Audrey Grant - uniongallery.co.uk · The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Vintage International 2009) Audrey Grant With all its eyes the natural world looks out

Audrey GrantWith all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open

Exhibition title and Painting titles taken from Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies andThe Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Vintage International 2009)

Audrey Grant

With all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open

New Paintings, Works on Paper and Artist Books

07.08.15 - 07.09.15

UNIONgallery

AudGrant Cat Text PRINT_AudGrant Cat Text 23/07/2015 13:00 Page 1


Looking in the Distance

“…upon her beads,

night after night, she counts the ancient curse.

Yet awkward as she is, she suddenly

lifts a constellation of our voice,

glittering, into the pure nocturnal sky.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnet I, 8, The Sonnets to Orpheus

Something about the woman in the picture draws us in. She pays us no heed, absorbed in her own world. But

there’s something about that plaintive figure, those little patent shoes. She’s the girl who arrived at the party

in a ball gown, only to find everyone else is in slacks. Standing on the fringe of the crowd, she looks in vain for

familiar faces. Then, finding a seat away from the throng - those shoes looked so fine in the shop, but boy, do

they pinch! - she drifts into thought. Gazing into the distance, she finds herself vulnerable to questions: why

am I here at this party? Why am I here in thi s world?

The people in Audrey Grant’s paintings are caught in pensive moments like this. They are alone, stripped of

the distractions we like to put between ourselves and our uncertainties. They are awkward in the way they

stand and sit. They hesitate. They try too hard to make a good impression. Their self-confidence is a brittle

veneer.

People have always been Grant’s subject. She painted from life for years, yet the point at which she stopped

working with a life model was crucial. The artist whose subject sits in front of her is bound into a contract of

observing, depicting. When Grant decided to stop painting specific human beings, she began, in a new way,

to paint the human condition.

Her title for her exhibition comes from Rainer Maria Rilke, from the eighth Duino Elegy. We are, he contends,

destined to be observers of our own lives, reflecting on their transience, locked into a search for meaning which

robs us of the spontaneity of simply living, as creatures do. We are always heading towards the exit, casting a

look back over our shoulder at what we might have enjoyed. Grant’s figures capture something of this and we

recognise it in them. We feel for them because we know how it feels.

[ 1 ]


Grant’s primary tool for exploring all this is paint, and her use of it is increasingly dynamic. It is applied and

scraped off, layered, scratched into, allowed to drip, spatter. She buys paint in bucket-sized pots, testament to

an ongoing daily struggle. Her work emerges from this intense, physical engagement. The figures may be still,

but the paint dances.

This exploration of materials has extended into a new body of mixed media works on paper. This time there

are no people. Beginning with prints of her own photographs of the ocean, she works on them with paint,

lithium grease (such as you might use to lubricate a car engine), gold leaf, siccative (a drying agent), liquid

latex. It’s a dance of materials, which are then interwoven with equations and diagrams from academic papers

on the dynamics of flow.

It is, perhaps, a different approach to the same question. Science, too, looks into the distance, asks: what is

this world? where do I fit in? But, here, the questioning has a different energy; the scientist wants to see more

clearly, to understand. If we are fated, as human beings, to look at ourselves and at the world, it is not only a

curse. For both the scientist and the artist, it is a dynamic engagement. It is what makes us human, with all the

good that entails. It is what makes us sing.

Susan Mansfield, writer and journalist

[ 2 ]


[ 3 ]

Woman Walking

2015, Oil on canvas, 40x40cm


Welt war in dem Antlitz der GeliebtenWorld was in the face of the beloved, from Uncollected Poems, 1923-1926


[ 4 ]


Siehe, ich lebeLook I am living, from The Ninth Elegy, Duino Elegies


[ 5 ]


Alles will schwebenAll things want to fly, from Sonnet II, 14, The Sonnets to Orpheus


[ 6 ]


Tanzerin I


[ 7 ]


Siehe die BlumenLook at the flowers, from Sonnet II, 14, The Sonnets to Orpheus


[ 8 ]


Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur das Offene With all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open, from The Eighth Elegy, Duino Elegies


[ 9 ]


Figure III


[ 10 ]


Figure IV


[ 11 ]


Wir sind freiWe are already free, from Sonnet II, 23,The Sonnets to Orpheus


[ 12 ]


Le monde est grand, mai en nous il est profound comme la merThe world is large, but in us it is as deep as the sea, R.M. Rilke, from Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard


[ 13 ]


Aber plötzlich…Yet awkward as she is…., from Sonnet I, 8,The Sonnets to Orpheus


[ 14 ]


Nur im Raum der RuhmungOnly in the realm of praising should lament walk, from Sonnet I, 8, The Sonnets to Orpheus


[ 15 ]


Tanzerin III


[ 16 ]


Tanzerin II


[ 17 ]


Figure II


[ 18 ]


Figure I


[ 19 ]


Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus eniem enzigen JahrNo, we don’t accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers dofrom The Third Elegy, Duino Elegies


[ 20 ]


Natural Philosophy

Works on Paper and Artist Books

These images incorporate phrases, diagrams and mathematical symbols extracted from scientific notes

and papers I have written. Their scientific context addresses the flow of substances: not just water but

also sea-mist, emulsions, grease and paint. Those elements thus enter the work not only directly as

subject and as materials, but also indirectly through the meanings of these borrowed marks.

To my eye such marks, while still recognizable as fragments of science, have also mutated into flotsam,

flocks of seabirds, or the mast and sail of a yacht.

Professor Mike Cates FRS

Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Edinburgh

Note on Works on Paper and Artist Books: photographs of the sea at Gamrie Bay, North East Scotland

taken in January 2015 by Audrey Grant. Photographs hand-printed by Norman McBeath on

Hahnemuhle Matt Fine Art Photo Rag 308gsm.

[ 21 ]


An Ideal SolutionLithium grease, siccative, oil transfer on hand-printed photograph

2015, 42x59cm

[ 22 ]


Interfacial tensionLithium grease, siccative, oil transfer on hand-printed photograph

2015, 42x59cm

[ 23 ]


Mean Field TheoryLithium grease, gold leaf, oil transfer on hand-printed photograph

2015, 42x59cm

[ 24 ]


Pressure FieldLithium grease, watercolour, siccative, oil transfer on hand-printed photograph

2015, 42x59cm

[ 25 ]


Some consequences of energy bending physicsLithium grease, siccative, oil transfer on hand-printed photograph

2015, 42x59cm

[ 26 ]


This is not fluidLithium grease, gouache, oil transfer on hand-printed photograph

2015, 42x59cm

[ 27 ]


Natural Philosophy Book One Lithium grease, siccative, latex, oil transfer on hand-printed photographs, 15 pages in gilt-titled archival box

2015 Open 66x22cm Closed 31x23cm

Book 1

[ 28 ]


[ 29 ]


[ 30 ]


[ 31 ]


Book 2

Natural Philosophy Book TwoLithium grease, siccative, gold leaf, oil transfer on hand-printed photographs, 15 pages in gilt-titled archival box

2015 Open 66x22cm Closed 31x23cm

[ 32 ]


[ 33 ]


[ 34 ]


[ 35 ]


[ 36 ]


Audrey Grant Exhibitions and Awards

Solo Exhibitions

2015 With all its eyes the natural world looks out into theOpen, New Paintings, Mixed Media Works on Paperand Artist Books, Union Gallery, Edinburgh

2014 New Paintings, Panter and Hall, London

2013 New Paintings, Union Gallery, Edinburgh

2012 Figures, New Paintings, Hester Gallery, Leeds

2009 New Paintings, Leith School of Art, Edinburgh

Selected Group Exhibitions

2015The Scottish Show, Panter and Hall, LondonLondon Art Fair, Panter and Hall, LondonVAS:T 2015, Visual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibition, RSA,Edinburgh

2014RSA Open, Royal Scottish Academy, EdinburghThe Cabinet Show, Compass Gallery, Glasgow20/21 International Art Fair, Panter and Hall, LondonThe Scottish Show, Panter and Hall, London

2013RSA Open, Royal Scottish Academy, EdinburghRGI 152nd Annual Exhibition, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow20/21 British Art Fair, Panter and Hall, LondonEclectic, Panter and Hall, LondonStill Spaces, Compass Gallery, GlasgowVisual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibition, RSA, EdinburghLondon Art Fair, Cyril Gerber Fine Art and CompassGallery, Glasgow

2012RSA Open, Royal Scottish Academy, EdinburghThe Cabinet Show, Compass Gallery, GlasgowRGI 151st Annual Exhibition, Mitchell Library, GlasgowLondon Art Fair, Cyril Gerber Fine Art and CompassGallery, GlasgowVisual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibition, RSA, Edinburgh

2011Being Human, Two person exhibition, Union Gallery,EdinburghRGI 150th Annual Exhibition, Mitchell Library, GlasgowRSA Open, Royal Scottish Academy, EdinburghAberdeen Artists Society, Aberdeen Art GalleryVisual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibition, RSA, Edinburgh

2010RSA Open, Royal Scottish Academy, EdinburghOrigin of Colour - Fabric of the Land, University of AberdeenAspect Prize Exhibition, Paisley Museum and Art GalleriesVisual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibition, RSA, Edinburgh

2009Visual Arts Scotland Members Exhibition, Gracefield ArtsCentre, Dumfries20th Anniversary Exhibition, Leith School of Art, EdinburghVisual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibition, City Art Centre,Edinburgh

2008Mixed Summer Exhibition, Gallery Heinzel, Aberdeen

2007Aspect Prize Exhibition, Paisley Museum and Art GalleriesRoyal Scottish Academy 181st Annual Exhibition, Edinburgh

Other Exhibitions

2013Ruffled Russell and the Lost Soul: Artists and their Materials,Edinburgh International Festival collaboration with writerMary Paulson-Ellis, The Hub, Edinburgh

Awards2013 The Anne Redpath Award, Visual Arts Scotland2011 David Gilchrist Memorial Award, Royal Glasgow

Institute of the Fine Arts2011 The Maverick Award, The Tom McGrath Trust2006 Visual Arts Creative Development Grant, Scottish

Arts Council2004 Eliza Clifford Prize for Outstanding Work by a

Mature Student, Leith School of Art

[ 37 ]


[ 38 ]

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

Mary Paulson-Ellis and my family for their enduring support

Hand-Printed Photographs by Norman McBeath

Catalogue Photography by Michael Wolchover

Professor Mike Cates FRS for his text, scientific notes and papers

Susan Mansfield

Kate Downie

Dave Cook and Bob Scott at J.Thomson Colour Printers

And to Alison Auldjo and the Union Gallery


UNIONgallery45 Broughton StreetEdinburgh EH1 3JUt. 0131-556 7707w. www.uniongallery.co.uk blog. www.uniongallery.blogspot.comTwitter. @UNIONgallery1Facebook. www.facebook.com/Union.Gallery.Edinburgh

ISBN 978-0-9569781-5-8

U

Documents

Audrey Grant - uniongallery.co.uk · The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Vintage International 2009) Audrey Grant With all its eyes the natural world looks out