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11/1/2008

Brian Catling

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

We are delighted to announce our first exhibition of 2008, and the 14th in our series of 26 exhibition projects which began in July 2007 and will end in July 2008. Each of the 26 installations presents a conversation between one invited artist and a counterpoint of their choice. In August 2008 we will publish a book documenting the year’s exhibitions.

Brian Catling (born in London, 1948) is an extraordinary artist, but this is just one of many guises; he is also a published poet and academic, and is currently Professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin in Oxford. Though he has taught sculpture for many years, his work most often takes the form of video or live performance and these separate activities frequently come together to create events which resolutely defy categorisation. His work manifests an uncompromising desire to press the boundaries of what we call art, and what it can and should do. A performance at the Serpentine Gallery in 1994 titled 'The Blindings', lasted an epic 9 days, and 'Antix' at Matt’s Gallery, London in 2006 evolved slowly over 16 consecutive nights, the artist having first made his arrival in a homemade boat which he sailed up the Thames from his house in Oxfordshire.

We are honoured that Catling has chosen this exhibition to present a series of new egg-tempera paintings he calls his “gritty little gems”, tiny icon-like works of Cylopic figures which he has made in secret over the past 2 years. Though these have developed partly in response to his live performances, the artist has kept them deliberately distinct from his usual practice. These portraits of what should be monsters, possess a strange beauty and sympathy, and stem directly from an earlier series of paintings of the unfortunate 19th century Edinburgh ‘idiot’ Robert McFarlane or “Bobby Awl” who has long held a morbid fascination for Catling. The artist has closely guarded these works until now but we will show them for the first time alongside the original 19th century death mask of this bizarre and mysterious character from Edinburgh’s past, generously loaned from the Collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Brian Catling has made performances and installations across the world, and in 2001 founded the international performance collective 'The Wolf in the Winter'. He has published eight books of poetry with a new volume based around an imagined conversation between the artist and the death mask of “Bobby Awl” released by the Etruscan press in 2007.

Brian Catling will be reading from this new publication at the preview of the exhibition on Saturday 12 January at 2pm. There will be a short performance reading by Brian Catling from 2pm on Saturday 12th January, please come along. The exhibition will be open every day from 10am to 5pm within the dates of the show. We are grateful to the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh for their assistance with this exhibition.

Opening Saturday 12 January 2008

Ingleby Gallery
6 Carlton Terrace, Edinburgh
Free admission

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