2011 oil and charcoal on paper, 50x75 cm Photo: Light Grey–Jamie McAteer
Scottish Art News 34
IOTA I N V E R N E S S O L D TOW N A R T A focus on new public art projects in the Highlands of Scotland Katie Baker
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ver a late September weekend last year, with seagulls circling overhead and the city rooftops and distant hills laid out below, people gathered at Inverness’ Rose Street multi-storey car park to watch a programme of documentaries, artists’ films and cinema classics. Sublime, which featured international and local artists alike, was set up by art organisation IOTA (Inverness Old Town Art) and is just one of many public art projects that Inverness has been playing host to in recent years. With IOTA’s support and coordination the city has, among other things, been wrapped in red wool (otherwise known as yarn bombing), by artists Jennifer Cantwell and Annie Mars, had its empty shop windows turned into temporary art galleries and housed a tea party in its Victorian market. Edinburgh and Glasgow may have the bigger reputations for contemporary visual art, but Inverness is quietly holding its own and its latest project involves one of Scotland’s most historically significant sites – the battlefield Culloden. Having been granted city status in 2000, Inverness wasted no time in following this up with a bid for European Capital of Culture. That this ambitious move was unsuccessful is hardly relevant. Their application not only provided an impetus for a raft of projects and ideas but also cemented a relationship between art and the city’s redevelopment. Funding was found for the regeneration of Inverness Old Town, the city’s traditional centre that has inevitably suffered from the growth of shopping malls and out of town retail parks. A research period in 2006 resulted in the event Imagining the Centre, which invited the local community, artists and performers to take part in a discussion about the identity of Inverness, past and future. From this twelve-hour conversation, and the projects that followed, IOTA emerged.
Since then they have been involved in a range of permanent and temporary artworks. Susan Christie, director of IOTA, describes working at Culloden as a ‘dream project’. She explains, ‘if you’re Scottish, especially if you’re based in the Highlands, there’s ripples and resonances of Culloden everywhere… People still feel the ramifications of Culloden here.’ The project, with working title Touching Distance, is the first of a series of roaming residencies and is a collaboration with The National Trust for Scotland. Commissioned artists Catherine Bertola and Roger&Reid have completed a six-month research phase at the site with plans to deliver outcomes in 2012. Much of The National Trust’s work is to do with preserving places – significant buildings, great houses, and exemplary architecture. Culloden, with its exposed moor land and clan burial trenches is more a preservation of a space, and what happened within it. It is not just a geographical space, but a cultural and emotional space in a country’s collective memory, with huge national significance. The name carries with it the weight of history; the short but bloody battle led to the end of traditional Gaelic culture and changed the course of Scotland’s future. As such it is a place that evokes strong feelings in many and requires no small amount of sensitivity in engaging with it. For Christie it was important that the project connected with the local and contemporary relationship with the battlefield, rather than being ‘mired in the past and melancholia’. It is, she believes, still of political interest, a ‘touchstone’ for Scotland, which artistically hasn’t yet been fully explored. Roger&Reid are Scottish artists Graeme Roger and Kevin Reid, who have been working together for eight Scottish Art News 36
years. Since 2004 they have worked at battle sites across the UK and America, investigating, performing and making interventions. With a practice that has taken in kites, food launchers and electric guitars along with a declared joint love of ‘cultural oddballs and outsiders, children’s TV and historical anomalies’, their work negotiates the problematic terrain that such locations often present. A playful approach tackles the difficult task of balancing the profundity of these places and the sensitivities evoked, with the potential for mawkishness and sentimentality. War can be difficult territory for artists, particularly post-Baudrillard and his notorious assertion that the Gulf War did not happen. As part of their research Roger&Reid attended the anniversary day of Culloden to interview those who had made the pilgrimage there. Inevitably, the site draws parallels for many with ongoing wars across the globe. Roger&Reid’s blog for IOTA details their failed attempt to follow modern troops, engaged on a midnight hike to recreate the original Jacobite march. Their floundering in the woods, setting themselves up as ‘inept’ onlookers left behind by the event, acknowledges the difficulties of connecting with the actualities of brutal conflict as an outsider to the event, whether looking at it through the prism of history, art or our televisions. Ongoing film project Trail of Tears documents Roger&Reid’s investigations and happenings, and its latest incarnation, premiered at Sublime, includes some of their work produced so far from Culloden. Their intentions for 2012 are to create a new film work at the site involving the public participating in a mass act of remembrance. Other ideas include kite cameras and a collaboration with The National Piping Centre to create for Culloden a new ‘Piobaireachd’, the highland bagpipe’s classical music. Catherine Bertola has previously worked across a range of historic sites, including the Brontë Parsonage Museum, and makes work in response to places, communities and histories. Her practice is concerned with looking beyond the surface of things and uncovering what is hidden. Installations in the past have included an interest in that most transitory and intransigent material ‘dust’ as a ‘matter of history’, collecting over time in our living spaces as fast as it is removed. For an installation at the V&A in 2007 she reproduced a William Morris designed wallpaper with dust collected from the museum. Bertola’s work, with its thoughtful, haunting and often delicate interventions provides an interesting counterpoint to Roger&Reid, as well as bringing to the project an outsider’s more neutral perspective. Bertola has spent the research phase at Culloden focusing on the importance of cloth in highland culture, the landscape of the area and the hidden symbolism of the Jacobites, particularly the ‘White Cockades’, which were worn 37
FROM TOP Still from film by Roger&Reid Commemorative Service at Culloden, April 2010 Photo: Frankie Glover, The National Trust for Scotland Culloden battlefield. Photo: The National Trust for Scotland Catherine Bertola, The Property of Two Gentlemen, 2006 dust, pva glue, two Georgian chairs with engrave brass plaques Image courtesy Catherine Bertola, Workplace Gallery and The V&A OPPOSITE Still from Roger&Reid’s film Trail of Tears premiered in September 2011 as part of IOTA’s Sublime programme in Old Town Rose St. carpark
during the battle as a symbol of allegiance to the Jacobite cause. She has also re-examined the site’s metal detection survey from the archaeological investigation in 2006 that she hopes to develop into an event at the site to re-map the archaeological finds, using markers to identify their original location. The plan is to involve local groups and volunteers in the event which will be filmed and shown at the Visitor Centre. There are also plans for a temporary sculptural installation within the centre, consisting of handmade lead cockades, as well as a programme of talks. The project at Culloden, with its engagement with local history and community, is typical of the type of work that IOTA does. Its projects have made use of the city’s spaces and history as well as encouraging community input. Recently, artist Mike Inglis was invited to come up with work to transform the city’s Crown Road Wall. The installation of a large graphic triptych followed a period of research exploring the history, mythology and belief systems of the highland community. Its centre panel features the figure of ‘Forty Pockets’, a well-known local homeless character from the 1950’s, who lived on the streets and got by on the generosity of the town-folk. Another ongoing project is working with Recoat, a gallery in Glasgow specialising in street art, with plans to repaint vehicles volunteered by the public.
public spaces as something of a blank canvas for displaying their work before disappearing off, then IOTA are taking a markedly different approach. At a time when arts funding is in a precarious position, with libraries closing and cuts being made, the organisation is going strong, and this must be due in no small part to providing art projects that have allowed this city to define itself. For Christie, public art has a role to play in identifying the city’s distinctiveness. The scale of the place, essentially a market town that has grown, has been an advantage, being small enough, perhaps, to foster a sense of inclusion in what is going on and a willingness to get involved. She talks of the idea of the ‘Highlander’, as ‘someone who feels deep in their bones a sense of connectedness to the land and landscape, and a sense of old fashioned values.’ The very first physical manifestation of IOTA was an installation by Matt Baker that referenced affectionate memories of the town’s Victorian statues – Faith, Hope and Charity – removed in the 1950s. Suggestions were sought from the public about what contemporary values should guide the city for the future – the final selection being Perseverance, Open-Heartedness and Insight. As virtues go, they seem to be standing this art organisation in good stead as well.
Christie has seen a shift in the city since they began. From an initial bemused willingness to help, people now actively seek them out to be a part of their projects. It is central to IOTA’s ethos that there is a continuum in their work within the city. If public art projects can at times become a kind of ‘cultural’ yarn bombing, with outside artists using
www.invernessoldtownart.co.uk Katie Baker is an artist and writer based in London.
Scottish Art News 38
Calum Innes, Resonance 18, 212.5x207.5 cm, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Ingleby Gallery
BEHOLDER
Calum Innes, Resonance Five, 184.5x176.5 cm, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Ingleby Gallery
AND THE BEHELD Bill Hare
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Scottish Art News 40
Beauty is taken from the idea raised in us Francis Hutcheson
The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same David Hume
It is therefore contrary to the universal sense of mankind, expressed by their language that beauty is not really in the object, but merely a feeling in the person who is said to perceive it Thomas Reid
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he University of Edinburgh has organised at its Talbot Rice Gallery an exhibition entitled Beholder to mark the tercentenary of the birth of its renowned – and rejected – son, David Hume. Inspired by Hume’s treatise Of the Standard of Taste the exhibition involves approaching various people who have an academic or professional connection with the visual arts, and asking each to select a work which exemplifies for them the excellent and beautiful in the visual arts. Beholder is a bold attempt and timely opportunity for such an exhibition to explore ‘taste and subjectivity in the visual arts.’ Furthermore, as ‘democracy is the key to this
Sir Henry Raeburn R.A. P.R.S.A., Professor Thomas Reid, 1796, 29x24 inches © The National Trust for Scotland. Image courtesy of The National Trust for Scotland
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project’ other ‘beholders’ – in the form of exhibition visitors – might also be offered an opportunity to have their say by voting for the artworks in the exhibition which they feel, are the most beautiful. All this should ferment a heady mixed brew of aesthetic judgement and popular taste. The opportunity for airing the critical debates raised by Beholder would have, I think, appealed to Hume and his fellow seekers after truth and beauty in the Scottish Enlightenment. For, although the German philosophers such as Baumgarten, Kant, Schopenhauer and Hegel are usually given the credit for founding the ongoing discourse on modern and contemporary aesthetics, it was the Scots literati who were the pioneers in this particular area of intellectual and critical enquiry. The most important and influential writers in this field included the three major Scotch philosophers – Francis Hutcheson , David Hume and Thomas Reid. By looking at their ideas and writings on beauty and taste we all should become more enlightened ‘beholders’ in the neverending argument over whom – and for what reasons – should be granted the power to award the laurel crown to the beauty of their choice. For as both Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton have convincingly argued, beauty is as much a social class and ideological issue as an aesthetic one in what might otherwise be called the tyranny of taste. A philosophical interest in the different ways works of art impact on human sensibilities and attitudes goes at least back to the writings of the Ancients – most notably in
Allan Ramsay, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), c.1740-45, oil on canvas 125.7x101.3 cm © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2011
Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics. With the coming of the Christian era however, the issue of aesthetics was forced to take up a secondary position in relation to ethics and theology within Western discourse until it returned to the philosophical agenda with the Renaissance, and even more so with the emergence of the Enlightenment. This early modern secular era was established by the new scientific investigations into our world and its place in the universe by natural philosophers such as Isaac Newton. Newton’s empirical method of enquiry undoubtedly had a profound influence on the philosophical and scientific ambitions and investigatory approaches of the major Scottish Enlightenment figures, including the philosophers Hutcheson, Hume and Reid. Aiming to break free from what they regarded as the religious extremist dogma and superstitions of the recent turbulent sectarian past these Scots felt it was now possible to examine the workings of the human mind and senses in the same objective and independent manner as Newton had mathematically traced the workings of the Earth and the planets. Among a wide range of different aspects of human and social behaviour, all three philosophers were each drawn to examine why certain natural phenomena and man-made objects, especially works of art, can cause pleasure and displeasure in the Beholder. This idea is well expressed in Hutcheson ’s early treatise A Sense of Beauty where he writes ‘it plainly appears that some objects are immediately the occasions of this pleasure of beauty, and that we have senses fitted for perceiving it.’ Clearly Hutcheson believes that it is our innate ‘sense of beauty’ which gives all of us feelings of aesthetic pleasure. Furthermore, without this programmed response in human nature, the experience of beauty would not exist, for he goes on to say, ‘Were there no mind with a sense of beauty to contemplate objects, I see not how they could be called beautiful.’ Thus for Hutcheson it is not God the Father, or Mother Nature, or even the Artist who creates the sensation of beauty, but some impulse in our make-up which involuntarily stimulates our additional ‘sixth sense’ – almost in a Pavlovian manner. For Hutcheson nature has certain qualities which make us instinctively appreciate its beauty. These qualities are rather vaguely described by him as ‘uniformity amidst diversity’. Furthermore these critical attributes should also be sought after by the Artist in order to stimulate the pleasure principle in the Beholder who is genetically programmed, rather than culturally conditioned, to respond to such aesthetic experiences. While David Hume read Hutcheson ’s ideas on these matters with a good deal of interest and sympathy they must have seemed overimposing and formulaic for his open and tolerant outlook. Hume was seeking an approach to the question of taste and beauty which was more in tune
with democratic discourse, but avoiding discursive anarchy. He presented his own particular perspective on these issues in his hugely influential Of the Standard of Taste. Strategically Hume shifted the goal posts in this debate from abstract questions concerning the nature of beauty, to the more socially and critically-oriented ones as to why certain works of art are preferred to others. He was looking for an agreed objective standard of aesthetic beauty using the Newtonian ‘experimental method of reasoning.’ In matters of aesthetic taste however, this was a formidable challenge, for as Hume observed ‘the sentiments of men often differ with regards to beauty and deformity of all kinds.’ This view is further echoed in Hume’s agreement with Hutcheson that ‘beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them: and each mind perceives a different beauty.’ This latter statement verges dangerously close to romantic solipsism and critical chaos, something that a social utopian like Hume would always try to avoid like the plague. Thus throughout his deliberations on these aesthetic matters Hume needed to steer a careful course between the Sybele of universalism and the Crybdis of individualism in order to reach the calmer waters of communal consensus. The guide for this journey of critical exploration and aesthetic discovery is not The Good Shepherd, but Hume’s secular counterpart, The Good Critic. Hume agreed with Hutcheson that we all possessto a greater or lesser extent – an aptitude to appreciate aesthetic qualities in works of art. The true aim for Hume however, was not instinctive appreciation, but sound critical judgement which would carry consensus with all art lovers of taste. As might be expected, a sizable part of Hume’s writing on these matters is taken up with listing the required qualities which were essential to the practice of good criticism. Hume felt that a convincing cultural authority must display the following five attributes for cultivated society to concur with their pronouncements. A good critic first and foremost must obviously have a ‘delicacy of taste’ and consequently abhor the grosser attractions of folk and popular culture. Secondly, Hume held that critical judgment was a serious business and needed constant exercise – ‘where he is not aided by practice, his verdict is attended with confusion and hesitation.’ Thirdly, a good critic needs to be knowledgeable in order to make relevant comparisons with ancient and modern artistic achievements and also between good and bad contemporary art. Fourthly, a good critic’s opinions should always be free from any personal prejudice or self interest – a central issue in Kant’s later ‘impersonally personal’ theory of aesthetics. Finally, the good critic must possess ‘strong sense’ in order to present a convincing justification for any aesthetic judgement.
While many might concur with most, if not all, Scottish Art News 42
Unknown after Ramsay, David Hume, 1758, oil on canvas, 80x65 cm University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection © University of Edinburgh Image courtesy of University of Edinburgh
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aspects of Hume’s arguments, there does however appear to be a worrying tautological flaw to his argument. One begins to wonder which comes first – the good critic or the good art? Pondering on this critical conundrum I am reminded of a revealing moment in Tony Hancock’s brilliant film The Rebel when, as an aspiring artist he is visited in his Paris garret studio by an very powerful art dealer and influential critic, played imperiously by George Saunders. Hancock finally plucks up the courage to ask the awesome question – ‘What is art?’ and, without a moment’s hesitation – with all the patrician authority of Lord Clark of Civilisation – Saunders replies, ‘Art, my boy, is what I like!’. Could Hume’s good critic very easily turn out to be a cultural dictator of civilised taste? Thomas Reid, like his illustrious predecessors, also took a philosophical interest in aesthetic matters and particularly in the visual arts; for instance, writing a treatise The Craft of Painting. It is however, in Reid’s other major work on aesthetics, Beauty and Common Sense, that he radically challenges the views of Hutcheson and Hume. Reid, being an ultra empiricist, set out to refute Hume’s claim that ‘beauty and deformity...belong entirely to sentiment’. Reid felt that Hume was too beholden to Cartesian dualism where there is always the tendency to internal things when in fact they are, according to Reid, to be found in the outside world. For Reid beauty was not an inner sensation of pleasure, but existed in the attributes of the external object itself, and this beauty was perceived and experienced through the senses. According to Reid, when I say for example, that a painting is beautiful, I am talking about the painting and not about myself. For as Reid points out in his dig at Hume – ‘It is contrary to the universal sense of mankind... that beauty is not really in the object, but is merely a feeling in the person who is said to perceive it. Philosophers should be very cautious in opposing the common sense of mankind for when they do, they rarely miss going wrong.’ As an invited participant, who has selected two paintings by Callum Innes for the Beholder exhibition, where do I stand in relationship to the Scottish Enlightenment arguments over the nature of aesthetics and critical practice? On the whole I find Hutcheson’s position too essentialist with its exclusive concentration on our innate responses to aesthetic stimuli and denial of external beauty existing in its own right. Furthermore, although Hume’s proposals seem reasonable and balanced in theory, I fear that the power games within the art world can too easily hijack his optimistic aims for more informed aesthetic discourse into a canon of institutional pronouncement and authority over matters of aesthetic quality. It is therefore Reid’s common sense phenomenological approach to aesthetics which is most in accord with my feelings on these matters. Like Reid, I prefer to focus my visual attentions on the work of art
itself and be aware of its effect on my sensibilities, rather than evaluating my critical judgements against those of others and the prevailing canon of taste. While Hume places ‘taste’ over ‘sentiment’ – Reid reverses that aesthetic order of values. Reid is committed to the centrality of fundamental consciousness in aesthetics; but, unlike Hutcheson and Hume, that consciousness is not a cerebral deductive process, but a physical embodied experience. Ultimately Reid differs from Hume in that he does not seek out an intellectual engagement with a work of art, but rather, a direct and authentic one. It is interesting to note that Reid’s nascent existentialism was fully developed in the twentieth-century writings on aesthetics by the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty and the arch modernist Clement Greenberg. To grasp Reid’s attitude to aesthetic appreciation it is necessary for the Beholder to become as free as possible from what Hutcheson calls the ‘association of ideas’ – our inherited and preconceived convictions and tastes. In art this can greatly help if the work has no overly distracting subject matter. Certainly this would apply to the deeply absorbing abstract paintings of Callum Innes, where the Beholder is able to concentrate totally on how they work as aesthetic experiences, not only through the complex processes involved in their making, but also on the various ways they impact on the Beholder’s physical, sensual and emotional aesthetic sensibilities. It is through what Greenberg termed ‘the distinct properties of a given medium’ that allows the Beholder of a Callum Innes painting to initiate and then develop an aesthetic process which is intrinsic to the artist’s specific and particular mode and medium of expression. In the art of Callum Innes the complex techniques and painterly rhetoric which the artist employs in creating such work are not a means to some other ends which would take the Beholder’s attention from the painting itself. On the contrary, it is the unique means involved in the act of painting – and abstract picture-making – which unequivocally stimulates the beholder’s aesthetic sensibilities. With such a commitment to his art, the unmediated aesthetic quality of Callum Innes’ work is directly and totally dependent on the quality of his painting. Thus while I, along with other beholders, of similar sensibilities may stand and admire the art of Callum Innes, ultimately, we are not really required. For in the end, his painting – like nature – is a beautiful thing in itself. Bill Hare is a writer, curator and teacher at The University of Edinburgh.
Beholder
Beholder is showing at Talboth Rice Gallery until 18 February 2012 University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge Edinburgh EH8 9YL Tel: 0131 650 2210 | www.ed.ac.uk/about/museums-galleries/talbot-rice Open: Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–5pm Admission free
Scottish Art News 44
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KW The Gram s taining p roces s to make the bacter ia vis ible is not dis s imilar to wor k ing with watercolour in the s tudio, and s mall cor ners of moder n clinical labs feel like s tudio spaces , with bottles of coloured s tains – cr ys tal violet, iodine, safranin – and coloured sp lashes around the s ink . It occur red to me that a microbiologis t is trained to look and obser ve with the same k ind of attentivenes s as an ar tis t. It is this shared obser vational trait of the ar tis t and scientis t that is the s tar ting p oint for me. Whereas an ar tis t’s wor ldview extends to the limit of the vis ible, the scientis t goes beyond, into the micro wor ld. In this way the p etr i dish can become an inter face between science and ar t, a look ing glas s that can be pas sed through in either direction, hop efully to reveal new ins ights and ways of think ing.
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KATE WH ITEFORD A vis it to the fascinating recons tr uction of Fleming’s tiny research Laborator y at St Mar y ’s Hosp ital, Paddington, spar ked off a new body of wor k . It insp ired me to make a jour ney to Scotland to take aer ial p hotograp hs of Fenwick Moor in Ayrshire, then back to London to p hotograp h p etr i dishes at the Depar tment of Microbiology at Hammers mith Hosp ital. This unusual jour ney was the s tar t of a new body of wor k exp lor ing the life and wor k of Alexander Fleming, but from an ar tis t’s p ersp ective. I began by look ing at cor resp ondences between Fleming’s wor k with bacter ial cultures in the lab and the natural sur roundings of his ear ly life growing up on a far m in Ayrshire, in a landscap e dominated by the Fenwick Moor. My own wor k frequently exp lores the impact of natural and man-made mar ks in the land us ing techniques bor rowed from archaeology and aer ial p hotograp hy.
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ROSEMARY H ARRI S Your research for a commission for Hammersmit h Hospit al l ed you t o t he Al exander Fl eming Lab orat ory Museum, can you describ e what happened?
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Scottish Art News 46
In this new wor k I was aware of the visual link between microscop ic and aer ial p ersp ectives , where the macro and the micro can seem to over lap, and the creative p otential of slip page from science into ar t, and ar t into science. RH You have a personal con nect ion wit h your family and Fenwick moor, don ’t you? KW Fenwick Moor has a ver y par ticular quality – a vas t area of p eat and marsh close to the sea, s tretching acros s Eas t Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. It is cr is s -cros sed by r ivers and bur ns and dis tinctive land for ms . It is an area I k now well as I sp ent ever y summer in Ayrshire, a county where the sea is war med by the Gulf Stream, creating a sor t of microclimate. My father ’s family had far ms acros s Ayrshire and Renfrewshire – Attiquin, Dr iffenbeg, the Falls – on all s ides of Fenwick Moor – even the names have a mythic quality. My memor y of Fenwick Moor is of a dar k brooding p lace where dense fogs descend without war ning and p eop le and cars were often s tranded. It is a landscap e of different moods , of different asp ects of the sublime – sometimes beautiful, sometimes awesome, sometimes scar y. Lochfield Far m, where Fleming lived until he was 14, is on the edge of the Moor and he was to ack nowledge much later that ‘ever ything I k now comes from Nature’. Fenwick Moor is a p lace that s tays in the mind, its raw nature leaves an imp r int. RH What con nect ion did you discover b et ween Fl eming’s science and art ? KW Fleming ack nowledged that chance p layed a par t in the discover y of p enicillin s tating that ‘chance favours the p repared mind.’ This op ennes s leaves room for creativity and the imagination, neces sar y for both the ar tis t and the scientis t. Fleming himself made a number of ‘paintings ’ us ing different p igmented bacter ia, which shows his awarenes s of the p otential of tak ing the medium beyond science into ar t, albeit in an imp ish and humorous manner. He made images of dancers , and baller inas , for examp le.
Kate Whiteford, Nature Study, 2009, inkjet print and acrylic on canvas
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Scottish Art News 48
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KW I n Pet ri Veri t as (2 009) is a series of paintings o n paper, u sing d ense l iqu id waterco l ou r. These wo rks refer to a lab te c h niqu e know n as streaking ( when the m i c ro bio l o g ist makes a series o f marks ac ro ss t he agar cu l tu re w ith a steril e l o o p to spread t he bac teria) . Th is tec h niqu e o f streaking al mo st beco mes a fo rm o f sig natu re markmaking by the mic ro bio l o g ist, and the resu l ting ‘cul tu re d raw ing ’ d evel o ps sl owly overnig h t o r over a nu mber o f days. By u sing a ‘wet o n wet’ te c h niqu e, my wo rk mimics the metho d o l o gy of the sc ientist, the ou tco me a series o f wo rks t ha t sl owly c hang e and d evel o p over time as t he paper bo th abso rbs and rej ec ts the ink.
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Kate Whiteford, In Petri Veritas , 2009 -11, aquarelle on parchment paper
R H Your use o f waterco lour – is this s ignif icant?
R H There is the p o s s ibility o f a new research p ro ject w ith the ho sp ital. Is it o f s imilar nature? KW The new pro j ec t, wh ic h I very mu c h hope w il l happen, w il l co ntinu e the researc h whic h began in the lab at Hammersmith bu t t ake it a stag e f u rther, wo rking al o ngsid e m i c ro bio l o g ists in the labo rato ry to bu il d u p a series o f imag es. A larg e- scal e wo rk o n t he f açad e o f St Mary ’s w il l su perimpo se m i c ro sco pic and aerial imag es f ro m Fl eming ’s l i fe, wo rk and env iro nment, h ig h l ig h ting the role o f the imag inatio n in bo th art and sc ience.
Ro se ma ry Ha rris is curator of I mp e rial Colle g e Healt hca re Cha ri ty A rt Colle ct i on. I n Petri Verita s was com m issi one d by I CH CAC for t he new A &E uni t at Ha m me rsmi t h Hosp i tal, D u Ca ne Road, London W 1 2 OH S T he A lexa nde r Fle mi ng L aboratory Museum S t Ma ry ’s Hosp i tal Prae d St , London W 2 1 NY O pe n: Monday –Thursday 1 0a m –1 pm a nd ot he r t i me s by ap p oi nt me nt
49
Scottish Art News 50
LITTLEWHITEHEAD:
CONTROVERSIAL OR ‘EQUALLY UNIMPORTANT?’
Jakub Koguciuk meets artists littlewhitehead ahead of their solo exhibition at Sumarria Lunn Gallery, London
C
raig Little and Blake Whitehead are a duo of Glasgowbased sculptors, who create and exhibit together as littlewhitehead. Their hyper-realist works, often controversial and disconcerting, have featured in a number of exhibitions, including the 2010 Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery in London, a touring show which was also shown at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (2009). It Happened in the Corner (one of two works bought by Charles Saatchi in 2009) is a meticulous recreation of an urban assault, which illustrates the main attributes of their work – direct yet perplexing, and based on the darker sides of contemporary street culture. With technical virtuosity, using wax, hair and clothes, littlewhitehead create pieces uncomfortably close to everyday reality. Their practice could be seen to have developed out of a sense of frustration with contemporary art as well the style of teaching they witnessed at the Glasgow School of Art – their work reacting against excessive theory and the dominance of conceptualism, although, crucially, it is not anti-intellectual. Remarkably direct and unpretentious, their works offer a refreshing counter to an art world often overburdened with theory. Both Craig and Blake insist that they are largely self-taught and that their technical process continues to develop as a result of endless experiment. They proudly assure that they have no studio assistants, which is impressive given the scale and level of technical skill 51
ABOVE FROM TOP It Happened in the Corner....., 2007 plaster, wax, foam, hair, clothes, glass bottle 180x200x150 cm (approx)
SPAM, 2010 wood, foam, wax, cords, shoes, helmet, wire, chairs, tables, lino 500x150x160 cm (approx) OPPOSITE Sentient Orbs, 2009 shoes, chinos, sweater, balloons, wire, stuffing 250x200x200 cm (approx)
Scottish Art News 52
involved in the work’s production. Their insistence on being the only people behind their work brings an interesting personal aspect to their practice. It appears that destruction is central to their art, whether understood as a confrontation with established values and conventions, or quite simply as the the liberating and creative experience of damaging materials. Famous for deep-frying the Bible and creating sculptures made from ashes from burnt copies of Mein Kampf, littlewhitehead aim for the shock effect. This encourages reflection and thought, but only after one is prepared to look beyond an initial uneasiness. Walking around the V&A Museum, where we met to discuss their work and plans, Craig and Blake cheekily admitted that they would like to experiment with the busts in the sculpture gallery. They explained later that they have been testing out the effects of acid on marble, but busts are expensive and difficult to obtain. All this aggressive rebellion and destructive potential would be difficult to understand without the humorous flip-side, which littlewhitehead insist upon. Sentient Orbs, 2009, the second work purchased by Saatchi, and included in Newspeak, featured the figure of a child rising to the ceiling, seemingly caught in a tight bunch of red balloons. The artists explain that a lot of their work originates from a desire for escapism and pleasure. More recently, Spam (2010), based on a popular internet image of a boy wearing Darth Vader’s helmet seated at a table, both baffled and delighted the audience of the 2010 London Art Fair. The contrast between the emptiness of the setting and the apparent anger of the ludicrously dressed boy conveys the strong sense of humour inherent in their work, which both artists are happy to revel in. littlewhitehead consciously avoid taking a serious stance and can turn to humour to avoid any sense of preaching. One can sense that they are primarily concerned with entertaining themselves – the playful relationship to their own occupation is what makes them charmingly authentic and real. When asked who is more important in the duo, Blake replied with a wink, ‘Oh, we are equally unimportant’. At the moment littlewhitehead explore new areas. With enough marble they will continue their experiments with acid. They have also been making and exhibiting their first attempts at painting. Early in 2012 they are planning an exhibition for Sumarria Lunn Gallery in London (who curated their project at the London Art Fair), which is bound to be at once engaging, witty, elusive, and subversive.
we care nothing for your joy, found photograph New work made for SCOTTISH ART NEWS by littlewhitehead | 2011
www.littlewhitehead.com | www.sumarrialunn.com Jakub Koguciuk studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art and works at The Fleming Collection. littlewhitehead will show at Sumarria Lunn Gallery, 36 South Molton Lane, London W1K 5AB from 12 April – 11 May 2012. 53
Scottish Art News 54
2011 Art Market Round-up Edinburgh which between them contributed more than half the sale total of £3 million. The £512,800 paid for Peploe’s Flowers and Fruit (estimate £300,000 to £500,000) by a British collector put it in the top ten prices paid for Scottish pictures. Bonhams also had good cause to be pleased with the £400,800 price for his fellow Colourist Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell’s The Artist’s Drawing Room. Two bidders pushed it above the £200,000 to £300,000 estimate to the second highest price paid for a Cadell. But two other works by the same artist failed to find a buyer in the saleroom.
Move away from the
Colourists, who now invariably hog the Scottish art headlines, and the picture is not hugely different. Almost one third of the 119 lots at Bonhams failed to sell but the auction house seems to have pitched its estimates sensibly and of the 83 that did go to new homes, 47 were sold above the high estimate. Of three landscapes by the nineteenth and early twentieth-century painter William McTaggart, two failed to sell while the smaller A Wet Harvest Day sold for a modest £42,000. The twentiethcentury Scottish landscape and still life painter Sir William George Gillies As financial storms continued to batter the world economy
a world record price for any Scottish work of art. The hammer price
performed strongly with five out of six works selling, two of which, at
throughout 2011, the international art market survived remarkably
may have only been on the low estimate but it took the Colourists
£10,800 and £3,000 respectively, more than doubled their estimates.
well. But buyers were selective and gave short shrift to works
into a new price bracket. Yet four of the seven Peploes in the sale
considered sub-standard or which carried over-optimistic estimates,
failed to find buyers.
estimates at its June auction of Fine Paintings in Edinburgh at which 70%
and this applied just as much to Scottish art as to any other sector.
of the 224 lots were sold. Not all the works were by Scottish artists and
What is also certain is that quality is far more important than
was similar caution with Peploe’s Still Life with Pink Roses in a Blue
The Hawker’s Cart by the Englishman L.S. Lowry, sold by the Royal Scottish
the location of a sale at a time when a clear divide has opened
and White Vase going to the London-based collector Mina Gerowin
Academy, fetched £555,000 hammer price, which was one third of the
up between the auction houses. Christie’s and Sotheby’s have
Herrmann for £313,250. The hammer price was at the lower end
total. But conservative estimates on Cadell’s Interior – Santa Maria della
abandoned sales in Scotland and include the best Scottish works in
of the £300,000 to £500,000 estimate so the picture looks like a
Salute Venice (£80,000 to £120,000) and Peploe’s Iona (£40,000 to
wider London auctions while Bonhams and Edinburgh-based Lyon &
shrewd acquisition by hedge fund manager Herrmann. The same
£60,000) helped them sell for hammer prices of £140,000 and £70,000
Turnbull continue to hold sales in the Scottish capital.
message came from the £121,250 paid by a British private collector
respectively. Six Wilhelmina Barns-Graham paintings, offered for sale by
for A Scene on Duddingston Loch near Edinburgh by the nineteenth-
The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust, all sold with the highest price being a
have something special then it can fetch a good price but estimates
century artist Charles Lees in Sotheby’s Victorian and Edwardian
mid-estimate £14,000 for her abstract Untitled – Margaret Series, 1958. The
have to be realistic. Christie’s took quite a gamble when it put a hefty
art sale. Thought to be on the market for the first time since it was
Trust and The Fleming Collection are holding a major exhibition marking the
£800,000 to £1.2 million estimate on Samuel John Peploe’s The
painted in 1853, the price for the picture was an auction record
centenary of her birth at the latter’s London gallery in early 2012.
Coffee Pot in its auction of 20th Century British and Irish Art. This was
for Lees. But subtract Sotheby’s commission and it was right at
partly down to the vendor’s high expectations but also reflected the
the bottom end of the £100,000 to £200,000 estimate - such
Will Bennett is the former Art Sales Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph who
rarity and quality of this classic early Scottish Colourist work. The
predictions are based on hammer prices.
now works for the marketing and public relations consultants Cawdell Douglas.
estimate led to muted bidding but art adviser Susannah Pollen paid
£937,250 for the Peploe on behalf of a UK private collector which was
paintings consigned from an American collection in its sale in
Auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s showed that if you
55
Over at Sotheby’s 20th Century British Art sale there
Lyon & Turnbull took a similarly pragmatic attitude towards
Samuel John Peploe, The Coffee Pot, c. 1905, oil on canvas 24 x33 inches © Christie’s Images Ltd. 2011 Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Untitled – Margaret Series, 1958 oil on canvas, 70.8x90.8 cm © The Barns-Graham Trust OPPOSITE Charles Lees, Skaters, A Scene on Duddingston Loch near Edinburgh, 1853, oil on canvas © Image courtesy of Sotheby’s
North of the border, Bonhams had 15 Scottish Colourist
Scottish Art News 56
JS So those small actions, gestures and nuances, in turn,
to constantly referencing something else, as you do in observational
determine what the charters look like, what they might be doing,
drawing. When I am drawing something from direct observation I
and the overall narrative content of the drawings?
feel like it is kind of going through me, it is not really being stopped or
CA Yes, quite often I will end up drawing a man that becomes
challenged. Drawing from your imagination is much more about what
a woman and vice versa. And sometimes what the characters
you do not know, how distorted your perception is, it is much more
are doing completely changes as well. At first the process is
interesting from that point of view.
quite free but the more the drawing comes together, its meaning
JS In drawing from your imagination, you are constantly challenged to
becomes increasingly restricted and coherent.
make visual connections, associations and resemblances, with virtually
JS In your drawings there are a lot of lines and marks, especially
no reference or source materials at all. I find that incredible.
in people, that look like they have been made very quickly. Does that
Charles Avery, Untitled, 2002, pencil and coloured pencil on paper The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation © The artist
Books
do with having a very direct relationship with the drawing as opposed
CA Occasionally I ‘rehearse’ a drawing, or one of my assistants may
fluidity and continuity allow you to almost draw as fast as you think?
make a model of an invented building so that I understand it, in order
CA I draw as a way of thinking, but not having to come up with
to conceive it in the drawing. But yes, most of the time I work without
a specific truth or an answer, and the fluidity in the line that
any visual references. It is really difficult, but I think it makes you much
you refer to emphasises the fact that the drawings are always
CA Absolutely, and I am aware that when I am drawing certain things, I am
more aware of how the world works. Particularly the aspects of the
provisional. I leave all my old lines in; I do not attempt to create
deeply involved in the subject. For example, if I am drawing a character that
world you study; how one part connects to another, and you suddenly
something perfect, that is a masterpiece. I am very against the
is sexually attractive, there is sexual charge there; in a sense I am having a
feel like you know it. When you draw from your imagination you realise
idea of something proclaiming to be ‘right’. It is all about the
love affair with them. It is like when children draw cars, they will be doing the
Drawing Projects: an exploration of the language of drawing
you have so much sub-conscious knowledge. Instinctually, you have an
process; it is all continuous states of development. You can invest
sound effects of the car as they make marks. They get really passionately
Mick Maslen and Jack Southern
awareness of the visual relationships of the world, which you can tap
the idea of time and speed of motion in the drawing, not just by
involved with the idea of the car, as opposed to drawing the reality of its likeness.
black dog publishing 2011 | Paperback £19.95
into. So much of what I draw, I have never drawn from life, so I guess in
what you are drawing, but by the speed and tempo of your line.
JS And that level of engagement seems remarkable to me, especially
a way, I have perfected that.
JS So every part develops in relation to the other visual elements?
considering many of the drawings are on such a large scale?
Drawing Projects features a series of conversations with a carefully
JS It seems amazing to me that you have developed such a distinct and
CA There are lots of logical steps, which gives the drawing a
CA Yes, when working on a mammoth drawing there are so many different
selected group of artists, including Cornelia Parker, Jeff Koons and
personal drawn visual language. Do you continuously make discoveries
sense of coherence. The drawings have a feeling that the whole
relationships going on. As soon as I introduce another character, it will have
William Kentridge, about their drawing practice. Preceded by practical
when drawing, which you then use again and develop?
composition and narrative is predetermined, but how it came
a knock on effect, and change other sets of interactive relationships in the
‘drawing projects’ – far removed from any ‘how-to’ drawing manual
CA Yes, exactly and that is what I was referring to earlier, when I
about is, to a large degree, improvised. I like the way you can
drawing. I find it important to have some kind of scheme, as a departure point.
– they instead offer guidance and new ways in which to engage with
said that I feel I am getting better. I have built up an intuitive visual
just draw. You do not have to fill in the whole space, just draw
For example, consider the way the main characters are going to develop and
the medium and make new discoveries. The discussions with the
repertoire, with both materials and processes, which I can keep
a single sweep. When drawing a figure you do not even have to
how they are going to anchor the drawing. But then it is important that that
artists that follow offer a deep insight, in an almost revelatory way,
adding to. For example, technically speaking, I instinctively know that
draw a body; you can imply a body. With that licence to work
system is not sacrosanct. These recent drawings of people in the town are
into the artist’s process. Both authors are artists and teachers and
if I am drawing a pan, I will use a really hard pencil like a 6H, if I am
quickly, you can just move onto the next thought. When I start
set in very defined physical spaces, so that introduces further problems. It
their ‘contemporary approach to contemporary drawing’, both in the
drawing aluminium it is HB, whereas if I am drawing a roll of lead it is
a scene I might draw a specific facial feature. As the drawing
is even more difficult to get the relationships between characters and their
informality of the conversations and in the ‘projects’ themselves (the
probably only 2B. When drawing a reflected surface, I leave white bits
develops, I then get the image of a character, who might have
environments right; I work very hard at that.
projects encourage various techniques and approaches, all of which
where the light is hitting, and go over it with a rubber once. Drawing
a very particular attitude or personality which emerges. Once I
JS In relation to the way the drawings develop, some elements have an
counteract any notion that there is one ‘correct’ or ‘best’ way to make
something wet; I throw water at it, drawing something textural, like
have drawn him/her, the next person seems to react to that person,
unfinished quality to them. Areas seem consciously left, and other parts of
a drawing), means Drawing Projects forms a particularly rich basis for
posters on walls, I use a rubber to tear and blister the paper, etc. All
and then the whole thing builds up through a logical progression
the drawing are really densely complete. Is this intuitive; moving on to another
developing an understanding of the medium and artists’ studio practice.
sorts of techniques I have built up to give whatever I am working on
from that arbitrary starting point of say a nose, for example.
part of the drawing when it feels right?
substance, textural depth, and contrast. I think I like the medium of
JS So when working on a particular section of the drawing,
CA I certainly am very aware of the fact that contrast is an effective visual
In the following edited extract from a conversation between Jack
drawing because of the lack of possibilities. The simplicity, for instance,
you are constantly in review of the whole? All those visual
device. So to have one area that is very densely full and described, in contrast
Southern and Scottish artist Charles Avery, Avery talks openly about
I predominately work in monochrome, I have got a bunch of pencils, a
connections must feel difficult to maintain sometimes?
to something that is very lightly delineated, gives visual balance and interest.
his working process, remarkably developed through self-study and
pot of ink and a compass, it is just very light is it not? I like the limitations.
CA Yes, and that can be a bit of a problem, because I get
And in my drawings specifically, I think the less described parts give it this
practice. (Avery was rejected by several art colleges in Scotland.)
JS The technical developments in your drawing are so entwined with the
easily distracted, and you need a certain level of intensity of
kind of movement, and emphasises the provisional nature or uncertainty of
The very limitations of drawing are what attracts him to the medium,
subject matter; the objects, characters, and places of your ongoing project
concentration, it is quite tiring. It is almost like method acting,
some parts of the drawing. But it is also an analogous strategy for the project
developed in his ongoing project The Islanders, which depicts epsiodes
The Islanders. There must be a fluidity of practice, which allows for pure
because you are introverting yourself, in a way thatís difficult to
as a whole. I am developing my own fictitious world, but I am not trying to
of a fictitious world the artist has been developing over a significant
invention, both technically, and in terms of the content of the drawings?
manage when you are aware of, and having to engage with the
create an exhaustive encyclopaedia of the universe, or go into more and more
number of years.
CA As I am working I am continually coming across new ideas,
world at large.
detail of a complete realm. There are huge areas of the Island that are very
and ways of doing things. Constant invention breeds a state of
JS Submerging yourself into the subconscious to that degree
lightly sketched, similar to one’s perception of the world.
unpredictable flux in the drawings. I can take advantage of the
must require blocking out any reference or involvement with
JS Does that sense of balance, both visual and metaphorical, also
accidents as they happen. So working quickly, I naturally enhance
your immediate physical surroundings? That allows you to be
serve to underpin and re-affirm the fact that everything that ‘makes
Jack Southern Do you feel drawing from your imagination is key to
mistakes, pushing things about, making little exaggerations, extend
completely involved in the physical, psychological and emotional
up’ the Island, objects, peoples, places, etc, can be seen as relational?
Charles Avery in conversation with Jack Southern, London, October 2010
your development?
limbs, etc, which makes the drawing as a whole plausible, in a way that
relationships in the drawing? In a sense you are there, involved
CA Yes; I would not have said that was the primary message of the work. But
Charles Avery With drawing from the imagination there is always room
a character on its own often is not. To a degree the mistakes make this
with whatever you might be drawing, not reflecting on it, or
it is something that I am acutely aware of when I draw; things relate to each
for improvement. I definitely feel like I am getting better. For me it is to
project; often it feels beyond my control.
making a rendition from a distance?
other, which gives a sense to the world I draw.
57
Scottish Art News 58
Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1960, oil on canvas, 141.00x230.50 cm (Single work repeated) ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate
Film
Jannis Kounellis ARTIST ROOM: mima, Middlesbrough 23 November 2012–10 March 2013
Scottish Painters (1959) Directed by Ken Russell Production Company: BBC Producer: Peter Newington Commentator: Allan McClelland Cast: Robert MacBryde, Robert Colquhoun 12 mins, black and white With the death of legendary film-maker Ken Russell in 2011 at the age of 84, William Summerfield looks specifically at Russell’s documentary
Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. Image courtesy Robert Bristow, author of The Last Bohemians: The Two Roberts – Colquhoun and MacBryde, published by Sansom & Company, 2010
for the BBC, Scottish Painters, the first of Russell’s films about visual artists and the chance early job that proved to be the big break in his career. While still a young and aspiring director, Russell was approached
practice. With visual eloquence Russell charts the landscape that
to make a short documentary for the BBC series Moniter, after the
surrounds and inspired them, before moving into direct contact with
regular presenter dropped out. For his subject Russell took the
the artists and their work. MacBryde introduces the importance
notorious Scottish duo Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde,
of visual spontaneity in his work; the still life he works on is not
collectively and affectionately referred to as ‘The Two Roberts’.
specifically composed but simply found. MacBryde goes on to
(Robert Bristow’s long-awaited and fascinating biography of the
describe the world as simply a matter of form and shape, an outlook
pair The Last Bohemians was published in 2010 and is the first full
he maintained throughout his career. The artist also expresses his
account of their lives and work.) Russell had been a great admirer
delight in colour, talking of the ‘screaming yellow of the lemon in his
of Colquhoun’s paintings since the late 1940s, when he worked
composition. His method is varied, ranging from direct painting, to
alongside him at the Lefèvre Gallery in London. For Russell, the Two
the use of collaged material and transference.
Roberts were dark heroes and in his biography he describes himself
exclaiming after their first meeting, ‘Christ, these are real Bohemians!’
centrality of childhood memories in his work and in particular the
Russell later spoke of Scottish Painters as the favourite film of his
recurring figures of women, as he is seen working directly on the
entire career.
painting Circus Woman. Colquhoun works furiously on the canvas
on-screen, his paint brush loaded with paint. As he plays with
The film was made in 1959 during of a period of
When talking to Colquhoun, the artist refers to the
professional and emotional decline for Colquhoun and MacBryde.
different painterly techniques, the image dissolves to be replaced by
While in the 1940s and early 1950s both artists, Colquhoun in
a montage of images made up of several of Colquhoun’s paintings of
particular, had received much commercial and critical acclaim, their
women. Russell was to work with several other artists in this series,
lives had begun a tragic descent into obscurity and alcoholism.
from the architect Gaudi to the pop artists of the 1960s, but it is this
The Roberts had left London for Suffolk, a move instigated by their
film that remains the most haunting, not least to the director himself.
difficulty to afford living in the city, and a shared personal desire to
escape to the country. Russell has described the difficulty of tracking
made the leap into feature films in the 1960s, most notably in the
them down, and on one particular ocassion when he finally did, it
form of 1969’s Women in Love. This not only garnered Russell an
was to find Colquhoun dead-drunk at their usual haunt and in need
Oscar nomination for Best Director, but spawned notoriety for the
of serious care. The inseparable pair, lovers since meeting at the
now infamous naked wrestling scene between the two male leads.
Glasgow School of Art, remained together until tragically Colquhoun
Despite his constant portrayal as the ‘enfant terrible’ of the British
died from the effects of alcoholism in 1962, followed not much later
film-making scene, Russell continued to be highly regarded right up
by MacBryde in 1968 in a road accident.
until his death as an avant garde film maker of considerable vision
and power. (William Summerfield)
Russell’s double portrait is extraordinary for the insight
PREVIEW 2012
Following the success of his early television work, Russell
that it gives into the pair’s working methods. Notoriously private, both Roberts preferred not to give interviews, making this ten-minute film the only significant statement made by either artist about their
59
Scottish Art News 60
rather than alternating between the Tate and the National Galleries,
26 Treasures
works from the collection have been shown in locations as varied
until 26 January 2012
as the Abbott Hall Art Gallery in Kendal and the Pier Arts Centre
National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF
in Stromness. Since its opening, the project has been astonishingly
Tel: 0300 123 6789
successful in terms of its visitor numbers and the critical acclaim
www.nms.ac.uk
received for the quality of the work and its curatorial simplicity.
Open daily 10am–5pm, Admission free
ARTIST ROOMS has a particular relevance in Scotland.
D’Offay studied at the University of Edinburgh and as such has close
Following the success of last year’s 26 Treasures at the V&A, the
personal ties with the city and its various collections. As a result,
National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, and the Ulster Museum in
ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions in Scotland have been strong in quality,
Belfast, National Museums Scotland decided to organise their own
such as the monumental photographic exhibitions of Diane Arbus
national 26 Treasures projects. The National Museum of Scotland
and August Sander at the Dean Gallery in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
in Edinburgh has collaborated with 26 members of the collective of
The collection’s emphasis on touring has benefitted venues in
writers, ‘26’, to showcase a selection of 26 objects from the Scotland
Scotland, affording smaller galleries across the country with such
galleries. Museum curators have randomly assigned an object
internationally renowned names as Jenny Holzer, Andy Warhol and
to every writer and requested each one to formulate a 62-word
Robert Mapplethorpe.
response to the object. The selected artefacts (which will be on
display) are eclectic and date from many different periods of Scottish
2012 has even more to offer Scotland. Six new venues
have opened their doors to the tour including Burgh Hall in Dunoon
history. The Neolithic Towie Ball, the Roman sculpture Cramond
and Linlithgow Burgh Hall, which will both feature The Mapplethorpe
Lioness, Queen Mary Stuart’s sixteenth-century harp, an eighteenth-
Scottish Tour new for 2012. Robert Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989, is
century gold teapot and a twentieth-century drag chains for a BAE
known for his beautifully shot yet often highly explicit photographic
ship are among the chosen artefacts.
works that focus on the underground scene of New York in the 1970s
and 80s. Tramway in Glasgow will show work by the Greek artist
Scotland’s culture and history. Three of the treasures on display –
Jannis Kounellis. Kounellis, a member of the Arte Povera movement in
the ‘Coigrich’, Alexander Peden’s mask and wig, and the Gown of
Italy in the 1960s, makes art based on found organic matter using as
Repentence – symbolise the role of the Church of Scotland, while
varied materials as earth, gold and fire.
Napier’s Bones and the Bionic Hand remind visitors of the great
number of Scottish scientific discoveries.
Another great coup for Scotland has been the donation
The display explores the richness and diversity of
of seven works by Martin Creed to the collection. Creed grew up in
Glasgow and rose to prominence in the international art scene after
started giving us a flavour of the project by writing a blog which is
Weeks before the opening of the exhibition, the 26 writers
his combination of deadpan wit and extreme minimalism in Work
regularly updated and can be consulted via the 26 Treasures website.
no. 127: the lights going on and off won the Turner Prize in 2001. His
In the ‘creation stories’ section, the writers describe their first
ARTIST ROOM, which will include works in neon and video, will be
impressions when they were assigned their artefact. For Kate Tough,
shown at Tate Liverpool between 24 February and 27 May.
who has been paired with the Ross tartan suit, it was a delight, yet for
(William Summerfield)
other writers such as Joan Lennon and Sara Sheridan, who have been allocated the drag chains and Queen Mary’s harp, it came initially as a shock. The writers also give some hints as to the nature of their texts. Each response presents both well and lesser-known artefacts in a new light. The 26 Treasures exhibition is accompanied by a series of public events for adults and children. On 21 January, a workshop The Alternative 26 will give 26 visitors the opportunity to work with the writers to write their own response to the treasures. For full details of the events organised at the National Museum of Scotland for the 26 Treasures project visit:
ARTIST ROOMS 2012
English and Scottish governments, in addition to donations made by
19 new exhibitions in 17 venues
the Art Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Despite the
For the full 2012 ARTIST ROOMS tour visit:
fact that the collection was valued at around £125 million, D’Offay
www.artfund.org/artistrooms
asked only for the original price paid for it, £26.5 million, with the simple requirement that the works be made fully available to the
The ARTIST ROOMS collection was formed by Anthony D’Offay
public. ARTIST ROOMS was also given a further and fantastic
over a 30 year period, comprising 700 works by 25 artists. In 2008
twist – D’Offay has insisted the works circulate museums the length
this collection was acquired for the nation through funding from the
and breadth of Britain, not just its major cities. This has meant that
61
www.nms.ac.uk www.26treasures.com Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1983 photograph on paper, 50.80x40.60 cm © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Robert Mapplethorpe ARTIST ROOM: The Burgh Hall, Dunoon (part of Mapplethorpe Scottish Tour): March–June 2012 and at Linlithgow Burgh Halls, West Lothian: July–October 2012
Dr Marion Amblard teaches at Pierre Mendès France University in Grenoble and is a researcher in British studies. She is a member of the French Society for Scottish Studies.
Scottish Art News 62
their ancient traditions seemed to fulfil this need. Bain’s intricate and elaborate designs celebrate Scotland’s ancient heritage, referencing the iconography found in great Celtic treasures such as stones, jewellery and manuscripts, but also aspects of Scottish landscape or culture, including ships, fish, trees and religious iconography. His desire to share and promote this pride in Scottish visual culture and national identity is clear in his attempts to establish a College of Celtic Cultures in Drumnadrochit. Unfortunately these attempts were unsuccessful, yet his book Celtic Art: the Methods of Construction (first published in 1951) is still in print today and remains the most successful manual of its kind among artists and designers.
In the spirit of revival and perpetuation of Celtic culture
propounded by George Bain himself, the exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery should provide a patriotic thrill to any self-proclaimed Celt, as well as aesthetic inspiration to artists and art lovers alike. George Bain: Master of Modern Celtic Art until 13 February 2012
Jessica Rimmer is an intern at The Fleming Collection.
Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL Tel: 0131 624 6200 www.nationalgalleries.org Open daily, 10am–5pm, Admission free Caithness-born artist, George Bain (1881-1968) dedicated himself to the revival of the intricate symbolic work of the ancient Picts and Celts. This winter, in celebration of ‘the father of modern Celtic design’, a unique selection of his work will be displayed at the Scottish National Gallery in partnership with the Groam House Museum.
The decorative nature of ancient relics such as Scotland’s
Pictish stones and illuminated manuscripts (for example the Book of Kells and Lindisfarne), fascinated Bain. He endeavoured not only to recreate but also understand their construction, encouraging others to do the same so to enable them to create modern Celtic designs of their own. As a teacher at Kirkcaldy High School in Fife for many years, he shared this passion for and knowledge of the complex mathematical frameworks and principles within which these ancient designs find life. He also wrote a number of educational publications encouraging the theory and practice of this previously dormant art form. The exhibition’s selection of sketches, prints and sculpture as well as items of jewellery and other objects adapted from his designs demonstrate the artist’s preoccupation with the intricacies of Celtic art, and his desire to evolve and innovate, applying it to varied media.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a
renewed interest in the traditions and arts of ancient Celtic culture. This coincided with archaeological discoveries of Celtic artefacts and relics across Europe as well as in the British Isles, triggering antiquarian research and revival of the traditions, artwork and culture connected with these objects. Also at the heart of this revival was a growing sense of nationalism in countries considering themselves Celtic (Scotland, Ireland and Wales in particular). Their political and cultural subjugation to England sparked a need to rediscover and reinforce a sense of identity, and a celebration of
63
FROM TOP George Bain Army tents at a Camp near Mahmudli, Macedonia, 1917. watercolour on paper, 125x160 mm The Holly Bough Xmas, 1904 magazine cover: printed paper, 292x208 mm OPPOSITE Bi-lingual Gaelic and English greeting card All works: The George Bain Collection, Groam House Museum © The George Bain Estate
Scottish Art News 64
You, Me, Something Else Until 16 March 2012 Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow G1 3AH Tel: 0141 287 3050 | www.glasgowlife.org.uk Open: Monday–Wednesday / Saturday10am–5pm Thursday 10am–8pm, Friday / Sunday 11am–5pm You, Me, Something Else brings together works classified as ‘sculpture from Glasgow’ by ten Glasgow-based artists: Claire Barclay, Karla Black, Nick Evans, Alex Frost, Lorna Macintyre, James McLardy, Andrew Miller, Mary Redmond, and Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan.
A number of these artists have recently been involved in
high-profile shows where they have created immersive or threedimensional artworks which have expanded sculpture beyond the realms of anything object-based, utilising whole spaces and working in situ. For example, for the recent Bloomberg Commission Publication: February 2012, £45
at Whitechapel Gallery (2011), Barclay created a complex space
British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age
enlivened with live dancers, performing in this new and carefully
31 March – 12 August 2012
configured sculptural context. Similarly commanding of the space,
Alison Watt: Hiding in Full View
The V&A, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
Karla Black’s presentation for the 2011 Venice Biennale filled the room
until 28 January 2012
Tel: 020 7942 2000
with delicate yet authoritative sculptural forms such as a sculpture of
Ingleby Gallery, 15 Calton Road, Edinburgh EH8 8DL
www.vam.ac.uk
stratified soil, dusted with powder paint. Through installing in situ, the
Tel: 0131 556 4441
Open daily 10am–5.45 pm, Admission £12
work is configured sensitively and inventively directly in relation to the
www.inglebygallery.com
space, something which lent great weight to Martin Boyce’s (another
Monday – Saturday, 10am–6pm (by appointment at any other time)
March 2012 will see the opening of the V&A’s exhibition British Design
Glagow-based artist) work for the Turner Prize 2011. A particular trait
Admission Free
1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, which will coincide with the
it seems of contemporary art in Glasgow – the other most recent
London 2012 Olympics. It will feature a diverse range of masterpieces
artists to win the Turner Prize worked with and within the spaces
Alison Watt became well known in the 1990s for her stark treatment
photographs that deal with notions of the self and femininity, her
of British design from the 1948 ‘austerity Olympics’ up until the
directly – Richard Wright’s intricate painting onto the actual walls, and
of the female form, placing her work alongside Lucian Freud and her
work is characterised by its frequently surreal subject matter.
present day, including art, photography, furniture and textiles.
Susan Philipsz’ exterior and interior sound installations, the display of
Scottish contemporary Jenny Saville, not only for her realist style, but
Watt has stated that she has been intrigued by Woodman’s work,
Among the objects on show in the exhibition will be work produced
the work critical to the experience of the work itself.
for the depth of connection with figurative painting throughout art
particularly in relation to the idea of self-portraiture.
by Edinburgh Weavers, regarded as one of the most important and
history. Early works such as Bathers, 1987, make reference continually
progressive textile producers of the twentieth century. The Scottish
encountered first – a heaped mound of cellophane covered in make-
and directly to Ingres and Classicism. However, since 2000 her work
Uffizi Gallery in response to their celebration of self-portraits made
firm was known for its pioneering and distinctive textile designs,
up, is glittering and ‘confetti’ strewn. An economy of means in Black’s
has left direct figuration, instead painting the forms made from fabric.
by women artists. While Watt has frequently made strong illusions
which were remarkable both in terms of quality and originality.
use of common household materials contrasts with works using more
While the body is no longer explicitly depicted, this use of material
to the art historical past in previous paintings, this process led her to
traditional techniques and materials as in Alex Frost’s large misshapen
associates her work with the use of drapery in traditional portraiture,
look instead at Woodman’s more modern work, Angel, 1977. In this
Edinburgh Weavers by Lesley Jackson (V&A Publishing) in February
‘boulder-like’ mosaic sculptures. However, although Frost borrows aspects
but in her work the fabric speaks not only of form but of the bodily
image a white sheet is waved in front of an open doorway, the ghostly
2012. It will examine the vision of the company’s pioneering art
of classical art forms, he uses Warhol-like appropriation strategies in
absence it represents. Much has been made of the symbolic meaning
image becoming an instant influence for Watt’s paintings suggesting
director, Alastair Morton, and the role that Edinburgh Weavers played
his use of imagery from commercial packaging, in this case, Ryvita.
of the white fabric depicted, such as in her monumental painting
presence, absence and frailty. In the resulting work, Angel, 2010,
in bridging artistic and design practices. Morton was consistently
In James McLardy’s Born Male, references to classical sculpture are
Still, 2004, which is hung in Old St Paul’s Church, Edinburgh. In this
this connection was demonstrated both in its formal and symbolic
committed to getting top British artists to produce designs for the
subverted by a large cylinder of what first appears to be marble, but is
setting the painting gains a form of spiritual purity, without the need
content. For Hiding in Full View, Watt has continued to work with
company, including Barbara Hepworth and Elizabeth Frink among
actually painstakingly painted MDF. What links these artists is a deep
for any exact religious reference.
Woodman as an influence, taking on the dreamlike quality of her
others. He was also an artist in his own right, and the book traces
understanding of how to work the materials to convey their ideas – often
work along with its continued engagement with and understanding of
the story of his life as well as that of the company whose vision he
playing with the materials to distort perception and counter expectation.
the human body. (William Summerfield)
shaped so definitively.
of absence permeating the paintings. The exhibition title Hiding in
stages of their careers, showcasing contemporary practice, which
Full View reveals this tension that has become central to her work.
insight into Britain’s rich design and manufacturing history,
is currently attracting much attention throughout the art world and
Featuring all-new paintings, this show explores her direct reference to
particularly apt during a year when the world spotlight will be cast
media. And there is certainly more scope here to explore other ideas
firmly over Britain and the Olympic Games.
and references throughout the work that perhaps connect to the city
For Watt’s latest exhibition at Ingleby Gallery, her work
has moved even further into the realms of the unknown, with a sense
In 2010 Watt was asked to produce a painting for the
a new artistic muse, the photographer Francesca Woodman.
Francesca Woodman shot to fame in the 1980s following
her tragic suicide at the age of just 23. Known for her unnerving
65
Alison Watt, Ambit, 2011, oil on canvas Studio September 2011 Images courtesy of the artist and the Ingleby Gallery Photography: John MacKenzie
The exhibition also ties in with the publication of the book
Both the exhibition and book promise to be a fascinating
For GoMA’s exhibition, Black’s Don’t Adapt, Detach is
This is a timely exhibition of works by artists at different
of Glasgow itself. Helen Dyson is a Gallery Assistant at The Fleming Collection. Scottish Art News 66
LISTINGS ABERDEEN
AROUND SCOTLAND
AUCTIONS
Tales of the City: Art Fund International and
An Lanntair
Bonhams
the GoMA collection
Astar: Ishbel Murray, Mairi Morrison,
Scottish Art
Anne Campbell
19 April
Royal Exchange Square G1 3AH
10 February – 31 March
22 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JX
Tel: 0141 287 3050
Mangurstadh: Elsie Mitchell
Tel: 0131 225 2266
glasgowmuseums.com
9 April – 3 June
bonhams.com/scottishpictures
GAP
Until 24 June
Alasdair Gray: City Recorder
24 March – 19 May
75 Belford Road EH4 3DR
Until 10 June
Aberdeen Art Gallery
Imagery on Dialogue: A Travelling
Tel: 0131 624 6200
BP Portrait Award 2011
Printmaking Group Exhibition: Engramme
nationalgalleries.org
Until 21 January
2 June – 21 July
Alan’s Angles
23 Union Street EH1 3LR
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Until 4 February
Tel: 0131 557 2479
Romantic Camera: Scottish Photography
Fusion: British Ceramics and Glass
edinburgh-printmakers.co.uk
and the Modern World Until 3 June
Metal Works!
Kenneth Street, Stornoway HS1 2DS
Until 3 March
The Fruitmarket Gallery
1 Queen Street, EH2 1JD
Hunterian Art Gallery
Tel: 0185 1703 307
Bloomsbury Auctions
Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Anna Barriball
Tel: 0131 624 6200
The Antonine Wall: Rome’s Final Frontier
lanntair.com
The Craigie Aitchison Sale
Until 19 February
20 January – 1 April
nationalgalleries.org
New permanent gallery
Schoolhill AB10 1FQ
Tony Swain
Tel: 0122 452 3700
13 April – 1 July
aagm.co.uk
45 Market Street EH1 1DF
DUNDEE
26 January, 1pm
82 Hillhead Street, University of Glasgow
Tolbooth Art Centre
24 Maddox Street, London W1S 1PP
The Scottish Gallery
G12 8QQ
From Our Own Collection
Tel: 020 7495 9494
William Johnstone & Sir William Gillies
Tel: 0141 330 5431
Until 28 January
bloomsburyauctions.com
Tel: 0131 225 2383
11 January – 3 March
hunterian.gla.ac.uk
High Street, Kirkcudbright DG6 4JL
fruitmarket.co.uk
Royal Academicians at The Scottish Gallery; Robert MacMillian
Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum
The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery
National Museum of Scotland
7 – 31 March
New Permanent Glasgow Boys Gallery
and Museum
26 Treasures
John Houston; Derrick Guild
Argyle Street G3 8AG
Winter Works on Paper:
Until 29 January
4 April – 2 May
Tel: 0141 276 9599
Etched Works by Whistler
Chambers Street EH1 1JF
16 Dundas Street EH3 6HZ
glasgowmuseums.com
Until 29 January
Tel: 0131 225 7534 / 0131 558 9872
Tel: 0131 558 1200
A Painted World
nms.ac.uk
scottish-gallery.co.uk
Celebrated
Open Eye Gallery
Talbot Rice Gallery
From 27 January
Barry McGlashan
Albert Square DD1 1DA Tel: 0138 230 7200 mcmanus.co.uk
Tel: 01557 331 556
Christies
dumgal.gov.uk
20th Century British & Irish Art Evening Sale 23 May
LONDON
20th Century British & Irish Art Day Sale 24 May
Art First
8 King Street, St. James’s
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Line of
London SW1Y 6QT
Roger Billcliffe Gallery
Drawing 1943-1993
Tel: 020 7839 9060
Mixed Group Show – Gallery Artists
21 Eastcastle Street W1W 8DD
christies.com
January
Tel: 020 7734 0386
Beholder
Postcards 2012: February
artfirst.co.uk
18 February – 6 March
Until 18 February
Ethel Walker: May
Glen Scouller RSA RGI /
Alison Turnbull
Lachlan Goudie: June
The Fleming Collection
14 & 15 March
Ruth A Nicol
10 March – 5 May
134 Blythswood Street G2 4EL
W.Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives
33 Broughton Place, Edinburgh EH1 3RR
9 – 27 March
University of Edinburgh, Old College,
Tel: 0141 332 4027
Until 5 April
Tel: 0131 557 8844
Tower Foyer Gallery
Matthew Draper / Roland Fraser
South Bridge, EH8 9YL
billcliffegallery.com
Made in Scotland
lyonandturnbull.com
Arctic Bound
11 – 29 May
Tel: 0131 650 2210
Until 21 January
34 Abercromby Place EH3 6QE
ed.ac.uk/about/museums-galleries/
Recent Acquisitions
Tel: 0131 557 1020 / 558 9872
talbot-rice
18 February – 14 April
openeyegallery.co.uk
27 January – 18 March
GLASGOW
University of Dundee
Blair House Sale
17 April – 2 June PERTH
The Art of Rediscovery by ChesterCollections
The Fergusson Gallery
13 Berkeley Street W1J 8DU
London Art Fair
Brilliance in Colour
Tel: 020 7042 5730
18 – 22 January
Until 11 February
flemingcollection.com
Business Design Centre, 52 Upper
Scottish National Gallery
Tel: 01382 384 310
Giovanni Battista Lusieri
Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)
Jim Hastie
dundee.ac.uk/museum
30 June – 28 October
You, Me, Something Else
In The Round: New Work by Kate Lowery
Peter Graham ROI:
The Mound EH2 2EL
Until 16 March
Until 10 March
A Glasgow Painter’s Journey
Tel: 0131 624 6200
Alan Dimmick Photographs
Marshall Place PH2 8NS
27 May – 15 June
nationalgalleries.org
16 February – 13 May
Tel: 01738 783 425
Wolfson College
Exhibition for the 2012 Glasgow
pkc.gov.uk/museums
Linton Road, Oxford OX2 6UD
Edinburgh Printmakers
Street, London N1 0QH
Kirsty Whiten: Breeden Badlands
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
International Festival of Visual Art
Tel: 0186 527 4100
14 January – 10 March
The Sculpture Show
18 April – 24 June
valerie.paterson@googlemail.com
67
ART FAIRS
12 June – 7 July
Nethergate DD1 4HN
EDINBURGH
Lyon & Turnbull
londonartfair.co.uk
Scottish Art News 68
NEWS FROM
THE FLEMING COLLECTION
2012 EX H I BI TI O NS AT
THE FLEMING COLLECTION
January 2012 marks the 10th anniversary of The Fleming Collection gallery opening its doors to the public and it is rewarding to reflect the position the gallery now holds as ‘an Embassy for Scottish Art’.
We are delighted to begin our anniversary year with
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives curated by Lynne Green in association with The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust. The
THE FLEMING COLLECTION
P AT RO N S
W.BARNS-GRAHAM: A SCOTTISH ARTIST IN ST IVES 10 JANUARY – 5 APRIL
exhibition marks the centenary of the birth of ‘one of Britain’s most senior abstract painters’, Barns-Graham’s early close association with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Naum Gabo, and later with figures such as Roger Hilton, has been seen in her native country as providing ‘a historic link between Scotland and St Ives’.
17 APRIL – 2 JUNE
This is followed by Made in Scotland (17 April – 2 June
2012) a selling exhibition showcasing work by some of Scotland’s leading contemporary artists and craftsmen. A percentage of all sales will go towards supporting The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, the charity that runs The Fleming Collection.
MADE IN SCOTLAND
The Foundation, as well as supporting the exhibition and
THE ART OF REDISCOVERY BY CHESTER COLLECTIONS 12 JUNE – 7 JULY
publication programme, continues to acquire works for the collection. Although our main focus is on collecting works by living artists the Foundation continues to fill historical gaps. Recently the Foundation has acquired striking oil paintings by two Past Presidents of the Royal Scottish Academy. The Penny Bank by Sir George Harvey PRSA
Visitor Information: 13 BerkeleyStreet, London W1J 8DU Tel: 020 7042 5730 | www.flemingcollection.com Tuesday – Saturday 10am–5.30pm
(1806-1876) and Reading Aloud / Margery and the Boys by Sir William Oliphant Hutchison PRSA (1889-1970).
Sir George Harvey was a pupil of Sir William Allan at
the Trustees’ Academy. Harvey provided an important link in the tradition of Scottish genre painting between the generation of Sir
Gallery One: Admission Free Gallery Two: Admission: £3.50 / £4.50 Gift Aid Children (6-16 years) / Students: Admission Free Friends / Members: Admission Free
David Wilkie and the later nineteenth century exponents, principally Thomas Faed. Sir William Oliphant Hutchison was educated at the Edinburgh College of Art and was a founding member of the talented
En gage with A r t is t s , C ur at o r s an d Mu se u m D irect o r s at S pe cial Gath er ing s
and progressive group known as the Edinburgh School. Reading Aloud demonstrates Hutchison’s immense academic skill. It depicts his wife Margery, daughter of artist E.A Walton to whom Hutchison was
WE WISH TO THANK THE FOLLOWING FOR SUPPORTING OUR EXHIBITION PROGRAMME
apprenticed at the age of eighteen, and their two sons.
The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation (Registered charity
no.1080197) receives no public funding and relies on the generosity
Founder Member:
of private individuals, companies, trusts and foundations. There are
Fleming Family & Partners Ltd
many ways that one can support our work from becoming a Friend, Philanthropic Friend or Patron or through corporate involvement by sponsoring an exhibition or becoming a Corporate Member. Sir William Oliphant Hutchison PRSA (1889-1970) Reading Aloud / Margery and the Boys, 1929 oil on canvas, 36x30 inches The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Sir George Harvey PRSA (1806-1876), The Penny Bank, 1864 oil on canvas, 104x148 cm Exhibited: The Royal Scottish Academy, no 361, 1964 Provenance: The Forbes Collection at Old Battersea House The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation
For further information please email gallery@flemingcollection.com or telephone Lucia Lindsay on 020 7042 5735. Selina Skipwith, Keeper of Art
Corporate Members: Berkeley Law Evercore Partners Limited Eton College Flemings Hotel, Mayfair Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky James Hambro & Partners LLP Ridgeway Partners LLP
Also: Patrons of The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Friends of The Fleming Collection
69
Contact us for membership details and for our current events programme Lucia Lindsay Head of Development T: 020 7042 5735 E: gallery@flemingcollection.com Membership Form see page 69
THE FLEMING COLLECTION
Suppor t i ng Sco tti sh Ar t Scottish Art News 70
Enjoy Scottish Art with Fleming Collection Membership
Events 2012
Membership entitles you to enjoy the gallery and our exhibitions to the full as well as unlimited free entry to Gallery Two for the Permanent Collection. You will receive invitations to special viewings and can shop for books and purchase tickets to lectures, tours and events at better value. You will also receive monthly news bulletins and Scottish Art News magazine. We rely on memberships and donations from our visitors and charitable foundations to help fund all our activities as The Fleming Collection receives no public funding. The Fleming Collection is the only museum dedicated to showing Scottish art all year round. It provides Scottish museums and galleries with a platform to exhibit their paintings to a London audience as well as showcasing paintings from The Fleming Collection. The permanent collection comprises over 750 oils and watercolours from 1770 to the present day.
Samuel John Peploe RSA, A Vase of Pink Roses, c.1925, oil on canvas, acquired 1968 The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation
W. Barns-Graham, View of St Ives, 1940 © The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust
Guided Tour of London Art Fair
Curator’s Tour of Wilhelmina Barns-
Barns-Graham Charitable Trust Lecture
Tuesday 17 January, 3–4.30pm, meet
Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives
Monday 12 March, doors open at 6pm, talk
promptly at the main entrance
Tuesday 21 February, doors open at 6pm,
begins at 6.30pm, seated lecture
Tickets: £20, Friends and Philanthropic
talk begins at 6.30pm
Tickets: £7.50 Friends and Philanthropic
Friends only (limited to 20 places)
Tickets: £10 Friends and Philanthropic
Friends, £10 non-Friends
At: Business Design Centre,
Friends, £15 non-Friends, includes a glass of
At: The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley
52 Upper Street, London N1 0QH
wine. At: The Fleming Collection,
Street, London W1J 8DU
Nearest underground: Angel
13 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DU
We are delighted to once again be offering
An introduction to Barns-Graham herself,
The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust was
this popular guided tour of the London
the themes of the show and to individual
established in 1987 by the Scottish artist
Art Fair on preview day. This will be an
works of art, by Lynne Green, curator of
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004). The
opportunity to visit stands selling Scottish
The Fleming Collection’s exhibition W.Barns-
main objectives of the Trust are threefold: to
works with a curator from The Fleming
Graham: A Scottish artist in St Ives. Lynne
protect and promote her name and art; to
Collection and meet the dealers.
Green is an expert in British Modernism
support students of art and art history with
and contemporary art, and the author of
grants and bursaries; and to retain her home,
W. Barns-Graham: a studio life and a new
Balmungo House, as a place of creativity with
catalogue that accompanies the show.
residencies for artists and writers. The talk will focus on the artist’s legacy, Balmungo House and the Trust’s activities.
SAVE THE DATE: The Fleming Collection is delighted to announce that its 2012 Friends Abroad Trip will be to Berlin, 14–18 September. For further details please contact
To book tickets tel 020 7042 5730 or email: gallery@flemingcollection.com You can also book online: www.flemingcollection.com 71
helen.dyson@flemingcollection.com or telephone 020 7042 5784
MEMBERSHIPS AND DONATIONS I would like to make a donation to The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Registered Charity no. 1080197 £50 □ £100 □ £250 □ other ________ I WISH TO JOIN AS A MEMBER Single Friend £40 □ Joint Friends £60 □ Student £30 □ Single Philanthropic Friend £500 □ Joint Philanthropic Friends £800 □ Single Patron £1000 □ Joint Patrons £2000 □
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Scottish Art News 72
SAMUEL JOHN PEPLOE, R.S.A. (1871–1935) The Coffee Pot signed ‘Peploe’ (lower right) oil on canvas . 243/4 x 33 in. (62.8 x 83.8 cm.) . Painted circa 1905 Price realised: £937,250
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Contact
20th Century British & Irish Art · Evening Sale 23 May 2012
André Zlattinger azlattinger@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2681
20th Century British & Irish Art · Day Sale 24 May 2012
christies.com
The Fine Art Society 148 New Bond Street London W1S 2JT +44 (0) 20 7629 5116 www.faslondon.com
Bourne Fine Art
6 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 557 4050 www.bournefineart.com
Part of the Fine Art Society SAN_Issue17FAS.indd 1
ANNE REDPATH Pink and Grey Still Life, 1942, oil on panel
Works available for sale include Anne Redpath and the Edinburgh School 21/11/11 13:37:26