I have very fond memories of Edinburgh, ranging from childhood outings on the train to spending four years there as an undergraduate. More recently, I appreciate the wonderful museums and galleries, visiting several times a year on the high-speed train from London. I was lucky enough to go to the 3-day OCA Drawing Workshop run by artists Emma Drye, Jane Mitchell and Olivia Irvine last September. Wish the OCA would organise more of these!
The last time I went to Edinburgh, though, was just to wander around the grounds and buildings that make up the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was cold, mid-winter, and not a bright day, but that meant we got the place to ourselves more or less, and were often the only people in a gallery. Starting outside, we came across the first of Antony Gormley's six sculptures that form a sculpture trail called "6 times" from the Gallery of Modern Art to Leith Docks.
The figure (left) is in the grounds of the Gallery buried in the ground up to its chest. The next
four figures are standing in the Water of Leith itself, tracing its course through the centre of the city. The second figure is in the middle of the river, immediately behind the Gallery,
gazing into the water below, and a further three figures are sited at
separate points downstream in Stockbridge, Powderhall and Bonnington.
The final figure is at the end of an abandoned pier in Leith Docks,
staring out to sea (below).
You can see an interview
with Antony Gormley here
where he talks about 6 times. I just love the way these figures exude calmness, and seem to invite us to take some time
to look around and admire our surroundings. The way this first figure seems to be emerging from the ground to begin its journey to the sea also adds a little bit if humour for me in what are essentially solitary and lonely figures. Life-size, and identical, they appear to emphasize our frailty in nature and our vulnerability. The city and the Water of Leith rush around the figures, but they stand immobile and seem to make us as onlookers stop and stand still too. Very powerful.
Inside the grounds is a scaffolded structure by Nathan Coley, six
metres high, with the words ‘THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE’ in illuminated text. A Scottish artist, Coley based this work on a project in Stirling where he posted a series of public
announcements around the town. The words are
taken "from a seventeenth-century royal proclamation made in a French
town believed to have been the frequent site of miracles". Coley’s
practice is based in an interest in public space, and how systems of
personal, social, religious and political belief structure our towns and
cities, and thereby ourselves. It was strange the way the size and wording of the sign seemed so intimidating , and it brought up feelings of what it might be like to live in a repressive regime where our thoughts are controlled.
It isn't the words being said, but the the definite, commanding way they are written that gives the message such power.
On the exterior of the building itself is another message, reading "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT". This one makes me want to smile, to say, Okay - that's good - I won't worry then." But back comes the feeling that my thoughts are not my own and that someone/something else is in control of what I think or feel.
These two works are very strong in their impact; firstly because of their size and secondly because of their luminosity. There is no ignoring them. Very simple, yet again very powerful. Like the simplicity of Gormley's 6 times sculpture above, Coley's work illustrates his underlying premise without any superfluous detail.
This ability to distill an idea to a simple statement of what is necessary to convey your point, but no more, is one that I need to work on in my drawing. I am often unsure when to stop and declare a drawing to be finished. (more about this later).
Further along on my walk, I encountered this delightful sculpture (below) "Master of the Universe" by Eduardo Paolozzi, one of my favourite Scottish artists. I see his work nearly every single day, as one of his sculptures is outside a tube station nearest me in Pimlico (and I also often see the mosaic patterned walls at Tottenham Court Road tube station; and the magnificent "Head of Invention" sculpture on the South Bank outside the Design Museum.) His work is recognisable because of the obvious relationship with technology, with which Paolozzi was fascinated. This particular sculpture below is based on a famous drawing by William Blake, which shows the scientist Isaac Newton. From the National Gallery of Scotland description, I learned that Paolozzi used the same pose as in the Blake drawing, but mechanised the figure. "The sculpture was made by cutting up and reassembling a plaster model, as the artist frequently does in his later work. A similar but much larger sculpture can be seen in the courtyard of the British Library in London. However while the figure in this sculpture is blind, the London version was given the same eyes as Michelangelo's 'David.'"
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What I didn't realise until I read a bit more about this fascinating man, though, was that it is to him that we owe the beginnings of pop art with his famous poster entitled "I was a rich man's plaything" (below left) which is said to be the first time the word "pop" was used in a work of art. Paolozzi used collage over many
years, whether in paper or sculpture of found objects.
This technique is really obvious in my "local" work of art by him, which shows a collection of industrial-type pipes atop what looks like - and is - a ventilation tower. (photo below right) I'm sure this mix of art and functionality would have appealed to him, and it certainly does to me.
I came upon one more of Paolozzi's works in the cafeteria of the gallery when I went inside to warm up, and this is one you really can't miss - so big is it that you need to go upstairs to view it from another floor. At 7.3metres, Vulcan is a half-man, half-machine monument to the modern age.
References and further reading:
This ability to distill an idea to a simple statement of what is necessary to convey your point, but no more, is one that I need to work on in my drawing. I am often unsure when to stop and declare a drawing to be finished. (more about this later).
Further along on my walk, I encountered this delightful sculpture (below) "Master of the Universe" by Eduardo Paolozzi, one of my favourite Scottish artists. I see his work nearly every single day, as one of his sculptures is outside a tube station nearest me in Pimlico (and I also often see the mosaic patterned walls at Tottenham Court Road tube station; and the magnificent "Head of Invention" sculpture on the South Bank outside the Design Museum.) His work is recognisable because of the obvious relationship with technology, with which Paolozzi was fascinated. This particular sculpture below is based on a famous drawing by William Blake, which shows the scientist Isaac Newton. From the National Gallery of Scotland description, I learned that Paolozzi used the same pose as in the Blake drawing, but mechanised the figure. "The sculpture was made by cutting up and reassembling a plaster model, as the artist frequently does in his later work. A similar but much larger sculpture can be seen in the courtyard of the British Library in London. However while the figure in this sculpture is blind, the London version was given the same eyes as Michelangelo's 'David.'"
What I didn't realise until I read a bit more about this fascinating man, though, was that it is to him that we owe the beginnings of pop art with his famous poster entitled "I was a rich man's plaything" (below left) which is said to be the first time the word "pop" was used in a work of art. Paolozzi used collage over many
years, whether in paper or sculpture of found objects.This technique is really obvious in my "local" work of art by him, which shows a collection of industrial-type pipes atop what looks like - and is - a ventilation tower. (photo below right) I'm sure this mix of art and functionality would have appealed to him, and it certainly does to me.
 | ||||||||
Collage is definitely a technique which I plan to try out a bit more, so I shall certainly be doing a bit more delving into the work of Paolozzi.
I came upon one more of Paolozzi's works in the cafeteria of the gallery when I went inside to warm up, and this is one you really can't miss - so big is it that you need to go upstairs to view it from another floor. At 7.3metres, Vulcan is a half-man, half-machine monument to the modern age.
 | |
| Vulcan's head taken from the first floor; and the whole figure from Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. |
References and further reading:
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2005/apr/22/obituaries
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/subjects/Mythology/502946/artist_name/Eduardo%20Paolozzi/record_id/2298
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