Exhibition Programme Archive 2009
Claire Barclary Openwide
Exhibition 7 February – 12 April
Scottish artist Claire Barclay’s work is large in scale and interventionist in ambition, typically taking the form of installations made in situ and partically in response to the space in which they are shown. These installations bring collections of finely-crafted, strangely ambiguous sculptural objects together in precisely plotted relationships. Combining craft and machine-finished processes, and common and precious materials, Barclay’s art is precariously balanced between function and dysfunction, understanding and bafflement.
This exhibition aims to present the range of Barclay’s practice, showing new work created, as is her prevailing method, specially for the Gallery, alongside selected sculptures made throughout her career and recognisable from previous showings. This is the first time that Barclay has shown new and existing work together, and the exhibition looks backwards as well as forwards, dramatising the artist’s resistance to the idea that anything the artist makes may ever actually be finished – that the work is still, conceptually at least, wide open.
Exhibition supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Henry Moore Foundation
Downloads:
• Exhibition guide
• Talks and Events recordings
Available from the bookshop:
• Publication, Claire Barclay: Openwide, 160pp monograph
• DVD 13 mins
• Postcards
Willie Doherty Buried
Exhibition 25 April – 12 July 2009
Willie Doherty’s work is rooted in the political and geographical landscape of his native Northern Ireland. It expands out of this context to address universally significant themes of individual and collective subjectivity and responsibility, creating a persistently significant framework within which to think about who we are, and where and how we live.
This exhibition brings together a selection of new and existing videos and photographs, and includes a new film, Buried, made specially for the exhibition. Buried was made and is shown in the context of Ghost Story, first shown at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Both works deal with memory, its repression and return, but while Ghost Story is narrated by a male voice piecing together a story of remembered horror, Buried relies on ambient sound to animate its dark, almost gothic woodland imagery. The works influence each other, the recounted memories, dreams and premonitions of Ghost Story seeping into Buried.
Also in the exhibition is Re-Run (2002), a double-screen projection showing a man on a bridge simultaneously running towards and away from the viewer. The film was shot on the Craigavon Bridge over the River Foyle, which literally and symbolically divides the Catholic and Protestant communities in Derry. It is shown together with a new series of photographs taken in Belfast, in which images taken now are joined by one or two taken in 1988 but never shown. The artist’s return to his own history has a resonance with the imagery of remembering and forgetting that motivate Ghost Story and Buried and much of his work.
Exhibition supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Downloads:
• Exhibition guide
• Talks and Events recordings
Available from the bookshop:
• Publication, Willie Doherty, Buried 160pp monograph
• DVD 13 mins
• Postcards
Eva Hesse Studiowork
Exhibition 5 August – 25 October 2009
The Fruitmarket Gallery’s 2009 Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition is a solo presentation of the work of German-born American artist Eva Hesse, a major figure in post-war art. The exhibition is the result of new research by renowned Hesse scholar Professor Briony Fer and is curated by Fer and Barry Rosen, Director of The Estate of Eva Hesse.
Throughout her career, Eva Hesse produced a large number of small, experimental works alongside her large-scale sculpture. These objects, the so-called test pieces, were made in a wide range of materials, including latex, wire-mesh, sculp-metal, wax and cheesecloth. This exhibition proposes that rather than simply technical explorations, these small objects radically put into question conventional notions of what sculpture is. Re-naming them studioworks rather than test pieces, the exhibition and the accompanying major publication offer a timely new interpretation of Hesse’s historical position, as well as highlighting her relevance for contemporary art now.
Downloads:
• Exhibition guide
• Talks and Events recordings
Available from the bookshop:
• Publication, Eva Hesse, Studiowork, 240pp
• DVD 15 mins
• Postcards
The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing
Exhibition 14 November 2009 – 10 January 2010
This exhibition of new and recent work by eleven highly acclaimed young international artists explores a diverse range of contemporary approaches to drawing. From small, intricately-crafted pencil drawings to expanded installations in which the ‘drawn’ lines are made from tape, or in which drawings mutate into animation, this exhibition celebrates a contemporary resurgence in drawing. This exhibition brings together artists from several continents, all using drawing to communicate their ideas, dreams and interpretations of the world.
Artists in the exhibition are: Jan Albers (Germany), Michaël Borremans (Belgium), Marc Brandenburg (Germany), Fernando Bryce (Peru/Germany), Kate Davis (New Zealand/Scotland), Monika Grzymala (Poland), David Haines (England/ Netherlands), Kim Hiorthøy (Norway), Garrett Phelan (Ireland), Naoyuki Tsuji (Japan), Sandra Vasquez de la Horra (Chile).
A Hayward Touring exhibition organised in collaboration with mima, (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) and the Bluecoat, Liverpool, in association with The Drawing Room, London
Downloads:
• Exhibition guide
• Talks and Events recordings
Available from the bookshop:
• Publication, The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing 120pp softback Published by Hayward Publishing
• DVD 15mins
