Alasdair Wallace: OSCILLATE, VACILLATE, ORBIT & REVOLVE
Glasgow Print Studio
Preview: 06 June, 6pm – 8pm
Exhibition Runs: 07 June – 28 July 2019
THIS exhibition of new paintings and prints by Alasdair Wallace represents his first major solo show in Glasgow in over 20 years.
An important strand of this new work examines the parallel processes across painting and printmaking, where they overlap and diverge and how they can inform each other. The influence of his recent experimentations in printmaking has led to his use of systematic painting techniques alongside his more usual instinctive and reactive approach.
Wallace grew up in Drumchapel, on the western outskirts of Glasgow. These ‘edge lands’ on the city’s rural and urban fringe have influenced the artist and, his attitude to landscape remains coloured by childhood explorations of what seemed like a wilderness.
Below the Glasgow Airport flight path, he and his friends would bunk off school and follow the nearby burn, upstream. Amidst the occasional burnt-out car and shopping trolley, they would encounter ideal worlds for childish imaginations to inhabit. An Arcadia in microcosm.
The sense of this ‘edge land’ absurdly infringing on some evocation of the ideal landscape is a recurring theme for Wallace.
Much of the recent work to be found in OSCILLATE, VACILLATE, ORBIT & REVOLVE reveals an influence of the emblematic language present in neo-classical landscape painting tradition and the depiction of Arcadia as an artificial backdrop to human drama.
The sense of symbolism inherent in these traditions is preserved but is mischievously confounded with ambiguous connections to contemporary experience. His invented landscapes are combined with oblique observations of real locations to present a world that is at once recognisable and unsettling. One full of unexplained presences and clusters of incongruous objects.
The graphic quality of print has also prompted a new exploration for Wallace of text and imagery in combination. Disembodied words float amidst etched landscapes while paintings are shot through with Dada-esque textual conundrums. The ambiguity and absurdity of the text is amplified in his recently completed ‘Analoguer’ digital prints.
Over his career, Wallace has distilled a unique vision. One touched with humour, mystery and a subtle sense of pathos. Though the work often intrigues and baffles in equal measure his affinity with materials, openness of form and the accessibility of familiar motifs, invites audiences to engage with the work imaginatively and form significances of their own.
Alasdair Wallace was born in Glasgow 1967 and studied at The Glasgow School of Art from 1987 to 1991. On graduation, he travelled to Italy with the John Kinross Scholarship from the Royal Scottish Academy.
He has received numerous other awards since then, including the William Littlejohn Award and the Guthrie Medal from the RSA, The Alexander Graham Munro Travel Award and the Walter Scott Award from the RSW, The Armour Award and The City Of Glasgow College Award from the RGI. He won The Noble Grossart Painting Prize in 2001and in 2018 he received the W Gordon Smith And Mrs Jay Gordon Smith Award at the annual exhibition of the Society Of Scottish Artists in Edinburgh.
Solo shows have taken place regularly at The Rebecca Hossack Gallery (London and New York), the Open Eye Gallery (Edinburgh) and the Compass Gallery (Glasgow) as well as the Featured Artist exhibition ‘230 volts’ at Glasgow Print Studio in September 2015.
Wallace regularly exhibits in the SSA, RGI, RSA and RSW annual exhibitions.
Other group shows include ‘The River Runs Through It’ at Kelvingrove Museum and the inaugural ‘Ghosts Of Gone Birds’ exhibition in London as well as several survey shows at The Fleming Collection Gallery, London. His work was included in ‘INK’, an exhibition curated from the archives of Glasgow Print Studio by Sam Ainsley, David Harding and Sandy Moffat in 2017.
His works are held in a number of collections including: Walter Scott Collection, Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, Cromarty Arts Trust, The Royal Scottish Academy, North Lanarkshire Council, Grampian Hospitals Art Trust and The City Of Glasgow College.
ENDS
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Exhibition open to the public Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5.30pm, Sundays 12noon – 5pm. Entry is free.
Public information number: 0141 552 0704
E-mail: info@glasgowprintstudio.co.uk
Website: www.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk
For further press information, please contact Naomi Brown,
Glasgow Print Studio, Trongate 103, Glasgow, G1 5HD
Call: 0141 552 0704
Email: naomib@glasgowprintstudio.co.uk
Visit: www.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk
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Naomi Brown details…
Contact: Naomi Brown
Phone: 0141 248 5210
Email: naomib@glasgowprintstudio.co.uk
Website: http://www.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk
