Informacje o wystawie
Wystawa ośmiu współczesnych artystów ze Szkocji przygotowana została przez Instytut Brytyjski w Warszawie. Prezentuje prace 33 twórców urodzonych w latach 50/60-ych, m.in. J. Bellany, S. Cambell, K. Whiteford.
Tekst z katalogu.
Autor: Margaret Mackay
There is currently a great deal of interest in contemporary Scottish art and the aim of this exhibition is to show something, through prints, of its nature and strength. Rather than attempt an overall survey only a small selection of artists has been made allowing the graphic work of each to be represented adequately.
Most arę primarily painters. For some, printmaking is an important part of their work, others have to date made only a few prints.
At the centre is a group of the young figurative artists who graduated from Scottish Art schools in the 1980s. Campbell, Currie, Hardie, Howson and Wiszniewski are among those who have already made a name for themselves nationally and on the international scene. John Bellany and Bruce McLean belong to an earlier generation. Both graduated in the 1960s and went on to live and work in London. In very different ways both have been influential and can be seen as forerunners in the recent developments of Scottish art.
Bellany, a painter who rejected the fashionable modernism of the 1960s and returned to the realism of the Northern European tradition as a source; and McLean, who trained as a sculptor, with his witty and subversive attacks on the pretentious and pompous in art. Kate Whiteford works outside the figurative mainstream. Her imagery deriyes from the often mysterious signs and symbols of earlier civilizations, particularly prehistoric Pictish carvings in Scotland.
The prints in the exhibition were made between 1983 and 1989. Almost all were produced in those particularly Scottish institutions: the Print Workshops or Studios. The first workshop dates from 1967. In the mid-1960s an American then living in Edinburgh, Robert Cox, opened a bookshop cum gallery with the intention of selling modern prints. It was short lived, closing in 1966. However, in 1967 Cox managed, with the help of a small Scottish Arts Council grant and a group of artists willing to act as council members, to re-open the Gallery with himself as manager, as the Printmakers Workshop Ltd. Although tiny it was at that time unique in Britain. It was publicly funded and anyone could become a member. Commercial studios existed but there were no studios to which artists had open access unless they were in a position to use art college facilities and expertise. The 19 50 s had seen a revival of interest in printmaking which continued throughout the 1960s and there was an evident need for the new kind of workshops. The popularity of silk screen as a medium during the 19 7 Os proved to be a further impetus to the expansion of the idea. Glasgow Print Studio was opened in 1972 and Peacock Printmakers, Aberdeen in 1974. The studios of Glasgow and Edinburgh have both moved into larger workshop and gallery spaces and studios have been established in both Dundee and Inverness. Co-publications with invited artists of the kind in this exhibition are now common.
Prints from three portfolios, The Scottish Bestiary, The Old Man and the Sea and Story from Glasgow are included. They were published by Charles Booth Clibborn, who graduated from Edinburgh University in 1986, and set up The Paragon Press the same year.
Ali sizes given in this leaflet arę image sizes, with height preceding width.
