Dieter Roth Diaries
Exhibition 2 August – 14 October 2012
Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998) was an artist of astonishing breadth and diversity, producing books, graphics, drawings, paintings, sculptures, assemblages and installation works involving sounds recordings and video. He was also a composer, musician, poet and writer. Art and life for Roth flowed readily into each other, and much of the material for his artistic output came from his everyday life.
Roth kept a diary throughout his life. A space to record appointments, addresses, lists and deadlines but also ideas, drawings, photographs and poems, his diaries teem with graphic exuberance, and proved a rich source for his work. The Fruitmarket Gallery is fortunate in being able to show Roth’s diaries to the public for the first time, in an exhibition which explores the importance of the idea of diary-keeping in the work of this influential artist.
Many of Roth’s major works can be understood as kinds of diaries. In the mid 1970s, he attempted to record a year of his life through rubbish, collecting and preserving all rubbish less than one or two sixteenths of an inch thick. The resulting work, Flat Waste, celebrates and subverts the ordering principle of the diary. Solo Scenes, a vast video diary, records the last year of Roth’s life on 135 video monitors.
Although Roth died in 1998, his work remains of interest to artists and audiences alike. He has a particular connection to Edinburgh, having been part of Richard Demarco’s exhibition Strategy Get Arts at the 1970 International Festival. This will be the first time his work has been seen in Scotland since.
Galápagos
2 November 2012 – 13 January 2013
Curated by Bergit Arends and Greg Hilty
This exhibition brings together work by twelve artists who have traveled to and spent time in the Galápagos archipelago through a residency programme initiated in 2007. Each artist was invited on the basis of their profound engagement with the opportunity, and each found the experience transformative for their artistic practice and their life.
Collectively they demonstrate considerable variety of approach and discipline within the visual arts, ranging across film-making, video, installation, painting, sculpture, photography, animation, illustration and sound. The artists also brought to the project, and developed during it, considerable skills of communication and interaction with scientists, tourists, and local inhabitants of the Galápagos, allowing them to explore subjects of scientific or social interest consistent with their artistic concerns in depth. The works they have produced individually give compelling form to profound personal visions developed through their experiences on the islands. Shown together, they build a unique dreamscape of a remarkable place, messages for mankind from the stark realities of Galápagos.
Artists include Jyll Bradley, Paulo Catrica, Filipa César, Marcus Coates, Dorothy Cross (with actor Fiona Shaw), Alexis Deacon, Jeremy Deller, Tania Kovats, Kaffe Matthews, Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt), Alison Turnbull.
In collaboration with Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon and The Bluecoat, Liverpool. The Gulbenkian Galápagos Artists’ Residency Programme and Galápagos exhibition were organised by the Galapagos Conservation Trust in partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Additional support has come from the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Natural History Museum.
