29 February 2024
This month we will be joined by Senior Curator Stephanie Straine as we head to Modern One’s new exhibition Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time.
South Korean-born, London-based Do Ho Suh (born 1962, Seoul) is one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. This expansive exhibition will explore the foundational role that drawing and paper play in Suh’s artistic practice, focusing on his collaborative methods, experimental techniques, and innovative use of materials.
Suh creates engaging and imaginative artworks that ask questions about home and identity. ‘Home’ is so much more than the place you live. Your own version of home is a fundamental part of who you are, influenced by your day-to-day life and your deepest memories. Do Ho Suh explores some of these fascinating ideas in his first solo exhibition in Scotland, taking over an entire level of Modern One. It will present the artist’s complex and compelling thread drawings – in which cotton thread is embedded in handmade paper – alongside architectural rubbings, paper sculptures, cyanotypes, printmaking and watercolours.
There will also be an immersive installation of Suh’s famed ‘hubs’, life-size sculptures that recreate physical spaces in colourful, translucent fabric. Visitors to the exhibition can enter and move through this innovative reimagining of places meaningful to the artist and his life.
30 June 2022
This month we will be heading along to the City Art Centre for their new exhibition Will Maclean: Points of Departure, which is also presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2022. To guide us round this exhibition we will be joined by Curatorial and Conservation Manager, David Patterson, as well as the artist himself, Will Maclean.
Will Maclean (b.1941) is one of the outstanding artists of his generation. His work is anchored in the history, archaeology, and literature of the Scottish Highlands and the Highland people, as well as his family background and personal associations with the sea.
Best known for his wall constructions, this major retrospective will span almost 50 years of work and embrace every facet of his practice – his constructions, drawings, prints, sculptures, artistic collaborations, video productions and outdoor installations. Combining exquisitely hand-made pieces with found or (on occasions) mass produced objects, his work balances between simplicity and complexity and invites the viewer to linger, to admire and to ponder the universal themes which he explores.
Accompanied by a new publication, the exhibition will be drawn from public and private collections, with many of the exhibits going on public display for the first time. The exhibition promises to be a rich visual feast for anyone with an interest in Scottish art and history.
26 May 2022
This month we will be making our way to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to see Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life, where we will be joined by curator Leila Riszko.
Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life is a major retrospective, spanning the artist’s entire career charting the development of her practice, her engagement with political and societal change, and the events in her personal life which shaped her work. It features more than 120 works, lent from public and private collections, including renowned sculptures as well as rarely seen drawings and paintings.
The exhibition displays some of Hepworth’s most celebrated sculptures including the modern abstract carving that launched her career, her iconic strung sculptures, and later large-scale bronze and carved sculptures. It will also bring insight to Hepworth’s wide-ranging interests – such as dance, theatre, music, religion, politics, and science – and show how they infused her artistic practice.
Art & Life has been curated by Eleanor Clayton and organised by The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland, and Tate St Ives.
25 January 2018
For our first event for 2018, we will be exploring NOW – the second in a series of exhibitions which highlight the range of quality of work being made by artists associated with Scotland and across the globe.
The centrepiece of NOW is new and recent sound installations, paintings and photographs by the Turner Prize-winning artist, Susan Philipsz. Born in Glasgow in 1965 and now based in Berlin, she is renowned for her installations and how sound can trigger memory and heighten perception.
Seven Tears (2016) features seven synchronized record players each playing a single note taken from the baroque lament, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1604) by the English composer, John Dowland (1563-1626). The original composition was written for viol and lute and is based on the motif of a falling tear. Philipsz has isolated individual tones from the original song, making it less recognisable. Each note was produced by running a wet finger around the rim of glasses filled with water. These recordings have then been rendered onto transparent vinyl records.
To complement Seven Tears, Philipsz has made a series of salt paintings, produced by submerging painted canvases into a bath of salted water.
Other featured artists include paintings by Michael Armitage, a newly commissioned installation by Sarah Rose, photographs by Yto Barrada, video installation by Hiwa K and a display pairing 19th-century dolls with drawings by Kate Davis.
A key thread woven through the exhibition is storytelling and ideas around collecting, play, legacy, memory and loss.
27 October 2011 at 6pm
This month, you are invited to Tony Cragg’s first museum show in Britain for more than a decade. This exhibition – which focuses mainly on Cragg’s work from the past 15 years – features around 50 major sculptures as well as drawings.
Craggs contribution to the debate on contemporary sculpture practice is considerable. Early works of the 1970s were mostly made with found objects through which Cragg questioned and tested possibilities. Later pieces demonstrated a shift of interest to surface quality and how that could be manipulated, and a play with unlikely juxtapositions of materials. Results vary from the exquisite to the grotesque, from the refined to the crude, in bronze, steel, plastic, rubber, glass, wood, plaster and more.
Joining us to explore Cragg’s investigative and intuitive approach to sculpture, will be sculptor David Moore. David’s work, which focuses on form and space, is widely exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent public art commissions have included works produced in collaboration with artist Kate Davis for the Docklands Light Railway, Langdon Park, London and The Cut screened at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. David is currently the Head of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art.
