Contemporary brings together seven exceptional artists in recognition of the strength and depth of their artistic talent. The exhibition includes creatives from various stages in their careers and acknowledges the validity of all mediums in contemporary practice.
Artists included in Contemporary:
David Cass | Doug Cocker | David Cook | Kate Downie | Richard Goldsworthy | Christine McArthur | Calum McClure
David Cass was born in Edinburgh and brought up in the Scottish Borders. He graduated with First Class Honours from Edinburgh College of Art in 2010, receiving the Royal Scottish Academy’s John Kinross Scholarship to Florence. The RSA now holds six of his works in their permanent collection and in 2018 the institution named work by Cass as the most promising created by a practicing artist in Scotland under 35.
Cass is difficult to pigeon-hole as he works across such a wide variety of media: principally he creates three-dimensional paintings using exclusively found objects sourced at flea-markets around Europe – though his practice also involves digital media and sculpture.
Cass has produced six solo exhibitions for The Gallery since 2011. At the age of 22, he constructed his inaugural show Unearthed, which was followed by the more conceptual Years of Dust & Dry in 2013. In 2015 Cass created an exhibition describing Florence’s Great Flood of 1966 (Tonight Rain, Tomorrow Mud) and in 2017 we presented the Venice-themed series Pelàda.
With each new project, Cass’ exploration into environmental themes deepens. His fifth exhibition Rising Horizon in February 2019 explored the issue of rising sea levels, and was a direct step on from Pelàda, zooming out from close examinations of Venice and its rising lagoon, to describe the abstract notion of a rising horizon line. He has recently presented work from this ongoing series at Venice Biennale. His latest exhibition Light on Water will be held in September 2024.
Doug Cocker was brought up in rural Perthshire and comes from a long line of farmers and blacksmiths. He taught sculpture at Nene College, Northampton and Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen and over a period of twenty years he was visiting lecturer at Edinburgh University, Edinburgh College of Art, The Glasgow School of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Tyler University, Philadelphia, Georgian College, Ontario and Newcastle Polytechnic from 1992–1998. He was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1984.
Cocker has undertaken many public sculpture commissions including the Ben Lomond Memorial at Rowardennan and the Glasgow Bouquet in the Merchant City, Glasgow. Doug Cocker’s sculpture is the artist’s response to the landscape and natural environment around him. Working predominately in wood, his studio in Lundie, outside Dundee, is a magnificent thinking space where the walls are littered with evolving ideas.
Public commissions include:
Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Ayr, Oldbury, Cardiff, Bristol
Public collections include:
Aberdeen Art Gallery; Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre; The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum; City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow; Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; Greenshields Foundation, Montreal; Peterborough Art Gallery; Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture, Edinburgh; Northampton Art Gallery; Kirkcaldy Galleries; Perth Museum and Art Gallery; The Ballinglen Archive, County Mayo; Robert Gordon University Collection, Aberdeen; University of Dundee; Boswell Collection, University of St. Andrews; Arts Council of Great Britain; Old Hawkhill, City of Dundee, Dundee; University of Stirling; Hospitalfield, Arbroath; University of South Wales Art Collection Museum
Cook was born in 1957 in Dunfermline and attended Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1979-84. He was recognised early as an exceptional talent, winning the first prize at the annual student show at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1983. He then won a travel award which took him to Paris, Amsterdam, Belgium and Cyprus. He won the Guthrie Award at the RSA in 1985 and was given Scottish Arts Council Awards in 1985, 1988 and 1989. He has exhibited irregularly but notably at The Traverse Theatre in 1982 and with the 369 Gallery throughout the following decade.
In the 1990s he was already visiting Seagreens (his current home) and staying at a cottage at Benholm, two miles to the North also frequented by Alberto Morocco and Ian Eadie. Cook travelled regularly in these years to Turkey, the Balearics and significantly, at the invitation of the Everard Reed Gallery, to Southern Africa for three months in 1997. He was able to secure the tenancy at Seagreens shortly after his return and eventually bought it in 2004. This sense of belonging is now deeply embedded; he can see the seasons change and paint the whole calendar; the daffodils of Spring, wild flowers of Summer, the Autumn skies and bleak drama of Winter are all on show: immediate, raw and compelling.
Kate Downie was born in North Carolina but raised from the age of 7 in Scotland. She studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen before travel and residencies took her to the United States, England, Amsterdam, Paris and Japan. Her constant search for new challenges and inspirations has seen her set up studios in such diverse places as a brewery, an oil rig, and an abandoned Hydroponicum.
As a Landscape painter her subject matter is often the man-made rather than the natural, but it is defined by good draughtsmanship and a sense of movement.
‘One of my creative concerns is to define these spaces between buildings rather than the buildings themselves. The object lesson for me is the witnessing and the drawing of these nonplaces which are also, by definition, public arenas of cumulative activity. My job as an artist is to accommodate these actions in our contemporary lives, and to find the poetry within.’
– Kate Downie
Richard Goldsworthy graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Sculpture in 2019. During his studies, Richard was awarded the RSA Barns-Graham Travel Award in May 2019 and completed a residency at Hospitalfields, Arbroath in April 2018. Working mainly with wood, Richard carves, chars, bleaches or casts elements to create highly contrasted objects that are visually intriguing. Charring gives the wood a denser, deeper texture beyond its basic colour and contrasts with any metal inclusions, which Richard casts into the wood, as well as with the natural grain and colour of the wood itself.
‘The exploration and transformation of material has always been a crucial part of my practice. Growing up in the British countryside, I have always been drawn to nature to source the materials I work with. From this ongoing relationship I have developed my study of wood and its intrinsic qualities, as well as its behaviour when acted upon through man-made materials and tools. This juxtaposition, both enhances and transforms the natural beauty of the materials I work with. My aim as an artist is to show off these natural materials and to guide the viewer back to these resources and the meditative power of nature we tap into when confronted by it.
The process of making, for example, the selection and seasoning of the wood, as well as working with it, is as important to me as the object itself. This gives me an intimate understanding of each work, allowing me to demonstrate the different ways in which a material can be looked at and used. By burning, carving and casting the wood, I create contrasting patterns that highlight and transform the shape and surface. I choose to celebrate the defects created by these actions such as my markings, and expose the ones caused by nature such as knots, cracks and ageing. Setting metal into the wood has the potential to create a friction between these two polar materials; yet aesthetically, it appears harmonious as a single object. The alchemical quality of this fusion is solidified, for me, by the casting process, in which the metal roots into the wood, similar in which a tree root takes to the soil.’ – Richard Goldsworthy.
Richard Goldsworthy presented a new selection of work in July 2020 – Wood, Metal & Fire and his work was also exhibited within In the Grain, April 2021.
Christine McArthur’s work is always changing and developing, in a wide variety of medium, all underwritten by her innate skill in drawing and sense of design.
Christine McArthur trained at the Glasgow School of Art from 1971-76 under David Donaldson, James Robertson and Leon Morrocco. She taught at both Glasgow University and the Glasgow School of Art up until 1980, when she began painting full time. She was elected to the RGI and the RSW. McArthur inhabits an immersive, creative world and tends to work in a series of ‘diaries’ from which finished work emerges. The passing seasons are observed, intertwined with imagery from her surroundings and familiar objects. She is a mixed media artist who specialises in oil, oil pastel, embroidery, acrylic, watercolour, pen and ink and collage.
McArthur was awarded Scottish Education Department travelling scholarships in 1975 and 1976 and was elected a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1990. In 1995 she was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.
Calum McClure was born in 1987 and graduated in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art in 2010. He was the winner of the 2011 Jolomo Painting Award, has had five successful exhibitions with The Scottish Gallery and was an invited artist at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy in London in 2012. Recently he has been included in an exhibition of prints at the Royal Academy, London; had work in the major Scottish art societies’ annual exhibitions; had work exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition; won a prize at the inaugural W Gordon Smith Award for painting; and most recently exhibited two pieces with Flowers Gallery, London.
McClure is a painter who immerses himself in the landscape and in the artistic process of representing it. He understands how paint can convey the poetry of suggestion and is absorbed in the infinite possibilities of the medium. His work evokes atmospheres, especially through the representation of light, shadow and reflections. Some of his images are almost abstract, others quite clearly representational, produced from intense scrutiny of details in the landscape and vistas, views from particular vantage points all with their possibility for further imaginative exploration. He is an artist who dreams as he sees and concentrates deeply as he paints, enabling others who view his work to be transported in a similar way. The images are positive, beautiful and lyrical, those of a precious environment to be nurtured and celebrated.
To view prints by this artists please click here.
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