29 March 2018
We’re back at the Gallery of Modern Art to discuss the third instalment of NOW, a series of exhibitions which highlight the range of quality of work being made by artists associated with Scotland and across the globe.
At the heart of the exhibition is five rooms dedicated to British artist Jenny Saville. She is best known for her monumental paintings of the naked female body which she first developed for her graduation exhibition at Glasgow School of Art in 1992. It was during this time that she came to the attention of Charles Saatchi who commissioned Saville to create 15 new works which were later displayed at the Saatchi Gallery.
On show will be paintings and drawings spanning her 25-year career including a new acquisition for the collection – Study for Branded 1992. More recently, Saville has been working with charcoal and pastel in which she layers imagery to suggest movement. She draws from a range of sources including art of the past, graffiti, children’s drawings and ancient myths.
We will be concentrating on Jenny’s work for this session and will be joined by artist Karen Strang, who also studied at Glasgow School of Art, to discuss the work.
21 September 2006 at 6pm
To kick off the Autumn season, we will be taking a closer look at one of the most talked about shows at this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, Ron Mueck.
The Australian-born, London-based artist is the first contemporary artist to be given a solo show in the refurbished galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy Building. The exhibition contains ten works, including the recently completed monumental sculpture of a newborn baby, A Girl (2006), five new works first shown at the Fondation Cartier in Paris earlier this year, and four previous works including Man in a Boat (2002) and Ghost (1998).
Ron Mueck previously worked in the special effects industry, but his career took a dramatic turn when he was asked by his mother-in-law, the artist Paula Rego, to create a model of Pinocchio. The sculpture was noticed and bought by Charles Saatchi. So impressed was Saatchi by this work that he asked Mueck to create more and to appear in the 1997 Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. The now infamous sculpture, Dead Dead (1996-97), a half life-size replica of his dead fathers naked body, drew considerable attention.
Some critics love Muecks work. Others hate it. Jonathan Jones of The Guardian described the exhibition as ‘blank, empty and brainless’. You will get the chance to make up your own mind up as we discuss the works with our special guest, Edinburgh artist Wendy McMurdo.
