Ian McCulloch RSA, Driftwood Construction
RSA Finlay Room
Paintings, Prints, Ceramics and Constructions 1997-2007
A curated exhibition from the studio of Ian McCulloch looking at the development and reworking of recurring themes in a career spanning some 40 years. Throughout this time his creative vision has stayed as clear as it was in the early Sixties and he has accumulated of some of the most weighty, thorough and interesting work in Scotland today. ‘Sculptures’ made from the detritus of Bute Beaches interact with painted ceramics and relief prints cut from boards from urban skips. This exhibition also includes drawings, paintings, woodcuts and linocuts and enables us to see a tiny slice of this extraordinary vision.
This exhibition consists of a small survey of my work from the later 1990s to the present. During this period, I have moved through printmaking, constructions, ceramics and paintings, all underpinned in the first instance by drawings. In part, the exhibition has grown out of my response to the sea-change which occurred almost overnight in the art world in the early 1990s when large, figurative paintings – the kind of paintings I had been working on since the mid-1980s – fell out of fashion and exhibition opportunities consequently declined. This, together with other events in my life, led me to explore the possibilities afforded by different visual art media in order to find a way to continue working. In the process, I found myself not only working with relief printmaking, but also returning to materials I had not worked with since my time at art school and the years immediately thereafter.
Ian McCulloch RSA, 2007
Full colour catalogue available
