News

Ceci est mon corps, Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, 12th – 29th May 2017

February 25, 2017

This new body of paintings for Audrey Grant’s Open Eye Gallery Exhibition Award, presented at the Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition in 2015, arises from the artist’s collaboration with Scottish Ballet in rehearsal at their studios in Tramway, Glasgow.

Since spring 2012 Grant has had privileged access to Scottish Ballet’s rehearsals, spending full days observing and drawing with pencil in sketchbooks the movement of the dancers. In the rehearsals Grant focused on trying to capture something of the energy and shape of the movement, looking at the dancers and not her drawings, building up networks of marks that would take the shape of recognisable bodies and movements. Taking inspiration from these drawings, Grant has created a new series of paintings focusing on the powerful and moving ballet premiered in Scotland at the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival – MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps), choreography by Angelin Preljocaj, and Christopher Hampson’s lyrical Cinderella.

MC 14/22 is a ballet for 12 male dancers and has been described as a hymn to the male body. The title is a biblical reference to the Last Supper, as told in Mark 14:22, in which Jesus says to the disciples, ‘Take, eat: this is my body’.

For more details and to view the exhibition go to the Open Eye Gallery website

 

W Gordon Smith Painting Award Exhibition

January 21, 2016

The Times, Scottish Edition, 18th January 2016, by Giles Sutherland
“…It’s been commonplace, over the past few decades, to hear various pronouncements about the ‘death of painting’. It’s clear, however, that such judgements are premature, and inaccurate. Certainly, on the evidence of this show, the craft and art of painting is very much alive….”

Read the full review here

“…Audrey Grant’s oil painting, showing a seated female figure against a disturbing yellow ground, takes its title from R.M. Rilke’s Seventh Duino Elegy ‘Nowhere, Beloved Will World Be But Within Us’ (Nirgends, Geliebte, wird Welt sein, als innen). Grant’s imagery somehow conveys the sense of Rilke’s words while avoiding literalism…”

W GORDON SMITH PAINTING AWARD EXHIBITION, Dovecot Gallery, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, 12th – 30th January 2016
Read Susan Mansfield’s Scotland on Sunday article here

With all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open

June 8, 2015

(“Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur das Offene” from the Eighth Elegy, Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), translation by Stephen Mitchell)

New Paintings, Mixed Media Works on Paper and Artist Books

07.08.15 – 05.09.15
Union Gallery, Edinburgh

A full colour catalogue with foreword by arts journalist and writer, Susan Mansfield to accompany the exhibition. Click here to view