Archives

Writing for Other Artists

Mar 25

2022

Contemporary Visual Art, Gregor Wright, Writing for Other Artists

Why are the paintings (not) televised? Some thoughts on the work of Gregor Wright

In the 2018 exhibition ‘Magic Stuff’, Gregor Wright showed a series of what he called ‘screen-based paintings’, digital works on UHD screens; abstract in appearance, and (implicitly) animate in nature. In the past, Gregor’s work has incorporated painting, drawing, sculpture (along with activities such as making fanzines and printing T-shirts), but the screens are prominent in the current body of work—and, as such, will be the focus of these reflections. Read more →

Apr 16

2021

Art History, Cathy Wilkes, Clare Stephenson, Contemporary Visual Art, Salvador Dali, Surrealism, Surrealism and Scotland

The Spookier School: (Anti-)Surrealism in Glasgow

This paper poses the question ‘What is Surrealism?’ from a particular vantage point: that of a practicing artist who has lived and worked in Glasgow since the turn of the twenty-first century. With reference to my own art practice, I will consider my troubled relationship with the category ‘Surrealism,’ as contingent with the specific trends of the Glasgow art-scene during this period and the broader international context.

In particular, I will address the apparent interest in surrealist methods demonstrated by Glasgow-based artists in the early 2000s (in opposition to the neo-conceptual and relational aesthetic genres that had placed prominent Glasgow artists on the international map in the previous decade). Whilst acknowledging the value of research into the historical surrealist movement (for shaping a more rigorous understanding of my practice), I will also recount my frustrations with the movement as they emerge in two areas: doubt regarding the ‘revolutionary’ power of the unconscious, and the potential valorisation of ‘linear’ narrative thinking – even in the domain of the ‘fantastic’. Read more →

Mar 19

2020

Andrew Kerr, Ekphrasis, Writing as Creative Practice, Writing for Other Artists

Bright Hook (excerpt)

 

[IV]

As for the light,
the light will not help you,
lyric it may be,
on the old wall,
in the nook where
the dust-clouds gather
(moutons the French call them‑
“little sheep”), the hissing
of these sad ciphers
at the end of “mist”
at the end of “dust”
will not help you either, Read more →

Feb 28

2019

Contemporary Visual Art, Ekphrasis, Lotte Gertz, The Still Life, Writing for Other Artists

Paintings with Legs

‘and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down’(1)

Inger Christensen

When I visit Lotte in her studio, and I look at one of her paintings, I see legs. These L-shapes have been made from cut-wood shapes smeared with ink, pressed against the calico to leave a mark (a sort of wood-cut, a sort of mono-printing). And all I can see is legs. But that seems like a heavy cumbersome word—“legs”—too cumbersome—and I keep the word to myself, until the artist says it—legs. Read more →

Jun 08

2012

Art History, Contemporary Visual Art, Lotte Gertz, The Still Life, Writing for Other Artists

Lotte Gertz: New Work

Gertz’s latest series of paintings and prints were made in a studio that occupied the same space as her general living-area and are full of the sense of immediacy that results from an artist’s direct response to ‘close-at-hand’ materials and objects.

Gertz’s sources include those items she ‘stumbles-upon’ again and again in the intimate chaos that surrounds her as she works: a space where ‘living’ encroaches upon ‘making’, where  discarded playthings (a stuffed panda-toy or a wooden Pinocchio-figure) might be found side-by-side with DIY tools, painting and printmaking materials, half-eaten slices of fruit or cheese, still-to-be-drunk cups of tea, and photographs of famous artworks from books and magazines. Read more →