The exhibition presents the two artists’ responses to Below another sky an international residency programme designed to support the research and development of new work in print by artists from Scotland, Australia, Canada, India and Pakistan. The exhibition includes new prints, produced by Hopkins and Rhodes in 2013 and 2014 at Edinburgh Printmakers, alongside new and related work by the artists in other media.
Below another sky is the first collaborative programme developed by the Scottish Print Network, a partnership between Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Printmakers, Glasgow Print Studio, Highland Print Studio, Inverness and Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen.
10 artists from Scotland and 10 from Commonwealth countries were invited to undertake research residencies during 2013 and 2014.
Below another sky takes its name from the poem ‘Travel’, published in 1865 by the Edinburgh-born author Robert Louis Stevenson. Travel – both actual and imaginary – was central to Stevenson’s work and his final years were spent on a Samoan island, now a member of the Commonwealth.
Hopkins and Rhodes were invited to take part in Below another sky because of their individual concerns with landscape, topography and travel. They were invited to show together at Edinburgh Printmakers as an opportunity to explore the ways in which these concerns are expressed and made visible in their practices. This is the first time the artists have presented a two-person exhibition together in the UK.
The artists approached the residency programme in very different ways. Carol Rhodes used the opportunity to revisit Bengal in India, where she grew up. This country has had a lasting impact upon her work: its topography, the juxtaposition of industrial and post-industrial landscapes and the tradition of Indian miniature painting are all important to her. However, her aim here was not to produce work that literally describes or represents particular locations; rather her interest lies in ideas of distance, both literal and psychological.
Fundamentally, Rhodes’ process is usually one of repeated erasure and revision within a single layer of paint. She has stated that, during her time working with Edinburgh Printmakers, the different restrictions and disciplines of printmaking have opened up a range of other qualities and potentials for her practice.
As with Rhodes, Louise Hopkins’ work resists the representation of a specific, actual place; instead she aims to create imagined and new places through the formal process of making the work. Hopkins was unable to travel internationally in 2013 and instead used the opportunity presented by Below another sky to find further ways of using painting, drawing and printmaking to explore what travel can mean within the studio. She has spoken of her desire to understand travel in its relation to the fundamental process of picture making - as a movement across and into a surface.
Hopkins invited other artists participating in this programme to send her objects from their home countries or residency destinations. She then used this material – specifically the forms, colours and patterns of a number of ceramic bowls and textiles – as the starting point for a new body of work. This work has been developed in direct response to conditions of real and imagined travel, exploring other places from a distance and thereby offering an alternative route to discover – or rediscover – our sense of proximity with the world.
For more information please visit http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/exhibitions/scottish-print-network
For more information on 'Below Another Sky' visit
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