From the top:
A Favourite Place by Michael G Clark
A selection of work by Christine Borland from Glasgow Sculpture Studios
Honey by Margot Sandeman with Ian Hamilton Finlay
MICHAEL G CLARK: ENTENTE CORDIALE
Thompson’s Marylebone 15 New Cavendish Street, London
0207 935 3595
www.thompsonsgallery.co.uk
Online from today (Jan 8) and in the gallery from January 19 - Feb 6
One of the 32 artists who has benefited from being shortlisted for the Aspect Prize is Mike Clark. Ayrshire-born Clark was a finalist in the inaugural award (then called the Kennox Prize) back in 2003.
An art director in film and television in London before returning to his native Scotland in 1999 to pursue a full-time painting career, being short-listed for the the prize gave him visibility in Scotland and London. Although he has exhibited at Thompson’s Marylebone gallery on a regular basis, this will be his first solo in London since he came back to Scotland.
For this solo show, he concentrates on an ongoing love affair with France, which began while still a student at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1980s. “Coming from a small town in the west of Scotland, Paris provided a romantic vision for me,” he explains. “Fueled by memories of Bonnard and Doisneau, the smell of perfume, tobacco and restaurants, it seemed to be pretty near perfect. It was a celebration of living.” There have since been many visits to France, and Clark’s love affair now extends to the South West and Provence. A chance meeting in Glasgow with David Donaldson (son of the late David Donaldson, former Head of Painting at Glasgow School of Art) and his wife Marion, led to several visits to Montjoi, where Donaldson Sr had a studio. Clark’s summers in Montjoi are now followed by intensive periods of painting in the studio back in Scotland. Clark’s softly rendered, beautifully composed paintings have a tender quality which quietly evokes a memory, be it real or imagined.
AT HOME IN BEARSDEN AND CORRIE
Lillie Art Gallery
Station Road, Milngavie
0141 587 8847
www.hughsongallery.com
January 18 - March 16
This exhibition, curated by Joan Hughson in tandem with the Lillie Art Gallery was scheduled for 2009 but had to be cancelled due to the death of Margot Sandeman, whose work it celebrates, alongside that of her parents, Muriel Boyd Sandeman and Archibald Sandeman.
Margot Sandeman was the one of the most talented artists in the wartime class of Hugh Adam Crawford’s Painting and Drawing Department at Glasgow School of Art, which she attended from 1939-1942. A contemporary and close friend of Joan Eardley, the two women possessed very different styles but shared an enduring passion for the dynamics of creating art.
Born and bred in Bearsden, Sandeman spent all her childhood summer holidays at Corrie on the east coast of the island of Arran with her mother Muriel, father Archiblad and brother Sandy. She and Eardley painted their for several summers after they left art school and in in later life, she and her husband bought a property there.
Muriel Boyd was a highly successful embroiderer who trained at Glasgow School of Art with Jessie Newbery and her successor, Ann Macbeth, at the beginning of the 20th century, while Archibald was a self-taught watercolouris. All three were drawn back time and time again in their art to the landscapes around Corrie and High Corrie.
The exhibition explores the inspiration of place in the work of the three artists, and the connections between them and their work in different media. It looks at differing approaches to painting adopted by Eardley and Margot Sandeman, and suggests a possible role for another close friend, Ian Hamilton Finlay in the ultimate direction taken by Sandeman’s art.
CHRISTINE BORLAND: CAST FROM NATURE
Glasgow Sculpture Studios
154 Kelvinhaugh Street, Glasgow
0141 204 1740
www.glasgowsculpturestudios.org
Until March 26
Cast From Nature is Christine Borland’s first solo exhibition of new work in Glasgow since her acclaimed exhibition, From Life, at Glasgow’s Tramway, 16 years ago.
Borland’s thoughtful and often hauntingly beautiful work is drawn time and time again to medical science as a way of exploring the human condition. Her latest inspiration comes from a 19th century sculpture, From Nature, which the Edinburgh surgeon John Goodsir is said to have cast directly from a flayed, dissected body. This poor unfortunate fellow had his skin peeled back from jawbone to pelvis, revealing the muscles beneath. He was also posed deliberately across a support in tribute to Michelangelo’s Pieta.
For this exhibition, Borland has created a work of art which is caught between a filmed performance and a scientific demonstration. The whole process of casting - she expects it to take the five months of the show's duration - is present in a live feed to the gallery evoking both the historical anatomy theatre and modern methods of medical training where students are observed on camera as they work with actors in the role of patients.
A series of public casting events with the artist takes place every Thursday, Friday and Saturday throughout January from 12 noon until 5pm.