25 July 2013, 6-7.30pm
For our July Spin evening, we will be back at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to discuss the exhibition of new paintings by Ken Currie. We will be joined by Glasgow-based artist Sharon Thomas who, amongst other projects, has recently exhibited Herstory, a series of portraits of notable women in public life in Scotland.
Ken Currie is one of the outstanding figurative painters of his generation renowned in the context of the Portrait Gallery for his haunting, luminous painting Three Oncologists (2002) and his self-portrait Unfamiliar Reflection (2006). Widely admired for his intensely powerful and provocative work, the portraiture of the Old Masters, such as Velázquez, Goya and David has always fascinated Currie, and his own work often references similar traditions and concerns. In this exhibition of new paintings, on public view for the first time, Currie meditates upon the idea of the portrait, its origins and purposes, and its continued significance in the modern world.
27 November 2008 at 6pm
Gerhard Richter is one of the most influential and important contemporary artists in the world today.
Drawn from a small, select number of private collections, this exhibition provides an unrivalled overview of the artist’s career from 1963 to the present. His paintings, both figurative and abstract, have had a huge impact on several generations of artists, and continue to do so, and has helped to make painting once again a vital means of artistic expression.
Richter’s incredibly complex work oscillates between paintings bordering on photorealism and large, abstract compositions of captivatingly expressive colour and technical perfection. Yet his work is always centred on painting itself, which is asserted in many different ways, confidently holding up its own reality for comparison to the actual world.
Joining us in discussion will be Keith Hartley, Chief Curator of the Gallery of Modern Art and curator of the Gerhard Richter exhibition.
