Having originally studied painting, Batchelor has, over the last twenty years, made colour his leitmotif. Not the colour found in nature, but the synthetic colour of the illuminated street sign and lurid glare of the nocturnal metropolis. Whether using conventional materials such as pencil, ink, pastel, gouache and acrylic, or highlighter pen, spray or gloss paint and industrial tape; whether making drawings or paintings intended to be simply drawings or paintings or making carefully-plotted diagrams of or proposals for sculpture, Batchelor’s two-dimensional works show how formal rigour and a modernist aesthetic can be subverted by the deployment of intense, exuberant colour.

This exhibition represents a first considered attempt to analyse Batchelor’s graphic register by critically reflecting on his use of surface, painting, drawing, and colour. It will present work created over the last two decades, including drawings, paintings, proposals, diagrams and preparatory drawings for sculpture.

The exhibition is curated by Andrea Schlieker, who worked with Batchelor as Director of the Folkestone Triennial in 2008, and will be accompanied by a catalogue with an interview with the artist conducted by Schlieker, and new writing by Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery and internationally renowned writer and curator Rudi Fuchs.

New edition Atomic Orange, 2013, 30 x 21cm
Screenprint in an edition of 100, signed and numbered by the artist.
This new screenprint has been generously created by David Batchelor specially for this exhibition.
All proceeds from sales will directly benefit The Fruitmarket Gallery and Spike Island.
Price: £120 unframed, £175 framed

New publication David Batchelor: Flatlands, £16.95
A new publication will accompany the exhibition. Published by The Fruitmarket Gallery, it is fully illustrated with images of all the paintings and drawings in the exhibition – reproduced here for the first time
– and features newly-commissioned texts by Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery, and Rudi Fuchs, writer, curator and previously the longstanding Director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, as well as a conversation between the artist and the curator of the exhibition, Andrea Schlieker, which took place over the planning of the show. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Spike Island, Bristol, where it will be presented in November 2013.

Notes to editors

David Batchelor is based in London. He was born in Dundee in 1955. He studied Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham (1975–78), and Cultural Theory at Birmingham University (1978–80).

Andrea Schlieker is a freelance curator, lecturer and writer. She curated the Folkestone Triennial 2011 having conceived and curated the inaugural Folkestone Triennial ‘Tales of Time and Space’ in 2008. She recently curated Mark Wallinger’s ‘Sinema Amnesia’ for the My City public art project in Turkey (2010-11) and was co-curator of the British Art Show 6. Schlieker has a long track record in curating national and international exhibitions as well as major public art projects. A member of the Public Realm Commissioning Advisory Panel for the Olympic Park, Schlieker was also a juror for the 2009 Turner Prize. She lectures regularly in Britain and abroad.

The Fruitmarket Gallery aims to make contemporary art accessible, without compromising art or under-estimating audiences.

The Gallery presents world-class, thought-provoking and challenging art made by both Scottish and international artists in an environment that is welcoming, engaging, informative and always free. The Gallery aims to give audiences the confidence to enjoy contemporary art and to understand the importance of art, artists, culture and creativity and their impact on individual and collective lives.
The Gallery’s creative programme includes exhibitions, commissions, interpretation, education and publishing in both print and electronic forms. Gallery facilities include a bookshop and a café. The Gallery is physically accessible and family-friendly.

Next Exhibition
Gabriel Orozco
Edinburgh Art Festival Exhibition 1 August – 19 October 2013
A new exhibition of work by Gabriel Orozco, one of the foremost international artists of our age whose consistently innovative practice captures the imagination while powerfully engaging with key material and conceptual issues of what it is to make art now. This exhibition cuts a conceptual slice through Orozco’s practice, tracing the occurrence and recurrence of a circular geometric motif – part of a way of thinking for Orozco, a way to organise ideas of structure, organisation and perspective. A highlight is a series of large geometric works on acetate, made in the mid 1990s, yet never before exhibited.