Jock McFadyen | Lost Boat Party |The Scottish Gallery - Summer 2021 by The Scottish Gallery

Jock McFadyen Lost Boat Party

Jock McFadyen Lost Boat Party 11 June—25 September 2021

The Scottish Gallery 16 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk scottish-gallery.co.uk

Dovecot Studios Ltd 10 Infirmary Street Edinburgh EH1 1LT +44 (0) 131 550 3660 info@dovecotstudios.com dovecotstudios.com

1 Sound of Jura (detail) oil on panel, 54.5 x 90 cm, 2011

Edinburgh Art Festival Institut Français d’Ecosse West Parliament Square Edinburgh EH1 1RF

Lost Boat Party Christina Jansen, The Scottish Gallery & Celia Joicey, Dovecot Studios

David Cohen wrote Jock McFadyen: A Book About a Painter in 2001 and began his first chapter, “Jock McFadyen is a maverick: his art is plucky and idiosyncratic, and eschews easy categorising... He follows an obsession with observational detail without losing the vital sap that gives his images their unmistakable edge. And he has the balls to work in a national tradition without making art that is parochial or polite.” This continues to be true, and at seventy McFadyen continues to paint the contemporary landscape without an agenda. Jock McFadyen finds his subject in the marginal and overlooked. He finds a derelict corner, or a twilight landscape seen through a chain link fence; graffiti is enigmatic under an endless, perfect sky. The idea of the chance encounter is contained in Lost Boat Party, his exhibition for the Edinburgh Art Festival 2021; the unexpected leaves a clear imprint on memory and its record in a McFadyen painting shifts us to a reconsideration of what constitutes beauty. McFadyen’s name might conjure up a tartan-clad romantic, but as with every environment he inhabits, and every aspect he considers (with the narrowed eye of the painter), he prefers cool detachment as he considers his homeland; happy to be the outsider. But the itch was clearly there, and he has opened a collaboration with two great Scottish institutions, The Scottish Gallery and Dovecot Studios, who have worked together to produce an exhibition in two venues which goes a long way to acknowledge the artist’s deep links to Scotland. Lost Boat Party is the culmination of an extraordinary eighteen months for the artist which launched his second monograph by Rowan Moore (first monograph was by David Cohen, published in 2001), and exhibitions at the Edinburgh City Art Centre and two more to follow, one at The Royal Academy, London and a retrospective at The Lowry, Manchester. All has been made possible by a combination of determination and creativity from the artist, institutions, and funders to stay with the programme, despite the backdrop of cancel and closure. Dovecot Studios celebrates the exhibition and his 70th year with the Mallaig Commission (page 54). 2

Lost Boat Party An Interview with Jock McFadyen

Why is your exhibition called Lost Boat Party? I’d gone back to painting the large fairground in The Last of England and in this new version the funfair had detached itself from the land and drifted out to sea or a swamp. The picture was completed but not yet titled. Meanwhile Little Sparta were rehearsing (Susie, Scott and Alan) and things were not going well. Scott said “we’re like a lost boat party”. Later on Susie told me what Scott had said and I immediately knew that it was the title of my new picture and now this exhibition… Little Sparta make landscape music and my work is about what happens when the landscape meets the world of the humans. The title doesn’t refer directly to asylum seekers or to the legions of boat people down the ages but it is about society in general being cast adrift and human mess. Is your 70th year important to you? It’s not important to me but it is biblical and the age when it’s considered reasonable to die as your time on earth is drawing to a close! People expect more nowadays… I certainly do, so fingers crossed. You have discussed your resistance to the concept of Scottish painting and being categorised as Scottish painter. Can you explain a bit more about this – is it that you feel Scottish painting as a genre is too vague, or is it that you don’t feel being Scottish is relevant to your painting? When I first started to exhibit in Scotland I had never heard of the Scottish Colourists, Joan Eardley was not on my radar and I was only vaguely aware of the skating vicar. Having said that, it was during my foundation course in the late sixties that I saw a coffee table book featuring an article on Alan Davie which made me want to try to become a proper artist instead of a heating and ventilating engineer like my best pal. There in full colour was Davie in the Caribbean with his beard and long hair in paint-covered overalls with his E type Jaguar in the background, living the dream. 5

While I was an art student at Chelsea, Mark Boyle became another hero and it was only later on that I became aware that Davie and Boyle were Scottish, as was one of the Chelsea tutors, Craigie Aitchison. The “Scottishness” didn’t seem important at the time because being Scottish was not the most interesting thing about these very different artists. You mentioned that you felt your art education led you to create selfreferential paintings largely about challenging painting as a genre, but that this changed after immersing yourself in the National Gallery collection. What was it about the Old Masters that led to you seeing representational painting as valid? It isn’t about representational painting. My work has always been figurative even though the early work was schematic and knowing… But after my residency at the National Gallery I finally lost faith in my cocksure method of making smart art. I loved painting but it dawned on me that in the end I didn’t believe that art which was discursive and in dialogue with its own history was terribly important and I certainly didn’t feel that it would sustain me through a lifetime of painting… and yes, working in a studio alongside 2000 Old Master pictures certainly helped with that. Your work often features architectural content, and your most recent monograph was written by an architecture critic. Does architecture inspire you, or is it just another element of a landscape? I’m excited by the interface between nature and the edges of human construction. If all the cars were suddenly removed overnight and the land was left with all the motorways and filling stations I wonder what the Martians would think when they landed… I’m trying to see things from the Martian point of view. I am a Rowan Moore fan and his writing on architecture considers every aspect of buildings from the pedestrian-eye view (humans and possibly Martians) to the budget and vanity of the client and architect. I wanted him to write about me as an artist caught in the web of the art business… or the business of being an artist. In other words I didn’t want it to be just about the art in a vacuum because art is part of whatever society forms its backdrop. What attracts you to the Scottish landscape? London is an interior. There is hardly any perception of the form or fall of the land and weather is something of little consequence to the commuters marching through the rain or shine. In Scotland there is more land than structure. If you happen to be in Glasgow or Edinburgh you can always see the landscape between the buildings, reminding you that the city is a small and temporary vanity. The land sits between the buildings, immutable, indifferent and not even bemused by our habitation… 6

In 1999 I made a show for the St Magnus Festival at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness and I drove all my painting stuff up there to work in a studio they had lent me. But I was stumped because I had become used to placing broad sweeps of paint against the detail of human structure. Nothing original in that of course, but fears of being derivative of Turner or Dutch landscape were allayed by the fact that the built environment is constantly offering up ever new horrors that it was my job to record… but in Orkney there was nothing, nothing to criticise or be cynical about. There was no counterpoint and no story, just the land and sea sitting there looking back at me. I could have driven to Kirkwall and found some graffiti, I suppose, but the game was up and I cautiously edged towards a position of simply painting the landscape without an agenda. A position which would have been untenable when I was a student, or when I was a smart young artist on the make, or the 48 year old urban realist I had become by that time. So this was a new challenge and one which the Scottish landscape continues to pose. When did you first visit the Outer Hebrides and what attracts you to paint island life? The McFadyens are from Tiree but I have only visited once, a few years ago. Alright if you want to fly a kite but it was too windy for me. As the oldest son I should have inherited the house my great grandfather Alex built on the shore but my father gave it away many years ago. When I was a kid we went “doon the watter” for the Glasgow Fair like everybody else and that would include boat trips to Rothesay, Mull and Arran and I remember all those paddle steamers, but after Orkney I became more curious and now visit Harris and the Uists to see our friend Mary Miers. None of that is hugely significant, because everywhere I visit finds a way into my pictures whether it’s Berlin, Belfast, New York, Chicago or Cramond Island, but my main locations are London and its estuary and Scotland and its islands because it’s where I spend most time. I’m a terrible traveller and don’t like to go far from France, London or Scotland although Italy is always very tempting. What do you love most about Edinburgh? I visited Edinburgh for the first time in 1978 as a 27 year old Londoner and I was blown away. I used to make little films when I was a young artist and some of these were included in the Edinburgh Film Festival of that year. After a long drive arriving in Princes Street with the castle and the gardens with the festival in full flow I couldn’t believe that Edinburgh was a Scottish town. The Crags, the landscape, the architecture and the water. All the Edinburgh bullet points hit me in one blast. I was born and brought up in the west of Scotland until the age of 15 but had never visited the capital. 7

The Festival closed with the famous firework display which in those days was free to all and I headed to Princes Street Gardens to see a symphony orchestra playing the 1812 and when they actually fired the cannons from the castle I decided that by hook or by crook I would buy a home in this city one day. It wasn’t until 1989 that I had made enough from my pictures to get something. I have never had a single relative from Edinburgh and my mother couldn’t understand what I had done, after all we are a Glaswegian family… Can you explain what inspired the Lunatic Series? I love Calton Hill. I used to walk my greyhound up the hill after dinner and stare at the sky until it got dark. Given that you trained in London, live in London and have made your career there, why is it important for you to exhibit here? I have been exhibiting in Scotland since 1979 when I made a show at the New 57 Gallery (now the upper floor of the Fruitmarket) and have shown regularly since, making exhibitions in Glasgow and Orkney as well as Edinburgh, and it is very important to me because although Scottish I am not part of the Scottish art scene. When I made a show at the Talbot Rice for the 1998 Festival one reviewer wrote “despite his name Jock McFadyen was born in England…”, My Scottish wife was furious and rang the newspaper demanding to know what part of England Paisley was in… I never question why exhibiting in Scotland is important to me, it just seems the natural thing to do. What did you learn most about curating the summer show at the RA in 2019? What did you enjoy most about the experience? Or what didn’t you enjoy? We know that you have been generous in your attitude to other painters. What I enjoyed about the Summer Show was the excitement and challenge of making a show from so much great work. We hung 1,600 works in 9 days including a beautiful watercolour by a nine year old boy as well as a huge Anselm Keifer which was so valuable that the insurers insisted on a roped barrier. I preferred the watercolour. Amateurs rub shoulders with Turner prizewinners and students rub shoulders with artists with huge international reputations in stunning top-lit galleries with walls that have been graced by Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo as well as Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. And to cap it all the proceeds pay for the only free art school in the UK. What’s not to like? What I didn’t enjoy was that it often gets a rough ride from certain art journalists who don’t seem to understand the concept that the exhibition is an annual overview of new work submitted by artists and selected by artists and it always amuses me that the naysayers never criticise Art Basel Miami or Frieze, 8

uncurated trade fairs with works selected by dealers from stock. Perhaps it’s the quality of the Champagne… What did you most enjoy most about your recent exhibition Jock McFadyen Goes to the Pictures at the City Art Centre? Why did you want to pair your works with works from their collection? I have always loved the City Art Centre and its commitment to Scottish art. It seems to have ploughed a straight furrow with its collecting policy and maintained a cool distance from the vagaries and caprice of fashion. I love it for what it isn’t and the fact that it sits across the road to give balance to the ubercool Fruitmarket and introduces ignoramuses like me to the likes of Nasmyth, Cowie, Begbie and Daft Jamie. It contains and displays great riches without raising its voice, an oasis in the centre of Edinburgh… It was a great privilege to wander through the collection and pull out a tiny fraction of its treasures to square up to. What do you enjoy most about being a painter? What do you hate most about being a painter? A: the paint B: the paint Was it a conscious decision to shift away from the human figure? It dawned on me that when the people in my pictures were centre stage I could paint the figure fairly quickly but then spend the next few weeks struggling with the structural and formal problems of the picture, or more bluntly with the ‘background’. I was spending more time on the backgrounds than the figures and the irony is that the viewer engages with the figure immediately. The figure is king, as any advertiser knows, and narrative follows close behind… The people in the paintings had been getting smaller in fact but after designing a ballet where the figures were real people - the dancers - I decided to completely remove the figure from my painting to see where it took me. It felt as if the figure had been a kind of pretext or starting point, or possibly just a bad driving habit and that I had been painting places all along… It was around this time that I first hooked up with Iain Sinclair, whose books about London and the estuary (Lights Out For the Territory, Downriver etc) struck a chord with me and felt a bit like a parallel to my work in painting. We did a lot of walking about along the Thames and out to Purfleet (where Dracula lived). Sinclair felt like a fellow traveller and we worked together on one or two shows and events including one about the A13 at Wapping Project in 2004. My main influences are not contemporary art but film, literature and music, particularly music made by my wife Susie Honeyman and her bands including the Mekons and Little Sparta. Also architecture (The A13 show was funded by 9

the Architecture Foundation). All this helps to give context to my work and helps me to be comfortable outside the unfolding story of art… What is your fascination with “cool”? I haven’t been fascinated by ‘cool’ since about 1965… but the art business, like the music and fashion business runs on credibility. You are either in or out. In is great and out is shit. For serious artists this is of no consequence. Even when you are in it is a distraction but it doesn’t matter because if you live long enough you will soon be out and things will be clearer but you will have made a few quid. But having a voice is important too and being cool is an amplification. When I was a teenage dope smoking biker hippie in Stoke on Trent in the sixties we all hated straights. Straights were the enemy. Nothing changes. Did you enjoy teaching art? We are aware of your influence on a generation of painters and it is quite unusual for an artist to be so generous to others For 25 years I visited The Slade every Thursday. The Slade is a famous old art school in Bloomsbury and I loved being there and looked forward to Thursdays because it was the one day in the week when I could leave my studio and go into the West End. I loved the social life and the atmosphere. Euan Uglow, Tess Jaray, John Hoyland, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville and Bruce McLean were also there and visiting artists passed through from all over the world. But the main vibe was from the students, many of whom went on to become major artists with brilliant careers. It was very moving to see young artists rise up and surprise you with their vision and confidence. I was a crap teacher really, more of a noisy bystander. I packed it in 16 years ago as I felt that art school was becoming a bit more school and a bit less art… Do you feel like a Lost Boat Party when you visit your mother in Carnoustie? No I feel like I’m coming into the harbour and after a while I feel like it’s time to cast off… I never lived in Carnoustie because my family moved there after I had moved to London but I think it was a culture shock for them moving from suburban Glasgow to the east coast, possibly even more than it was when they moved to England for six years. What are your future plans? My main plan is to try to stay alive as long as possible and just see where the pictures take me. Do you enjoy making editioned prints? I have never been much for printmaking although I have worked with some terrific people over the years including Chris and Bob at Advanced, Alan Cox, Ken Duffy and Mike Taylor. But I am too impatient for the process to deliver a small image when I could be moving paint about on a big surface. In recent years 10

I have been making digital prints derived from an original collage of painting and photography, usually hand coloured and editioned in runs of 50. I love doing these and I’m making more and more of them with a fabulous printer in Hoxton who seems to understand me… What do you think of the Mallaig rug commission? I’m thrilled and flattered that Dovecot is interested in my work. The intriguing thing that Dovecot always seems to do is take the fluidity and accident of paint by the scruff of the neck and freeze it into another material, and with that comes the material’s own aesthetic. It is a weird transmutation. Gestures become frozen and colour which was melded in the heat of painting’s moment becomes deliberate, chosen coolly by the weaver. It is as if the rug is a post mortem of the painting and the rug is saying “this is what you did… face it!” And it is a revelation… Are you always going to live in London? Would you consider moving back to Scotland or do you plan to live in France? I’ve been living in London for half a century and it is my principal home and workplace so I suppose I don’t know any better, but I can only tolerate London if I can go to my French place and my Scottish place regularly. I will always keep my studio there but often dream of swapping my house for a pied-à-terre and a farm in Kent. The pollution and the aggression are a real drag sometimes but I’m not quite ready to take my toe off the bottom and am scared to because I don’t know how it would affect my pictures and my life. London is the devil but it’s the devil that knows me best.

2 Lost Boat Party oil on canvas, 152 x 339 cm 2020

3 The Last Party oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm 2020

4 Ghost Boat oil on board, 70 x 94.5 cm 2021

5 Carnoustie oil on canvas, 150 x 339 cm 2020

6 Jackson’s Ford oil on canvas, 102 x 137 cm 2017

7 From Jura looking West oil on canvas, 50.5 x 76 cm 2010

8 Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue oil on canvas, 102 x 152.5 cm 2017

9 Pink Flats oil on canvas, 152.5 x 339 cm 2006

10 Arthur’s Seat oil on canvas, 45 x 68 cm 2021

11 Looking North oil on aluminium, 59 x 77 cm 2021

12 Somewhere on Harris 4 oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm 2018

13 The Beach oil on canvas, 152 x 339 cm 2017

14 Oasis oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm 2021

15 Salisbury Crags oil on canvas over board, 46 x 63 cm 2021

16 Looking Out to Sea 4 oil on canvas, 112 x 169 cm 2005

17 Intermarche 5 oil on board, 49.5 x 76 cm 2019

18 Falling Light oil on board, 61 x 90 cm 2019

19 Terminus oil on board, 21.5 x 33 cm 2007

20 Ghost Boat 2 oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm 2021

21 Orthe oil on board, 110 x 165 cm 2021

22 Fife oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm 2019

23 From Calton Hill 9 oil on board, 46 x 80 cm 2019

24 From Calton Hill 10 oil on canvas, 45.5 x 70 cm 2019

25 Estuary Music oil on canvas, 152 x 339 cm 2007

26 Somewhere in the Hebrides oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm 2017

27 Uist oil on canvas, 97 x 150 cm 2011

28 Coastal oil on board, 82 x 122 cm 2021

29 Lost Boat Party 2 oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm 2020

30 Calton Hill 5 oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm 2017

31 Mallaig 2 oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm 2018

32 Mallaig 4 oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm 2018

33 Mallaig 6 oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm 2021

34 Jock McFadyen: The Mallaig Commission Gun-tufted wool on canvas, 150 x 225 cm 2021 Created by Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh

Biography

Jock McFadyen was born in Paisley in 1950 and moved to England aged 15 in 1966. He gained his BA and MA from Chelsea School of Art which he attended from 1973 - 1977. His first solo show was held at the Acme Gallery in London in 1978. Since then he has had over 40 solo exhibitions including The National Gallery (residency show), Camden Arts Centre, Imperial War Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Talbot Rice (Edinburgh Festival) and Pier Art Centre (St Magnus Festival). His work has been included in a great many mixed exhibitions in the UK and abroad including John Moores, Hayward Annual and The British Art Show. In 1981 McFadyen was appointed Artist in Residence at The National Gallery London and in 1991 he designed sets and costumes for Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s last ballet, The Judas Tree, at The Royal Opera House Covent Garden. McFadyen was elected to The Royal Academy in 2012 and in 2019 he was chief curator of that year’s Summer Exhibition. McFadyen’s work is held in 40 public museum collections including Tate Gallery, National Gallery, V&A, British Museum and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art as well as many corporate and private collections in the UK and abroad. McFadyen lives and works in London, Edinburgh and France.

Awards / Commissions Elected Royal Academician 2012 Designed sets and costumes for Kenneth MacMillan’s The Judas Tree, Royal Opera House 1992 Prize winner John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 17 1991 Artist in Residence at the National Gallery, London 1981 Arts Council Major Award 1979 Arts Council Award for film-making project 1978 Public Collections Amnesty International Arts Council of Great Britain Ashmolean Museum, Oxford BBC, London Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery British Council, London British Museum, London City of Edinburgh Contemporary Art Society, London Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery Glasgow Art Galleries The Government Art Collection The Guildhall, London Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow The Imperial War Museum, London Kunsthalle, Hamburg Leicester Education Authority

Lillie Art Gallery, Glasgow Manchester Art Gallery The Museum of London The National Gallery, London Pier Arts Centre, Orkney Scottish Arts Council Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Sheffield City Art Gallery Tate Gallery, London The Theatre Museum, London University of Dundee The Victoria and Albert Museum, London Walsall Museum and Art Gallery Whitworth Gallery, Manchester Wolverhampton City Art Gallery Worcester Art Gallery Corporate Collections

Many private and corporate collections, including Clifford Chance, Deutsche Bank, Fleming Collection and Prudential

Published by The Scottish Gallery and Dovecot Studios, May 2021 The exhibition can be viewed online at: dovecotstudios.com/exhibitions/jock-mcfadyen-lost-boat-party The artist’s work can be viewed online at: scottish-gallery.co.uk/artist/jock-mcfadyen ISBN: 978-1-912900-36-7 All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers. Photos by Ian Georgeson: 3, 4 Photo by Keith Hunter Photography: 55 Photos by Lucid Plane: 12, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 27, 29, 30, 34, 37, 42, 44, 45, 47 Photos by John McKenzie: 1, 19, 36, 40, 41, 48

The Scottish Gallery 16 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk scottish-gallery.co.uk

Dovecot Studios Ltd 10 Infirmary Street Edinburgh EH1 1LT +44 (0) 131 550 3660 info@dovecotstudios.com dovecotstudios.com

Edinburgh Art Festival Institut Français d’Ecosse West Parliament Square Edinburgh EH1 1RF