Exhibition: Scratching the Surface
Scratching the Surface
19 - 27 March
Scratching the Surface is an exhibition of work by three Edinburgh based artists presented in two parts. These exhibitions bring together Scott McCracken, Andrew Smith and Allan Robertson who all work within the medium of painting. Each artist has his own motivations and observations, but they are united in their appreciation and practice of paint’s materiality and the possibilities of painting as a contemporary medium. The first exhibition will be hosted at the Patriothall Gallery in Stockbridge and will show recent paintings by the artists. The second exhibition will take place at art’s complex at St Margaret’s House and will showcase recent drawings, prints and smaller works.
Participating Artists
Allan Robertson
I have become particularly interested in the impact of new and declining industry on Scotland’s Landscape.
My work brings together the shapes and colours of the landscapes of the 20th and 21st centuries with pieces of earlier industrial times included into the mix.
I depict the colours, textures and various surfaces of the materials used in the construction and manufacturing structures. Using their shapes and lines in geometric compositions and designing new arrangements. These industrial edifices which are mostly hidden from sight are exposed to create contemporary landscapes.
Taking inspiration from the maze of conduits and pipes and the seemingly obscure structures of heavy industry I reflect on their life. Their stories and histories, analysis their relationship between the different layers, I reconfigure these fragments into new narratives.
The final piece encapsulates the underlying beauty and poetic nature of the original structures.
Scott McCracken
My work is concerned with the role of painting in a contemporary context, examining the way painting is approached and the process of image making through the exploration of painting. This research manifests in various strategies, such as an interrogation of the formalist qualities of painting, the nature of pictorial representation, and an interest in the materiality of the medium.
In my paintings, I assume the role of the unreliable narrator, presenting the viewer with a continually shifting pictorial language as a way of purposefully misleading their perception. The work aims to create tension within the picture plane, opposing ideas such as reality versus fiction, the interior world versus the exterior world, and the abstract versus the figurative.
Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith's recent work has been a continuing evolution of previous years' paintings looking at the city in the context of civil liberties and notions of how society is sculpted. Andrew's paintings are representations both realistic and abstracted of the city from the distorted perspectives. I am interested in the strata of society, how this is manifested, be it visually or in a more subtle manner and questioning it through a visual means. The human environment, that is to say one that humans have specifically and systematically sculpted, has been a particularly strong theme that permeates through my work. What interests me about these environments is both their psychological effect and the social/ideological issues that they establish as well as the layers of history they reflect.